Monthly Archives: April 2025

MiniRack Build Out And Review

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MiniRack Build Out And Review

Seems like in the last year or two home networking folks have started building up MiniRack Home Lab servers.  A typical network server rack is 19″ and the minirack form factor is 10″.

My build is inspired by Jeff Geerling.  Jeff is a Tech Guy who specializes in all things Raspberry Pi.  Anyone who owns a Pi probably knows about him.  Essentially, my build will consist of 3 Raspberry Pi computers and a JetKVM.

  • Raspberry Pi 4 with POE+. – An MMDVM board is used as a gateway for DMR Ham Radio.
  • Raspberry Pi 5 with GeekPi POE+ and 256GB NVME Hat. Additionally, a HiFiBerry DAC8x Digital to Analog converter for streaming audio. Lyrion Music server and Squeezelite and deployed.
  • Raspberry Pi 5 with the same Geekpi POE+ and this NVME houses a 4TB NVME drive with Samba.  Also, it has a mini RTL-SDR for running OP25 which is a P25 Phase 1 and Phase 2 decoder.  I use it to track two trunking communications systems. (Police Scanner)
  • JetKVM – used to control the Pi with the 4TB drive.  Lastly, KVM stands for Keyboard, Video, and Mouse and is similar to IPMI accessibility.

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Dovoh Laser Level H3-360G Review

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Dovoh Laser Level H3-360G Review

Dovoh laser level H3-360G

Dovoh H3-360G

Like any ordinary guy I love me some tools.  And the higher tech they are, the better.  Laser Level manufacturer Dovoh provided John’s Tech Blog their high accuracy H3-360G Laser Level with their DR1 Receiver.  Although the sample was provided for free the opinions you see written here are mine.

From a professional standpoint I could have used one of these in my working years.  I aligned and certified Aircraft Visual Landing Aids at Navy and Marine Corps Air Stations.  Surveying was a big part of aligning glide slopes.  One set of aids consists of 4 boxes.  The center of each lens should be within 1 inch of each box on average.

I could have set this up and verified that check in seconds.  As it stood it took some time to survey all the boxes, record elevations, do some math, etc.
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Auto-Vox Back Up Camera Review

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Auto-Vox Back Up Camera Review

Auto-Vox Back Up Camera

Auto-Vox Back Up Camera

The nice folks at Auto-Vox have provided me their Wireless Solar Back Up Camera ($116.98) to review.

This is a perfect product for me to shake down since I don’t have a backup camera on my small camper.   I have tried other backup cams, however, this camera has a solid mounting mechanism which attaches behind your license plate.

Other manufacturers sometimes use magnetic mounts. I’m always afraid one big bump will either misalign the camera or have it fall off completely.  No worries here with a positively mounted bracket.   That being said the camera barely fits on my camper license plate mount because it is attached to a turn signal/brake light.
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Benfei Adapters And Docking Station

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Benfei Adapters And Docking Station

I’m a MacBookAir fanatic.  Anyone with a MacBookAir can tell you that due to its slim design there are a few standard ports missing.  There is no ethernet port, no SD card slot, and only a couple of USB-C ports.  Adapters are a must.  The nice folks at Benfei sent me a few adapters and a docking station to test and review.   The adapters are as follows:

Benfei Adapters

Benfei Adapters

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