ozaz1

I have an outbuilding with power outlets. There's a local circuit breaker within the outbuilding so power in there can go down independently of the house. I want to set something up to monitor for this and notify me if/when it happens. The building does not have ethernet and is out of range of my home WiFi. I have a spare powerline adapter that I'm not using, so my first thought is to use powerline to get an ethernet socket in the outbuilding and run a simple script on a server in my house to ping a networked attached device that I place in the outbuilding. If there's no response it will send me a phone notification (via a service like Pushbullet) prompting me to check on the power in the outbuilding. This leads me to my main question: I need something to ping which can connect to network via ethernet (my powerline adapter does not have WiFi so I can't use a WiFi smart plug for example). Given its sole purpose will be to act as a target for my ping, I'm wondering what's the cheapest thing I can buy for this purpose?

Also, another question: I'm wondering what alternative approach I could take which does not involve ethernet, powerline or WiFi. I'm thinking I could put a microcontroller in the outbuiling and periodically send a non-WiFi wireless transmission to the house. If it fails to arrive, the power is probably out. The outbuilding is about 15-20 metres from the house. It's a wooden building and the house is brick. Would LoRA be the best choice for wireless transmission here? Given I already have a powerline adapter, I expect this wouldn't be as cheap as the powerline option but using a wireless protocol other than WiFi would be a learning exercise that might also be handy for future projects.

Hello,

I want to use a desktop PC as a NAS-like device in a home environment. It will be used as a file-server and backup target for other computers in the household, and it will need to run a cloud backup application (I'm considering Backblaze). I will not be using it to run any VMs or dockers so it does not need to be a powerful device. What I really want is for it use as little power as possible, yet sufficient for the tasks mentioned above.

I know if I use a mini PC I can achieve very low idle power draws of around 5W (when no external storage drives are attached). But I do want to include two or three 3.5" spinning storage drives, ideally attached via SATA instead of USB, so I guess it will have to be a tower PC. However, in my experience tower PCs idle at around 20-30W even before spinning storage drives have been attached (although I've only ever owned a couple of tower PCs, and these were more than 5 years old so I don't know if this is particularly representative).

Are there tower PCs which achieve the same/similar low power consumption as mini PCs (with the only real reason for the larger form factor being to provide more space for expansion)? If so, do you have any suggestions for specific models? Ideally I want to buy something prebuilt with a Windows license. I'm not keen to invest time into a self-build and I'm keen to use Backblaze for the cloud backup, which requires Windows or Mac. Happy to buy used but would like it to be new enough to be officially supported for Windows 11.

However, happy to consider other suggestions which would still enable me to do cloud backup of around 5TB of data for similar price to Backblaze (around $100/year).

Thanks

I currently have a 10-year old off-the-shelf NAS (Synology) that needs replacing soon. I haven't done much with it other than the simple things I mention later, so I still consider myself a novice when it comes to NAS, servers, and networking in general, but I've been reading a bit lately (which lead my to this sub). For a replacement I'm wondering whether to get another Synology, use an open source NAS/server OS, or just use a Windows PC. Windows is by far the OS I'm most comfortable with so I'm drawn to the final option. However, I regularly see articles and forum posts which frown upon the use Windows for NAS/server purposes even for simple home-use needs, although I can't remember reading a good explanation of why. I'd be grateful for some explanations as to why Windows (desktop version) is a poor choice as an OS for a simple home NAS/server.

Some observations from me (please critique if any issues in my thinking):

• I initially assumed it was because Windows likely causes a high idle power consumption as its a large OS. But I recently measured the idle power consumption of a celeron-based mini PC running Windows and found it to be only 5W, which is lower than my Synology NAS when idle. It seems to me that any further power consumption savings that might be achieved by a smaller OS, or a more modern Synology, would be pretty negligible in terms of running costs.
• I can see a significant downside of Windows for DIY builds is the cost of Windows license. I wonder is this accounts for most of the critique of Windows? If I went the Windows route I wouldn't do a DIY build. I would start with a PC which had a Windows OEM licence.
• My needs are very simple (although I think probably represent a majority of home user needs). I need device which is accessible 24/7 on my home network and 1) can provide SMB files shares, 2) act as a target for backing up other devices on home network, 3) run cloud backup software (to back itself up to an off-site backup location) and, 4) run a media server (such as Plex), 5) provide 1-drive redundancy via RAID or a RAID-like solution (such as Windows Storage Spaces). It seems to me Windows is fine for this and people who frown upon Windows for NAS/server usage probably have more advanced needs.

I currently have a 10-year old off-the-shelf NAS (Synology) that needs replacing soon. I haven't done much with it other than the simple things I mention later, so I still consider myself a novice when it comes to NAS, servers, and networking in general, but I've been reading a bit lately (which lead my to this sub). For a replacement I'm wondering whether to get another Synology, use an open source NAS/server OS, or just use a Windows PC. Windows is by far the OS I'm most comfortable with so I'm drawn to the final option. However, I regularly see articles and forum posts which frown upon the use Windows for NAS/server purposes even for simple home-use needs, although I can't remember reading a good explanation of why. I'd be grateful for some explanations as to why Windows (desktop version) is a poor choice as an OS for a simple home NAS/server.

Some observations from me (please critique if any issues in my thinking):

• I initially assumed it was because Windows likely causes a high idle power consumption as its a large OS. But I recently measured the idle power consumption of a celeron-based mini PC running Windows and found it to be only 5W, which is lower than my Synology NAS when idle. It seems to me that any further power consumption savings that might be achieved by a smaller OS, or a more modern Synology, would be pretty negligible in terms of running costs.
• I can see a significant downside of Windows for DIY builds is the cost of Windows license. I wonder is this accounts for most of the critique of Windows? If I went the Windows route I wouldn't do a DIY build. I would start with a PC which had a Windows OEM licence.
• My needs are very simple (although I think probably represent a majority of home user needs). I need device which is accessible 24/7 on my home network and 1) can provide SMB files shares, 2) act as a target for backing up other devices on home network, 3) run cloud backup software (to back itself up to an off-site backup location) and, 4) run a media server (such as Plex), 5) provide 1-drive redundancy via RAID or a RAID-like solution (such as Windows Storage Spaces). It seems to me Windows is fine for this and people who frown upon Windows for NAS/server usage probably have more advanced needs.