Electronics

Self-hosting everything

Nick Vermeulen

15 Mar 2026 — 1 min read

During my time as an ISP I used to have a datacenter filled with rows of 19” cabinets that housed servers, disk systems and routers as tall as a fridge.

Today I got my newest setup online: a small shelve with the smallest server I ever had, a tiny MacMini M4. Besides internal storage it has two small external drives: a 1TB SSD and a 3TB harddisk. Ten times more powerful and 4 times more disk than any server I had in my datacenter. The new router is a MikroTik hAP ax3, with Gigabit Ethernet links not just to the MacMini but also to the cable modem that allows me to do Gigabit speed tests on the Internet, which blows my mind.

That same small router also does the wifi at 700-800Mbps, updates my nameserver when my cable IP changes and is my Wireguard VPN server.Some of you may have noticed that our web blog has disappeared. This is because these companies all go bankrupt or simply cease to exist. So we’re gonna do it ourselves on this MacMini. Today I got the remote “screen sharing” working from my MacBook, as well as general fileserver, Plex media server and Time Machine backup destination. Soon the webserver

Galvanic Isolator: not!

I previously called these gadgets a scam or at least a barely allowed trick and I did receive some feedback on that, asking if a company like Victron really is selling a scam product so let me put this into context with this post: I call these gadgets scams or

Line Isolation Monitor

You can buy a LIM for $1000-$2000, which is a great deal for a hospital operating room but a bit stiff for a sailboat where nobody dies when AC power is disrupted. A couple remarks before diving in: the diagram above is conceptual, not an actual schematic, which requires

AC power diagram part 2

In part one we arrived at the input bus where incoming AC power, if any, is present. This incoming power is used to charge the batteries and/or to feed the distribution panels for use throughout the boat. Multiplus inverter/chargers I recommend two identical units that are special-ordered from

AC power diagram part 1

For these posts I am using a diagram that closely follows our actual installation aboard Jedi. In this post I discuss the input side: the shore power and generator inputs, the transfer switch, the input bus and the P conductor busbar. I present a detailed description of an installation that

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Galvanic Isolator: not!

Line Isolation Monitor

AC power diagram part 2

AC power diagram part 1