It also has thermal imaging capability. 😜

It’s IP67 rated. In theory I could, and still have a functional phone.

My phone has an insane battery. I only have to charge it every couple of days, even when using android auto (via wireless adapter). My charger also includes a cooling fan, and can push 30W. It’s not as efficient, but it’s damn convenient.

I’m not sure about as a power bank. It can do reverse wireless charging (QI) however.

I actually use it almost entirely wirelessly now. It’s a faff to open the waterproof cover on the usb C each night.

Ulefone Armor 27T

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My current phone has a 10,600mah battery already…

The dream router is an excellent base to build upon. It provides all the normal functions (ethernet, wifi, router etc) as well as hosting the control software.

Unifi’s real power is when you expand it. The access points make extending WiFi coverage easy. You dont even need a wired link. It will link over WiFi, either as a primary or as a fall back. The flex mini is also quite handy. It’s a little poe powered switch. I have a couple tucked away providing extra ports around the house.

With my setup, I have detailed monitoring and control down to the port or wifi device. I can monitor and control things in detail, or get a high level view of my network.

While expensive, UniFi hardware is just a huge step beyond the rest of the consumer market.

I’ve had literally 10x the range (5x vs 50m), in congested environments, compared to ‘gaming’ hardware. I actually did a side by side to test. I was shocked at the difference.

The bridging function is also a life saver. 2 LR units can get a reliable signal between each other, at ridiculous ranges.

Depressingly, that’s around 2x the cost/Tb.

I personally make use of the sonoff pow smart plugs, with Tasmota firmware. Though any Tasmota compatible smart plug with power readings will work.

The key thing is that with Tasmota, you can properly calibrate the readings. I have a friend with a high quality power meter. I used that to calibrate my smart plugs, they seem to track within a few % of the expensive one, once calibrated.

Depending on if you have access to an expensive meter or not, this will either be the best bet, or completely useless to you. Your local Hackspace might also be a good option for getting your hands on an expensive meter for an evening.

From memory, I think it worked out 50-80% more power draw, on average. I might be wrong on that however, I’ve yet to do a will watt measurement with like for like loads. My testing was closer to both idling.

The NUC can draw more power, but has far more advanced power saving features too. I ended up budgeting using 20W.

I hit the limit of my Raspberry Pi 4. It would periodically crash itself by overheating (Heatsink was hot to the touch) I now use a NUC. It runs excellently, and handles my home automation setup fine. Unless I start doing something extreme, I can see myself overloading it.

One of the less mentioned things with self hosting is running costs. A Pi is extremely cheap to run. A NUC is a bit more, but still well below a full blown PC. Servers can actually pull a significant load, even when idle.

The raspberry pi was never meant to be a power house. It’s whole goal was to make support and learning easy. A few, very well maintained models, with the same core chips. The last bit is the cause of the shortage. They can’t easily redesign without fragmenting the support base. That is completely against their ethos.

I’ve also found, once you hit a Pi’s limit, that it’s best to go to something more specialist. My go-to options are NUCs for general computing, or the Nvidia Jetson series, for portable brute power. Anything that saturates a pi will quickly saturate the smaller SBCs soon after, as well. They suffer from many of the same bottlenecks.

In their defence, the pi was never intended to be a powerhouse. Their focus was on getting good software support for a low cost system. This provided a stable foundation that built that turnkey reliability.

A lot of the other board providers have a habit of just creating a powerful little board, and throwing it out there to fend for itself. This is great for competent geeks, but less good for those still learning.