Mini Rack 005: Home Automation, Docker Swarm, AI Agents, and NAS

[RasPiBuilder]

Description

My goal for this project is to build a fully self-contained rack to support a full suite of services for home automation, docker swarm, AI agents, and NAS. I'm still in the process of kitting everything out, so it's not 100% complete yet.

Parts List

• DeskPi RackMate T1
• Some Cheap 7in Display
• Pi Zero W2 with Cam
• Home Assistant Yellow with CM5 4GB Ram, 32GB eMMC & 256GB m.2
• Old Raspberry Pi 3 (Placeholder)
• Rapink 12 Port Patch Panel
• MokerLink 11 Port Gigabit PoE Switch
• 4 Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, with PoE Hat(f) & 1TB m.2
• 2 Raspberry Pi 4 8 GB, in Argon One case 256GB m.2
• 2 five TB external SSDs (connected to the Pi4)
• Middle Atlantic Half Rack PDU 15A

[stirkage]

Nice build :)

What device are you runing the 7" display from? I've been looking for one myself to display probably a HomeAssistant dashboard for monitoring my rack but didn't want to run a full Pi for it if there was a cheaper alternative. Not that the Pis are that expensive but a kitted out one can get that way.

[RasPiBuilder]

I'm running it from one of the Pi4s. Right now it's just displaying RasPi OS. I wanted to quickly verify that everything was connecting properly and had a SD card laying around with it.. but I'll be switching it to a headless install with OMV and then setting up a lightweight UI for the dashboard.

[cccccccccccccccccnrd]

what keyboard is dis?

[nafanz]

I was also interested in the keyboard, it looks unusual.

What SSD drives do you use and how long have they been serving you?

[mikeshoss]

How are you running agents in this?

[RasPiBuilder]

what keyboard is dis?

It's just a cheap "folding mini keyboard" I picked up a few years ago on Amazon. The exact brand is "Jelly Comb" I don't think that particular one is available now, but there are tons of similar ones out there.

[RasPiBuilder]

How are you running agents in this?

Ollama and n8n.

With a Pi it's somewhat limited (7B quantized or less, phi works pretty well). Phi mini, with a good prompt, works relatively well

For this specific build, I'm largely focusing on things that I can run in the "background" such as email classification (for tagging) and RSS feed summarization.

Slightly longer term, I'm eagerly awaiting a Radxa Orion O6 and hope that I can get some decent performance out of it.

For anything larger more demanding, I can also offload to my gaming PC (have a 4060 TI, which performs pretty well). But.. I'm really wanting to try to push how much I can get out of such a small system.

[RasPiBuilder]

I was also interested in the keyboard, it looks unusual.

What SSD drives do you use and how long have they been serving you?

Replied about the keyboard above. Just search Amazon (or similar) for a"Mini folding keyboard".

For the drives, right now I'm just using some old 5tb external drives that I got from a Costco sale. Not great but work well enough for testing setups.

That said, I'm working on a 1U NAS that fits into a 10" rack. Waiting for parts at the moment, but hoping to share a prototype within the next week or two.

[StevenACoffman]

Home Assistant Yellow can be mouted into 10-inch rack with this btw: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1843939759/10-inch-rack-mount-for-home-assistant?click_key=ad7bbc56c285042682197a49696a96e2840e218f%3A1843939759&click_sum=2920fed1&ref=shop_home_active_19&sts=1

[geerlingguy]

@StevenACoffman I believe @JaredC01 also has a free 10" rack mount (printable file) for HA Yellow, I just printed it though I didn't see it in the LabRack repo yet (or I didn't look hard enough lol).

[JaredC01]

@StevenACoffman I believe @JaredC01 also has a free 10" rack mount (printable file) for HA Yellow, I just printed it though I didn't see it in the LabRack repo yet (or I didn't look hard enough lol).

It's one of those "transitional" modules that belongs in LabStack Rack, so I hadn't pushed it yet. I added a new directory for it and pushed the model and spacers:

https://github.com/JaredC01/LabStack-Rack/blob/main/LabStack%20Rack%20Mini/STLs/1U%20Mini%20HomeAssistant%20Yellow.stl
https://github.com/JaredC01/LabStack-Rack/blob/main/LabStack%20Rack%20Mini/STLs/1U%20Mini%20Add%20HomeAssistant%20Yellow%20Spacer%20x4.stl

It uses 4x M3x10 SHCS screws in the design (if I remember right they're 10mm, but up to 12mm fits, I believe).

[StevenACoffman]

@JaredC01 Ooooo, you are where the cool mounts for the JetKVM came from! Thanks for that btw!

[StevenACoffman]

BTW, there are a lot of nice 10-inch mounts available from https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiveTechSolutions for those that don't have their own printer.