I’ve got enough seedling to fill 2 racks like this and then some - it was using way too much space around the house, so I went vertical

LEDs might emit much more energy as light compared to incandescent lights, but that light will get absorbed by plants and surrounding and will eventually end up mostly as heat, no matter what light you have. This rack has 24x18W = 432W worth of lights, which is equivalent of a small space heater running on low.

2 of those racks in a small room in the basement is enough for me to have 24C (75F) in that room while the rest of the basement is closer to 12C (45F). The fanciest of growlights may have saved me 1-2C, or not.

Nothing fancy - T8 LED tubes, cool daylight (6500K). IIRC some are Philips corepro 865, some are Osram equivalent - I used whatever I had left from installing new lights in garage. Brands you recognize, but their value product lines.

Are those as good as “real” grow lights? Hell no. Do they get me 80% there for 20-30% of the price? They sure do!

I’ve done something similar just not with a nicely maintained lawn but an overgrown meadow. And I did half an acre at once because I’m a glutton for punishment. Random notes/observations:

• get soil tested ASAP. It’s cheap and it will tell you what you are missing. Small amounts of targeted fertilizer (a single 10kg/22lbs bag for half an acre in my case) of missing microelements pretty much doubled my yields in second year. I wish I’ve done it earlier.
• grass is very resilient and will consider 6 weeks under a tarp a friendly challenge. You will be weeding it constantly for the first year. The only areas that ended up grass-free for me were covered with a tarp for a full year after being tilled. Tarp outside of vegetation season does nothing.
• it might be too late for wood chips this year, especially if you are adding 4 inches of them - it’s best to add them at the same time as cover crop
• raised beds are an easier option for a small area. Despite all the space I have I still have half a dozen large ones for herbs and plants that aren’t very compatible with the heavy clay I have here

I don’t care for microgreens at all, so it’s going to be a storage rack.

Tomatoes are moving to greenhouse second half of next week - I don’t expect temperatures outside to drop much below freezing after that, at least not beyond what an electric heater or two can salvage in an emergency. Peppers will have to wait until temperatures outside don’t drop below 5C (40F) even during the night - it’s going to be 6, maybe even 8 weeks. 6b zone…

All plants have been started within a couple of days 6-7 weeks ago.

I’ve added list of materials and total cost to the post.

Fixed height. Being able to adjust light distance per tray is better when you have different height plants on a single shelf. It’s also less work when building it.

Check silica packet effectiveness below 50% humidity… It’s not great. Molecular sieve on the other hand has no problem getting humidity below 5%. I managed to buy a 10kg bucket of 3A sieve for about $120 and it’s going to be enough for many years.

I store all my filament in ziplock bags with some 3a molecular sieve - even after 2 years in 45-65% humidity at 21C room I don’t have to dry PETG.

Something more like this https://a.co/d/0bgPCSvQ - it should use half the power, it’s way smaller, 2x SATA if you want 2 drives. I haven’t checked if this specific one is 12V, but there are dozens in the same form factor and with similar specs.

There are a lot of atom or mobile i3/i5 powered mini PCs that actually are powered with a 12v brick, in fact most of the industrial ones are. Small form factor, passive cooling, can play media for you and usually comes with 4x 1/2.5gbit Ethernet, so it can double as a router/switch. Usually 10-15w power draw.

Go to AliExpress and simply search for minipc and make sure it has a SATA connector for your hard drive.

4k 120Hz HDR is what current gen consoles can output right now and what is becoming common even on mid-range TVs (quality of HDR aside). I’d expect you’d want most of that experience or future-proof solution that would allow that when you get a new TV.

• No SBC that I know of can handle 4k 120Hz HDR output, so getting the most of moonlight is not possible.
• Low latency decode requires some work to get running
• AV1 encode/decode has even more latency, do you will be running higher bitrate h264, which in turn means wired network connection is recommended.
• Streaming services limit 4k and/or HDR access on a lot of content to locked devices. E.g. Netflix only guarantees 720p sdr when watching in a browser - how much more you get depends on the deal with the copyright holder.

Tl;dr; a long, active fiber HDMI cable + USB over IP might be cheaper, better and easier. That’s what I ended up buying despite the cable length being 60m (200ft).

Same. I’ve switched to Arch from Ubuntu as my main os almost 10 years ago and in all that time I’ve had a problem that goes beyond inconvenience level maybe twice. In fact Ubuntu broke more often.

Workstations/laptops at my current job in order of popularity: nixos, arch, macos. Windows is around 2%.