Thoughts, experiments, and discoveries from the lab
How an overlooked dashboard was recovered from a retired LXC, moved with its Grafana and Prometheus history, and rebuilt as a read-only operations console.
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How I built two charging decision systems for my solar + battery + Tesla homelab: a nightly charge engine and a PV-aware Tesla governor. Real bugs, real fixes, real numbers.
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The counterintuitive lesson from a homelab that flipped its AI hierarchy: putting the most sophisticated model in the orchestrator seat made everything cheaper, faster, and more reliable.
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Architecture documentation for the Hermes Agent and OpenClaw subagent integration in Big Kel's home lab infrastructure.
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A 150-character shell script wrapped around MLB's hidden public API — how I check the Cardinals score from the terminal, no app required.
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Five AI agents, a kanban board, and a bullpen mentality: what I learned about lanes, silence, and not asking the crypto specialist to restart Docker.
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The framework-adaptation trap costs months. Three lived attempts — Hermes/OpenClaw, CrewAI hierarchical mode, and a generic skill-registry — and the rule for when to bend a framework versus draft the agent you actually need.
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Swapping models is the wrong first move for nearly every reliability problem in agent design. Five planning questions that matter more than your model choice — drawn from eighteen months building Brock at home.
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What I learned building a home-grown CrewAI assistant from scratch — twelve domain specialists, deterministic state pre-injection, output verification, and the day Brock confabulated an answer about itself. A baseball-shaped post-mortem on agent reliability.
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How Hermes Agent integrates with OpenClaw subagents through the MCP bridge and delegate_task pattern — a clean migration pattern for AI agent architectures.
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How I connected an Omi AI wearable to Home Assistant through a local Gemma 4 LLM — turning voice commands into device control, and ambient conversations into an Obsidian journal. No Alexa, no Google, no cloud.
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Real electric bill data — 14 months of actual invoice numbers — from a coastal Georgia home with 16.1 kW solar, 99 kWh battery storage, two EVs, and a retired IT guy who refuses to stop tracking things.
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A retired IT pro walks through his home lab DNS setup: pfSense, two Pi-hole servers with Nebula Sync, Unbound as a recursive resolver, and why running a flat network with 60+ devices isn't as crazy as it sounds.
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A retired IT guy shares how Home Assistant, six cameras, a 99 kWh solar battery system, and Tesla Dog Mode form a real smart home pet safety setup for his golden retriever, Rudy.
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Which is better: the 100-year-old daily driver or modern infrastructure-grade kitchenware? A deep dive into the economics and performance of vintage cast iron.
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A data-driven look at cast iron seasoning - polymerization chemistry, oil testing, temperature experiments, and myth-busting based on real testing.
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Learn how to monitor your entire home lab infrastructure using Home Assistant with real-time metrics, Docker monitoring, and automated alerts.
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How I use Home Assistant to optimize electricity costs with time-of-use rates, solar panels, and battery storage. Real billing data showing 48% monthly savings after solar installation.
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How I use Home Assistant automations to optimize my Tesla Model Y charging schedule around time-of-use rates, solar production, and battery state — saving hundreds per year.
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A detailed walkthrough of installing and integrating a 100kWh home battery system with Solar-Assistant and Home Assistant for real-time monitoring, automation, and energy independence.
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Year 1 results from my 12 kW solar array and 100 kWh battery system. Real numbers on production, consumption, self-consumption rates, and financial ROI.
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Learn to configure Ollama Cloud with OpenClaw for affordable cloud LLM access. Features Kimi-K2.5, MiniMax-M2.1, and DeepSeek-V3.1 with pricing comparison.
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Stop drowning in data. Learn how to build Home Assistant dashboards that answer questions in 3 seconds, not 30 minutes.
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Building a hybrid AI infrastructure with local inference and cloud tiers. Learn how to save 80-90% on API costs while maintaining premium capabilities.
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A deep dive into cast iron history—from Lodge's factory floors to the modern boutique revival. Plus one 60-year-old's late-in-life discovery of the greatest cookware ever made.
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How to eliminate EV charging costs with home solar and battery backup—without net metering. Real economics, hardware setup, and why resilience beats ROI.
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I'm using Full Self-Driving on actual Uber and Lyft shifts. It works. Here's exactly how the integration works, where it's brilliant, where it breaks, and what it means for the future.
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Why EVs are the best vehicle for gig work (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash). The real math shows total cost of ownership is competitive with gas cars—plus reliability and comfort.
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How I automated updates for 9 Docker stacks to run twice a week at 3:17 AM. The thinking behind smart automation and what to watch for.
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How I installed a 100 kWh lithium battery system, what went right and wrong, and why I'd do it differently. A deep dive into home energy independence.
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Connect Home Assistant to Obsidian and create a living knowledge base of your home's performance. Data-driven smart home optimization.
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How charging your EV during super off-peak hours can save you $1,500+ annually. The math, strategy, and why intentionality beats convenience.
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