Amcrest AD110 doorbell connected over wifi to a recycled HP mini-PC (can be had cheaply on Amazon) running Frigate (https://frigate.video/) with a Google Coral accelerator installed in one of the internal slots. The Amcrest doorbell does have a cloud video connection if you want, but I firewalled it off from the internet and use the local RTSP streaming over to Frigate. Frigate talks to my local Home Assistant install too for automation. Also built a little buzzer with an ESP8266 and a simple piezo buzzer that runs ESPHome, which Home Assistant can use to play little sounds for stuff like person at the front door, lightning strikes in the area, etc... whatever you want to. The doorbell also has a local API to expose notifications when the button is pressed, which you can link to HA with amcrest2mqtt.

The wifi connection for the doorbell isn't ideal for security purposes, but it's good enough and a lot easier than getting CAT5 to my doorbell. It is more or less 100% reliable with my home wifi setup, though again I'm not really counting on it for any sort of reliable home security.

OP is absolutely right tho that this setup requires work to put together and maintain. Configuring Frigate can be especially confusing, but there are other local options like BlueIris (paid, and Windows only which kills it for me but it is very capable). I've been in this game for many years so it's all easy to me, but getting started is definitely a learning curve. Very fun though, if it's your sort of thing. The DIY home automation community is in a bit of a golden age right now, IMO.

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

It's actually trivial to simulate a high-latency low bandwidth network on Linux with the traffic control subsystem, one need not switch networks at all.

  tc qdisc change dev enp1s0 root netem delay 300ms 200ms loss 10% 80%

This command delays all packets in and out of the wired interface enp1s0 300ms, +/- 200ms, with 10-80% packet loss.

As webcams were hard to come by during the onset of the pandemic, I resorted to a raspberry pi + HQ cam + lens + raspistill preview + HDMI capture device (instead of usb). I won't defend the total cost (probably more than an acceptable webcam). The HQ cam results were quite good and seemingly high enough framerate (not 660 fps though!). Added benefit is interchangeable lens options including ones that will give the bokeh effect.

I have a small script that essentially does:

FILENAME=/tmp/economist-$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").mobi /usr/bin/ebook-convert "The Economist.recipe" $FILENAME --output-profile=kindle_voyage --username=[your_user] --password=[your_password] --keep-ligatures --smarten-punctuation --change-justification left --mobi-file-type new --mobi-keep-original-images

and then E-mails $FILENAME to my kindle address.

As a side note: I wish The Economist provided this service, but they don't. Instead, they started "enhancing" their mobile apps to include incredibly distracting, animated ads. I am very unhappy with how they are treating their readers. Also, what could these banners ads possibly be worth? $10/user/year? $25/user/year? Just let me pay more for my subscription and treat me respectfully.

Are you unaware that judgement will be used?

Compassionate uses are hail marys and are used appropriately.

Very fascinating and inspiring read!

I run a small browser-based MMORPG and I've seen a lot of interesting metagames play out in the game economy.

One thing I thought of while reading this is the effect of scarcity. I specifically remember one time when a stupid bug made the world a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

My game has a political aspect where one player is the ruling king, giving them a few unique abilities such as setting taxes. It’s a powerful position and players are constantly fighting for the throne. The way this works is that the king hires NPC guards to defend and protect the throne. The more guards, the more expensive and time-consuming it is to dethrone the king. The downside is that the upkeep to staff a full kingsguard is equally expensive. This has naturally made it so that only the wealthiest players can actually afford to sit on the throne and the easiest way to accumulate wealth is to run a shop.

The economy is centered around resources and mining. Normally the mines are replenished from time to time but the bug broke this mechanic. The first thing to deplete was the noble metals such as gold and silver, the same metals that the wealthiest merchants made their fortune from. With prices going through the roof a class division was created between players who had accumulated metals before the bug and players who hadn’t.

The problem is that without good gear you have no chance of coup d'etat. Even if you had a gold armor and sword you need a constant influx of new gold in order to repair them when fighting the guards. Even bronze became a rare commodity.

In effect, what happened is that the kingdom became a dictatorship. The king could set maximum taxes without any consequences. Normally such action would start a riot, have all players get their pitchforks and create a rebellion but without good weapons this was impossible.

I finally got around to fix the bug once normal iron started to run out as well and new players were restricted to useless wood gear, barely enough to kill rodents. I lost a lot of players but it was a really interesting social and economic experiment.