You don’t need cameras to generate subtitles.

All of the Raspberry Pi models have hardware decoding. Even a Pi 1B will play a 30 mbps 1080p bluray rip. I used to run OpenELEC on a 1B. The interface on XBMC was really laggy, but h.264 videos played smoothly.

You need a Pi 4 or newer for h.265 hardware decoding. The Pi 3 has enough power to software decode some h.265 videos.

The video player you use needs to be compiled specifically for a Raspberry Pi for the hardware decoding to work though.

The Ideapads are consumer grade laptops. The build quality and repairability are usually worse than the business laptops.

Could also probably get a couple grand for a working i486 PC at this point

Yes, clean it up and sell it as a “vintage gaming PC”. You can get some good money for them now. You won’t get a couple grand unless it’s something rare though.

Some ISPs just have a broken IPv6 implementation. If they do it correctly, they should delegate a /56 prefix that doesn’t change unless the DUID on your router changes or your PoP changes.

I’m not sure about OpenWRT, but you can do WiFi motion detection with an ESP32.

I have a small piece of acrylic sheet taped over the power and reset buttons on my server for that reason. At least I don’t have to worry about mice.

You’re better off with the LiFePO4 batteries even if you don’t care about weight. A lead acid battery will wear out quickly when you cycle it daily. Lithium also has a higher charging efficiency, so you get more usable power from the solar panel.

The helium slowly leaks out over time. That will increase drag and decrease thermal conductivity. It will run hotter and use more power. There is a SMART attribute that will warn you when the helium is running low.

The CUPS web UI is just for configuration. As long as the printer is shared, it should automatically show up in the printers list for any Linux PC on the same network.

That’s a helium filled drive, so it’s got a limited lifespan whether it’s running or not. I would at least set it up as a NAS and use it to store your backups.

The ones for mosquitos use a chemical attractant.

That could be a failing power supply. Excessive ripple under heavy load can cause a hard lock up.

Yes, you could get the base memory usage much lower than in the video.

You just need a video capture card or dongle for your computer. Preferably one with an S-video input. If these are pre recorded tapes, you will also need a Macrovision remover connected between the VCR and capture card. If you want the quality to be as good as possible, you will need a timebase corrector. Those are hard to find and expensive though. The TBC will also remove the Macrovision.

Many routers support more than one SSID per radio.

You didn’t need anything that fancy. You could build a Macrovision remover circuit. The schematics were certainly harder to find before the web, but you could build one up in an afternoon with parts from RadioShack.

I’ve got 12 years and 5 months on a Western Digital WD20EARX HDD. It’s starting to get some bad sectors.

I’ve got a similar runtime on a SAMSUNG SpinPoint F2 and it still seems to be healthy. There’s nothing important on either of them, I just want to see how long they will last.

I prefer mine with a cord. It looks like there are still plenty of wireless mice available that use AA batteries. Eneloop batteries work great for those.