HOMELAB

HOMELAB

Projects, hardware, and research for the Petrovic house — what's built, what's planned, and what's still on the bench. Everything local-first: the house should work when the internet doesn't.

Running

Alerter (unarmed) + announcer →

Next dollar

Smoke/CO set, ~$280 — see item →

Waiting on

AT&T install date, gates the ~$945 network buy →

The Bill

the plan of record — priced, phased, decided

Overview → The dashboard — what's running, decided, and open, the system diagram, and the phase-by-phase spend. status · system · phases The Ledger → Every line item on the house bill in one filterable table — status, phase, price, running totals. 55 line items · 6 phases · filterable

The Systems

flat — the parts of the house, one deep dive each

Climate & Envelope → The ecobee plan, the attic project (removal → your window → blow), baffles, windows, and the whole-house fan's second life.
The Mini-Split → Three picks and two funerals before TOSOT — the pick and why it beat the field, 120V wiring, and the install runbook from lineset to commissioning.
The Window Job → Fifteen openings of 1955 aluminum single-pane — block-frame ordering, the brick-inset install sequence, brand tiers, and glass strategy.
Resilience → The fire & CO gap the audit found — fixed first — then the tornado alert pipeline, UPSes, the generator ladder, radon watch, and a shelter kit.
Room by Room → The nursery's comfort panel, the kitchen printer and its morning slip, the exterior lights, and instrumenting the pit properly.
Backbone → Home Assistant on the hub, the Zigbee radio, energy monitoring, and what a voice assistant looks like here.
The Network → Fiber to closet to every corner — the gateway verdict, the PoE switch, the closet, the attic drops, and the cutover plan.

Built

running now

  • ● running · unarmed Alerter — polls the NWS warning polygons against our exact rooftop every 45s and drives the announcer by tier. Deployed on the hub; log-only until armed. The sirens answer to city dispatch — this answers to us.
  • ● running Announcer — make any Sonos room speak: TTS → LAN → speaker, with snapshot/restore. CLI plus an HTTP API on the hub port map (:8770). Dry-run by default — the house sleeps a lot.

In the Stacks

research, not yet in print

  • JUN 2026Smart-home backboneHome Assistant + MQTT + Zigbee2MQTT as the spine; ESPHome for DIY nodes.researched
  • JUN 2026Sensor nodes & dashboardsESP32 beats Pi for sensing; e-ink wall dashboard build (~$120).researched
  • JUN 2026Local voiceWake word → local STT → Ollama → Piper; Echos demoted to dumb announcers.researched
  • JUN 2026Network & Wi-Fi auditDouble-NAT + wireless backhaul suspected; fix list costs ~$0.researched
  • JUN 2026ADS-B flight trackingSDR + antenna already owned; plane → Ollama → Sonos is an open niche.researched

ON THE WIRE — LAN SWEEP, JUL 17 2026, 1:30 AM

28 devices answering. Sonos ×3 units across 2 rooms · TP-Link Deco/Kasa fleet ×6+ · one mystery ESP32 (10.0.0.196, Espressif radio, identity TBD) · the recteq smoker is not on the network · the hub kara was unreachable at sweep time · ecobee not yet installed.

Everything → Every page, section, and part, one list.