Discovering OPNSense: Search Bar

Overview

After Migrating to OPNSense I’ve really been impressed with it’s improvements over pfSense in various areas. I will repeat that I have nothing against pfSense, but OPNSense continues to surprise me the more I poke around and discover some of it’s unique features. Today we will take a quick look at one of my favorite features of OPNSense: the Search Bar!

OPNSense Search Bar

There’s not much to talk about other than the fact that it is super useful for finding some of those hidden menu items.

  • No more spending minutes trying to browse the menus for that one page you remember seeing but cannot seem to find anymore.
  • No more having to search the pfSense documentation or forum for finding the location of a specific setting.

Fuzzy Searching Works:

Limitations

One limitation is that individual settings are not displayed (only settings ‘pages’ are)

For example, if i search for Hardware acceleration does not reveal the System > Settings > Miscellaneous page:

Related Posts

What, Why, When, and How Nextcloud

What is Nextcloud?

TLDR: A Nextcloud description is below, but why not just check out the demo!

Nextcloud is a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that provides an enterprise grade all-in-one solution for file storage, collaboration, meetings, etc. Over the past few years Nextcloud has come a long way and is now my recommended solution for anyone seriously interested in hosting their own data with privacy and security in mind. Nextcloud is made up of many, many apps that can be installed as needed. Some of the apps include:

A sampling of a few Nextcloud apps
  • Files (This is installed by default and aids in storing/sharing/managing your files)
  • Calendar (This uses WebDav and can be synced to other devices more on this in a later post)
  • Tasks (This also can be synced using WebDav to other devices like MacOS/iOS Reminders)
  • Gallery (This helps with managing your photos in a centralized location)
  • Maps (Directions, pinning locations, mapping where your photos were taken, etc)
  • Contacts (Address book that uses WebDav to sync with other devices)
  • Bookmarks (Bookmark storage that can be synced to your browser using Floccus)
  • Talk (Meeting software like Zoom or Jitsi, no Nextcloud account needed to join calls!)
  • Mail (A very functional Mail client application with encryption, multiple accounts, etc)
  • Other features:
    • 2 Factor Authentication
    • File Sharing policies (timeframe, encryption options, public link expiration, etc)
    • LDAP user/group managment
    • Automated updates & Security audits
    • Forms
    • Polls
    • Project Management
    • Social Plugins
    • Password Manager
    • Many others (See the Nextcloud App Store)

Why Nextcloud?

Why use Nextcloud? Simply put: data privacy. Nextcloud provides a private and secure vault for all your personal information. No need to worry about Google reading your emails and using your photos for machine learning purposes. No need to pay Dropbox or any other cloud storage company a monthly fee for storing your files on a server you have no control over. Nextcloud makes it easier to take responsibility for your own data so you know where it resides. If you’re still not convinced, check out Nextcloud’s reasoning.

When Nextcloud

Given my bullish stance on Nextcloud, I would also like to make clear that Nextcloud isn’t for everyone. It does require some technical experience and a use case that is worth while. Nextcloud works best and is most enjoyable when it is used for more than just a few files. Casual or non-technical Nextcloud users would be better off signing up with a Nextcloud provider rather then self-hosting it since the providers will handle the configuration and hosting of the storage (this however does reduce your visibility in where and how your data is stored). An alternative to a cloud provider is to buy a dedicated, pre-configured piece of Nextcloud hardware with some tech support.

How Nextcloud

Requirements

Memory Required: 512MB

Nextcloud can be installed in a variety of ways. My preferred method is using the per-configured virtual appliance, but other methods include docker, Ubuntu snap, web-server script, archive extraction. Detailed installation instructions can be found in the Nextcloud Docs, but a simple rundown of the installation methods are listed below:

Appliance

Virtual Machine (My preferred method)

I prefer this method since it allows me to take easy snapshots/backups of the entire Nextcloud environment. This gives me peace of mind so I can be sure I can rollback to a point in time if anything goes wrong.

  1. Download the Virtual Machine (There are also advanced-configured VMs here)
  2. Setup a VM in your favorite Hypervisor (Proxmox, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, VMWare, etc)
  3. Import the downloaded Virtual Machine file and start the virtual machine (check the console)
  4. Login to the pre-configured Nextcloud instance and enjoy!

Appliance: Docker (Great for those already using Docker)

For those already using docker, this method may be appealing. I avoided this option primarily because it didn’t have a very clean docker-compose setup.

  1. On a docker-enabled machine run `docker run -d -p 8080:80 nextcloud`
  2. Alternatively, if you use docker-compose, start with this template:
version: '2'

volumes:
  nextcloud:
  db:

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb
    restart: always
    command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --binlog-format=ROW
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud

  app:
    image: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    links:
      - db
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db

Appliance: Ubuntu Snap (Easy for Beginners, but not recommended!)

This installation method is very easy but does have some drawbacks. From my experience, updates are slower to be released to the Nextcloud ubuntu snap distribution and often has issues with edge cases (I’ve noticed this with Collabora docs). It is also very difficult to migrate Nextcloud from a snap installation to a different installation method (I learned this the hard way!).

  1. Setup an ubuntu machine with snap enabled.
  2. Run `snap install nextcloud`
  3. Follow the installation steps and enjoy.

Web Installer (Good for C-Panel style web-hosting)

  1. Download the php script from the Nextcloud Site
  2. Upload the php scrip to your web server
  3. Point your browser to the php script
  4. Walk through the installation wizard (default user: ncadmin default password: nextcloud)
  5. Enjoy!

Manual Archive File Installation (Most Difficult)

  1. Download the Archive from the Nextcloud site
  2. Extract the archive file to an accessible location on your web server
  3. Configure Apache webserver
  4. Configure SSL
  5. Walk through installation wizard

Enjoy Nextcloud!

‘Don’t be Evil’ Isn’t enough for me!

Zabbix Email Notifications

Overview

Now that we’ve setup a Zabbix server and configured some hosts, we need to get notified when there are issues with our hosts. The easiest way to be notified is probably via email (This is my go-to notification option since it is so widely supported).

Email Configuration

Configuring the email service is pretty straightforward:

  1. In the Zabbix WebUI navigate to: Administration > Media Types > Email (HTML)
  2. Update the outgoing SMTP settings to match those of your email provider (i.e. Gmail)
    • Be sure to setup and use an App Password if you have two-factor enabled for your email account.
  3. Click Update
  4. Click Test to make sure the settings work.

Enable Email Notifications for User

In order for emails to be sent, you need to enable them for your Zabbix user:

  1. In the Zabbix WebUI navigate to: User Settings > Media > Add
  2. In the Type box choose ‘Email (HTML)
  3. Add the email address to which you would like to send notifications.
  4. Click Add
  5. Click Update

Choose Which Notifications to Receive

Now that we have the email service configured and the user set to receive emails, we need to tell Zabbix which types of emails to send (what severity, which hosts, or which triggers). In general I like to be notified of any triggers that have a severity of Average or above:

  1. In the Zabbix WebUI navigate to: Configuration > Actions > Report problems to Zabbix administrators
  2. Under Conditions click Add
  3. Choose Type:Trigger severity and choose what severity you would like to be notified for (I choose ‘is greater than or equals’ a severity of ‘Average
  4. Click Add
  5. Check the Enabled box.
  6. Click Update

Enjoy!

Now sit back and wait for the notifications to roll in – or instead of waiting, go make some breaking changes to your Hosts! (Just make sure you can roll back your changes easily with something like Proxmox backups/snapshots!)

Zabbix Host Configuration

Overview

If you’re not sure what Zabbix is or how to set it up, see my first Zabbix blog post. Once we have a running instance of the Zabbix server we can begin adding hosts that we would like to monitor. Adding a host consists of two primary steps: Configure the Client & Configure the Host (Server).

Configuring a Host

In order for Zabbix to get information from a client machine (Zabbix calls them Hosts) we need to configure some kind of protocol for Zabbix to use when fetching information. Some of the most popular protocols Zabbix uses are:

  • Zabbix Agent <- I Prefer this
  • SNMP <- Often built in – so requires no additional software
  • JMX <- For monitoring Java applications(?)
  • IPMI <- Good for enterprise gear (HP iLO, DELL DRAC, IBM RSA, Sun SSP, etc)

Below are a few host configurations for some of the above ‘protocols’.

Host Configuration: Zabbix Agent

In order to use the Zabbix agent, we can simply install the agent like any other package:

# Install the agent on Ubuntu/Debian
apt-get install zabbix-agent

# Configure agent with Zabbix server address
nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf
# Update `Server=` to the ip/hostname of your Zabbix server

# Start the Zabbix Agent
service zabbix-agent start

Host Configuration: SNMP

Configuring the host with SNMP will be different for each machine, but usually there is some kind of simple GUI that allows you to enable SNMP, and provide a community string (a sort of authentication). Here’s an example that used the term ‘Trap’ to represent the SNMP configuration:

Host Configuration: IPMI

The IPMI configuration also may be different for each machine, but it is generally pretty easy to enable:

Configuring a Host on the Server (Zabbix)

Once we have the hosts configured with at least once source ‘protocol’ we can add them to Zabbix. This is also pretty straightforward:

  • In the Zabbix WebUI navigate to: Configuration > Hosts > Add Host and provide a hostname, a group and interface(s). Once finished, click Add. Note: you can also use a hostname in the DNS name field instead of an ip address.
    • Note: If configuring IPMI, you’ll need to provide the host credentials on the IPMI tab.
  • Also, be sure to add at least one Template to the host. Templates help Zabbix categorize the data it fetches from the hosts – templates can be used on many machines to standardize the data that is fetched from the hosts.
    • You can search for existing templates in the Link new templates field and add any relevant templates you think may be useful.
    • When searching for templates I usually search for the protocol (Agent/SNMP/IPMI/etc)

Monitor your Hosts

Now that we have some hosts added we can monitor them and view any problems or issues that may need to be addressed:

By clicking on the links we can view the Latest Data any Problems or even some nice Graphs for each Host:

There are some pretty slick options for getting notifications when problems happen, reporting, network maps, and more, but we’ll have to save those goodies for a future blog post. For now, get to work adding your hosts!

~ Thought of the Day: Why is it normal in the US for a waiter to take your credit card out of your sight when processing payments? To me this is like having your email password in plain text of the footer of your email!

Installing Zabbix for HomeLab Monitoring

Overview

With a quickly growing HomeLab that contains many servers/services/devices I am starting to see the importance of being able to monitor all these ‘things’ from a central location. My understanding is that the goal of Zabbix is to do exactly this. So lets give it a go!

Installation

Initially i figured I would just install Zabbix in Docker like I do for most other services, but i quickly realized that the docker-compose would get messy pretty quick (see here for a sample). After looking over the install options on the Zabbix site, i realized that they offer a virtual appliance that can be run on most hypervisors (I run proxmox which supports the qcow2 KVM disk format). Here’s my steps for installing the virtual appliance in Proxmox (additional installation details can be found on the Zabbix appliance documentation):

Create a Proxmox Virtual Machine

When creating the VM, you can use all the default options, just give it a name and remove the HardDisk after the VM is created (we will add the Zabbix appliance disk later).

VM Created in Proxmox (Shows Zabbix disk added)

Download the Appliance

# From the proxmox shell run the following to download the appliance
# Note: Right click the Zabbix appliance download link to get the latest version
wget https://cdn.zabbix.com/zabbix/appliances/stable/5.2/5.2.5/zabbix_appliance-5.2.5-qcow2.tar.gz

Unzip the Appliance

tar -xvzf zabbix_appliance-5.2.5-qcow2.tar.gz

Import the Appliance Disk to the Virtual Machine

# Note: Change the vm id, the appliance version and the storage type below
#       (you may need to use 'local' if you are not using 'zfs')
qm importdisk 105 zabbix_appliance-5.2.5.qcow2 zfs

# Cleanup unneeded files
rm -rf zabbix_appliance-5.2.5-qcow2
rm zabbix_appliance-5.2.5-qcow2.tar.gz

Update VM Options

At this point you’ll want to make sure your VM is set to boot from the imported disk and to start on boot.

Set VM to boot from imported disk

Assign Static IP Address (Optional)

Note: At this point it may be helpful to assign a DHCP Static mapping so your VM will receive a static IP address from your Router. This is how I did it in OPNSense:

Start VM

Now that we’ve got the VM setup, go ahead and start it up! The default login credentials were:
User: root
Pass: zabbix
Note: The default front-end web interface default login is shown in the console below:
User: Admin
Pass: zabbix

Proxmox Console View

Log Into the Web Interface

In your browser navigate to the IP address of your Zabbix VM:

Zabbix Web Login
Zabbix Dashboard

Congratulations. You have have a running Zabbix Instance! Don’t forget to finish configuring and securing your instance. A few items I addressed immediately were:

  • Changing Web login credentials: WebUI > User Settings > Change Password
  • Changing Console credentials: `sudo passwd root`
  • Change timezone: `cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime`
  • For fun: change to the dark theme: WebUI > User Settings > Theme

Get Monitoring!

Now that you’re setup, what are you waiting for, get started monitoring all the things! We won’t cover how to setup monitoring in this post, we’ll save that for a future post which delves deeper into the benefits and use-cases of Zabbix. Enjoy! Also see Zabbix Host Configuration and Zabbix Email Notifications.

Discovering & Migrating to OPNsense from pfSense

Background

I’ve been happily using pfSense for a few years now and have generally been quite happy with it’s performance and feature set, however I learned recently that the installation files that can be downloaded from the pfSense website is not the same code that is open sourced on Github. I try to stay away from the arguments about which software is ‘more’ open source friendly, but I do like to support the projects that are committed to a FOSS (Free and Open Source) model without up-selling additional features. I don’t have anything against up-selling additional features, but IMO up-selling additional features can lead to a neglected core product.

pfSense – Thank You

I am not leaving pfSense because I didn’t like the project, but because I wanted to try something new that is more committed to an Open Source future. pfSense is a great solution for any networking enthusiast, and I would not hesitate to recommend it. However, as you will see below, I would first recommend OPNsense for a few main reasons…

  • Full-featured email notifications (pfSense had some email notifications but they were severely limited)
  • A search for settings (IMO, the pfSense menus were poorly organized)
  • Reports (pfSense has some summary statistics & status pages, but no all-in-one way to generate reports on a wide range of network statistics)
  • TOTP Two Factor authentication login (pfSense may now support this?)
  • Event-based automation (pfSense had a Watchdog package that would restart services, but was limited)
  • Official API (pfSense had unofficial APIs and hacks, but nothing full-featured)
  • Home Assistant integration (pfSense did have a HACS integration, but it required additional hacks to setup)
  • Nextcloud Configuration Backups

OPNSense – The Future is Now

I’ve always wondered about OPNsense and if it could offer some of the things I often wanted in pfSense but could not easily achieve, and so far I have been very pleasantly pleased with the installation & configuration.

Installation

Installation was straightforward (although I installed it in a Proxmox VM):

  • Download ISO from OPNsense website & upload ISO to Proxmox server
  • Create a new Proxmox VM:
  • Attach ISO to VM & start VM
  • Follow the installation wizard & tips on the OPNsense documentation.
  • Finish the rest of the configuration in the OPNsense web GUI (Default user/password: root/opnsense)

Migrating from pfSense

The most daunting task that I was dreading was figuring out how to migrate to OPNsense from pfSense with minimal downtime. I had heard of a slight possibility that certain sections of pfSense configuration backups could be imported into OPNsense, but I decided to avoid that route in order to start with as clean of an OPNsense installation as possible. My migration path was:

  • Step through each menu in pfSense and update the corresponding setting in OPNsense
    • Some configuration items didn’t exist like the awesome pfBlocker (I will miss this)
    • When I came to the ‘Interfaces’ section, I setup each interface with a different (temporary) static IP
  • After all configuration items were finished, I began to shut down services on pfSense and enable them on OPNSense one at a time (i.e., disable dhcp on LAN, and enable LAN DHCP on OPNSense with same lease range)
  • Finally I disabled the interfaces on pfSense and re-configured the static IP addresses on the OPNSense interfaces to match how they were configured in pfSense.

The Features I’ve Always Wanted!

Full-featured Email Notifications, Reporting, Settings Search, Home Assistant Integration…

Related Posts

What, Why & How Zoneminder?

What is Zoneminder

Zoneminder is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Network Video Recorder (NVR). It is claims to be one of the most advanced and scalable video surveillance systems available. It provides an API that can be used via a web interface, a mobile app, or third party software. Out of the box
Zoneminder offers a simple camera viewer, motion detection, event notifications, and much more. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s what a ‘montage’ view on Zoneminder looks like (via the iOS app and the web view).

The Mobile App (ZmNinja) is also open source. It can be compiled or purchased on the AppStore for around $6. It offers a very elegant and full-featured interface to mange cameras, view events, and receive push notifications to mention a few.

This screenshot of the web view shows a list of connected cameras, their configurations, and events. A ‘montage’ camera stream view similar to the iOS view is also available.

Why use Zoneminder?

  • It’s Open Source! If you’ve read any of my other posts, I’m a huge proponent of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS). Open Source means the software can be trusted to not include nasty key loggers and other privacy invasive features (I’ll admit I rarely verify this myself).
  • It’s Free! Since Zoneminder is free (and always will be) it is worth trying!)
  • It’s feature rich! It lacks very little (if any) features that commercial NVR systems offer.
  • It’s relatively easy to install (See below for installation/configuration details)
  • It’s locally controlled! (No cloud needed – or wanted!
  • It has an optional Open Source mobile App (Approx. $6 if you buy it on the AppStore)
  • It’s hardware efficient (IMO – It seems to require less resources than alternatives).
  • It has a Home Assistant integration!

If the above reasons aren’t enough to convince you to give Zoneminder a try, I can tell you from experience that I’ve tried most of the other alternatives to Zoneminder (MotionEye, BlueIris, AgentDVR) and have found Zoneminder to be superior in most respects (although a bit more advanced to setup – see below). I don’t mean to be critical, but below I will list my main complaints about the alternatives I’ve listed. If I’ve forgotten about other good alternatives, pleas let me know in the comments!

  • MotionEye
    • Seemed to be quite resource hungry
    • No mobile app (although web interface is quite reasonable)
    • Did not seem very scalable (more than 4 cameras seemed to be buggy for me)
  • BlueIris
    • Currently Windows Only as of 2021
    • Not Free ($65 as of 2021)
    • Not Open Source
  • AgentDVR
    • Subscription required for advanced features and updated via web GUI
    • Requires a web account for some features
    • Requires webRTC (a technology I’m not a huge fan of)
    • No mobile App (although webGUI is quite reasonable)

How Zoneminder?

I’ll admit that Zoneminder can seem daunting to setup for someone not very tech-savvy, and may not be the best choice for someone with no knowledge of linux or command line experience. For most people that are reading this they probably already have enough tech knowledge or are willing to learn how to setup Zoneminder. There are a variety of ways to setup Zoneminder, but since I already use Docker, it was definitely the easiest path for me and the one I will outline below:

Install Docker Engine

If you don’t already have the docker engine installed, you’ll need to install it via the terminal or via a Docker Desktop application. Once installed you will have access to the docker terminal command.

Install Docker-Compose

Although docker-compose isn’t technically required, it does make running docker containers much more manageable and repeatable (if the physical computer you have docker on crashes). Follow the official documentation to install docker-compose.

Create your docker-compose file.

Create a directory somewhere called docker-compose (mine is located at ~/docker-compose). Inside that directory create a file named docker-compose.yaml and in a text editor modify the file to look like the following (If you want to access Zoneminder on a port other than 80, modify the first ’80’ in the ports section, otherwise, leave it as is).

version: "3"
services:

  # Zoneminder Docker-Compose Configuration
  zoneminder:
      container_name: zoneminder
      restart: always
      image: dlandon/zoneminder
      network_mode: bridge
      privileged: false
      shm_size: 1gb
      ports:
          - '80:80/tcp'
          - '9000:9000/tcp'
      environment:
          - TZ=America/New_York
          - PUID=99
          - PGID=100
          - INSTALL_HOOK=0
          - INSTALL_FACE=0
          - INSTALL_TINY_YOLOV3=0
          - INSTALL_YOLOV3=0
          - INSTALL_TINY_YOLOV4=0
          - INSTALL_YOLOV4=0
          - MULTI_PORT_START=0
          - MULTI_PORT_END=0
      volumes:
          - zoneminder_config:/config:rw
          - zoneminder_data:/var/cache/zoneminder:rw

volumes:
  # Zoneminder docker volumes (located in /var/lib/docker/volumes)
  zoneminder_config:
  zoneminder_data:

That’s about it, now we should be able to run Zoneminder! A few optional notes before we try it:

  • The configuration above will automatically start Zoneminder whenever the host machine (your computer, or the Proxmox Virtual Machine in my case – stay tuned for some Proxmox tutorials!) is started.
  • The configuration above can also be modified to also run a ZoneminderEventNotification, object detection server, and more. Basically you just need to change the 0’s to 1’s (note if you do this it could take hours on the first start of Zoneminder since it will need to compile dependencies).

Running Zoneminder!

To start Zoneminder we just need to tell docker to run our docker-compose file which will run any containers defined in it (currently only Zoneminder). To run the docker-compose file simply run:

# Remember this command - you'll need it to restart your docker containers
# if they don't start up automatically for some reason

docker-compose up -d

# If you get a permissions error, you may need to run the command as sudo

sudo docker-compose up -d

Give it a few minutes to configure itself and then try to navigate to http://<your-computer-ip-address>/zm/ or http://localhost/zm/ and you should see Zoneminder!

If you don’t see the Zoneminder web interface, give it some more time because it could still be starting up (it takes a while on the first start). For additional troubleshooting you can also visit the Zoneminder Forums.

Zoneminder System Configuration

I’ll leave all the advanced options up to you, but some Zoneminder options should probably be changed right away by clicking on the Options menu:

  • I would recommend adding authentication under Options > System > OPT_USE_AUTH
    • If using authentication, add some random text to Options > System > AUTH_HASH_SECRET
  • If you want to use Zoneminder with Home Assistant, make sure Options > System > OPT_USE_API is enabled (see below for Home Assistant configuration)

Add Cameras

To add a camera, simply click on +Add in the Console view. You will be prompted with a camera configuration – don’t be overwhelmed with the options, you only need to change a few:

  • General Tab:
    • Name : the name of your camera
    • Source Type:
      • ffmpeg if you have access to an RTSP stream for your camera
      • Remote if you only have an ip address for your camera and no RTSP stream
  • Source Tab:
    • If using ffmpeg, enter your RTSP stream in Source Path
    • If using Remote, enter your camera’s ip address in Host Name and choose the camera’s port and/or path of the camera image files
    • Choose your camera’s resolution

Click Save.

After saving the camera configuration you should see the camera on the Console view with a green indicator icon. If the indicator is red, you may need to play with the camera configuration some more or consult the Zoneminder documentation for more details about your type of camera.

Home Assistant Integration

If you haven’t heard of Home Assistant, read my post about it here. If you know about Home Assistant you’ll want the integration which is almost too easy to install. Simply navigate to Configuration > Integrations > + and search for Zoneminder. If you don’t find Zoneminder, you may need to set it up via configuration.yaml since the config-flow setup was removed after a bug was found. To set up the integration manually, add the following to your configuration.yaml:

# Be sure to add zoneminder_url, zoneminder_username, and zoneminder_password
# to your secrets.yaml file!

zoneminder:
  - host: !secret zoneminder_url
    username: !secret zoneminder_username
    password: !secret zoneminder_password

camera:
  - platform: zoneminder

For additional configuration options see the Home Assistant docs.

Enjoy your Home Assistant integration!

Closing Notes

This post was not intended to cover all the features and configurations of Zoneminder. Don’t forget to explore other features configurations like:

  • The Mobile App
  • Event/Alert Notifications
  • Object Detection (see yolov4 in your docker_compose file)
  • Remote Access from outside your network so you can access it like: https://zoneminder.yourdomain.com
    • (I’d suggest using a reverse proxy like NGINXProxyManager – stay tuned for a tutorial about this)

Repurposing a Squeezebox

Squeezebox Boom

Squeezebox – A bit ahead of it’s time

First off, I’d like to spend a minute appreciating the craftsmanship and the premium nature of the squeezebox line of products. Almost a decade before the current ‘smart’ speakers that are common today (Echo, HomePod, GoogleHome, etc), the Squeezebox sported much of the same functionality:

  • Premium Quality Sound
  • Remote Control (via a handheld remote & web interface)
  • Streaming radio, podcasts, music, etc
  • Apps for extensible functionality
  • Web Interface for local and remote access (most modern speakers don’t offer local control)
  • Local API for extensibility (I don’t know of any modern speakers that offer this!)
  • A community of users for great support (still exists today!)

An Orphaned Squeezebox

Recently at my workplace we upgraded the office speaker and had an orphaned Squeezebox Boom. We were ready to recycle the 12 year old speaker, but it still seemed to have so much potential. The speaker hardware worked flawlessly (although the online services have been neglected by Logitech). Naturally, since I knew the Squeezebox had a local API, my instinct was to check if Home Assistant had any support for such a device, and sure enough it has a Logitech Squeezebox integration! After browsing the integration documentation I figured it would be worth an effort to give the Squeezebox a new life.

Prerequisite for Integration: Logitech Media Server

The Home Assistant documentation indicated that I would need to have a Logitech Media Server in order to control the Squeezebox – A slight inconvenience, but a quick search on DockerHub revealed some pre-built docker containers that can provide me with a self-hosted alternative to the Internet reliant interface that Logitech could shut down at any time. Setting up the docker container was as simple as adding the following to my docker-compose file and running: docker-compose up -d. Stay tuned for future posts about Docker & docker-compose. They are great tools for quickly setting up various services!

#Logitech Media Server
logitechmediaserver:
  container_name: "logitechmediaserver"
  image: lmscommunity/logitechmediaserver:stable
  restart: always
  ports:
    - 9000:9000/tcp
    - 9090:9090/tcp
    - 3483:3483/tcp
    - 3483:3483/udp
  volumes
    - logitechmediaserver_config:/config:rw
    - logitechmediaserver_music:/music:ro
    - logitechmediaserver_playlist:/playlist:rw
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro

...

volumes: 
  ...
  #logitechmediaserver
  logitechmediaserver_config:
  logitechmediaserver_music:
  logitechmediaserver_playlist:

Exploring Logitech Media Server

After starting the docker container I was able to natigate to the Lotitech Media Server web interface which was a bit outdated:

Logitech Media Server Default Interface

Let’s fix the outdated interface by trying a community developed ‘Material Skin’. Ah.. much better!

A Community Developed Material Theme for Logitech Media Server

There are numerous other extensions that sounded promising (i.e. Airplay/Chromecast support), but those will wait for another day. Let’s get back to integrating this into Home Assistant…

Home Assistant Integration

The Home Assistant integration was a breeze to setup:

  1. Open Home Assistant web interface
  2. Click Configuration Menu Icon (Gear)
  3. Click Integrations
  4. Click Add Integrations
  5. Click on Logitech Squeezebox
    • At this point Home Assistant may auto-discover your Squeezebox, if not continue…
  6. Enter the IP address of the Squeezebox
  7. Enter the Username/Password for the Squeezebox Web interface (if configured)
  8. Enjoy!
    • Home Assistant control of the Squeezebox
    • Additional features like playing Home Assistant media & sending Text to Speech to the speaker.
    • History of played media
    • Trigger media based on other smart devices/sensors.

Squeezebox reborn!

< Home Assistant Media Card

Home Assistant Card Detail >

Introduction to Home Assistant

Everyone likes home automation – if it works! We’ve all been excited about that smart switch or wireless light that we can control from anywhere in the world, but how great is it really? For a few ‘smart’ devices it may seem work well, but once you begin to accumulate more than a handful of devices you will quickly begin to realize that you have as many apps as you do smart devices and you will begin to start asking questions like:

  • Which app controls which device?
  • Do I have to download all these apps for each member of my family?
  • Wouldn’t it be nice if I could control all my smart devices with a single app?
  • Why can’t I connect my smart devices together?

All of these questions can be answered with a tool called Home Assistant. In the most basic of terms, Home Assistant is a tool that pulls all of your smart devices into a single app. I will save the details of Home Assistant future posts, but it aims to do the following and much more:

  • Be Free and Open Source (FOSS)
  • Improve your privacy by reducing the need for internet based cloud services
  • Control all the smart devices in your home from a central location
  • Connect smart devices in your home in order to trigger perform actions like: When there is motion in the hallway, turn on the light
  • Provide a single app (web or mobile) to control and manage all your smart devices

Home Assistant may not be the ‘silver bullet’ for every situation, but I am willing to say that it is unequivocally the best home automation solution available today (as of 2020). Anyone interested in taking the next step in home automation should consider Home Assistant. Stay tuned and in the near future we will be discussing how to get started using this great tool, and why it is (in my opinion) superior, but friendly with other alternatives like Hubitat, SmartThings, and HomeKit.

white and gray Google smart speaker and two black speakers
Photo by Sebastian Scholz (Nuki) on Unsplash

(Full disclosure: I was not paid or in any way incentivized to speak so highly of Home Assistant)

WordPress Comment Spam

A day after my first blog post and I am already a sensation! Well, to the Parbrize family at least. Although I’d love to agree with the generous comments, it takes less than common sense to realize the comments are spam. Within a day I received 13 comments on my fist blog post – all of them obviously spam.

… And because I wasn’t sure what my next blog post would be, I will explain how we can prevent spam like this in the future.

WordPress Comment Spam

After a bit of research I found a useful article on Namecheap that breaks down WordPress spam into 3 main categories:

  1. SpamBots (automated comments that may or may not contain links)
  2. Trackbacks/PingBacks (comments that contain links for the sole purpose of improving the Google rank of another site)
  3. Manual (comments manually created that have no relevance to the blog post)

Although the easiest way to avoid comment spam is to disable comments, I’ll investigate some other options first:

  • Use a plugin like Akismet to auto-block spam comments.
    • I may try this in the future, but I prefer built in options to reduce my reliance on third parties and the number of ‘things’ to update.
  • Manually block spam by using built-in WordPress features under: Settings > Discussion

For now i will opt for the second option, if I find that it’s too labor intensive to keep up with all the spam, I may try the Plug-In at a later point. Now for the manual configuration:

Disable:

Added Parbrize IP addresses to the ‘Disallow’ list:

I’ve also ensured that the following is checked so only approved commenters are displayed.

We’ll see how that works for now, but it may be necessary to add a Re-Captcha to the comment form to prevent and endless flow of spam from other IP addresses.

Until next time, try googling your name or email address!