UNAS Pro 4

This week, Ubiquiti’s previously announced UNAS Pro 4 became available for purchase. This looks like a compelling UNAS option if you want to rack mount it. The UNAS 4 Pro only takes up 1 unit (1U) of rack height, fits 4 hard drives, 2 NVMe flash drives, and has 10GB connections on the back of the NAS. It costs $499 here in the US without drives which is a competitive price for a 4-bay rack mounted NAS. The YouTube channel NASCompares has a breakdown of all the details. It seems like a great value, until you want to put flash storage in those NVMe slots.

The Memory Shortage is coming home

You might have heard that we are facing a memory shortage as AI chips grab more and more of the available production of DRAM. If not, this article at Bloomberg will get you up to speed. I’ve been following the issue for a couple of months now, and I’m concerned about smart home tech prices. NVMe flash for your NAS, or micro SD cards for your surveillance camera are already way up in price. That’s where memory is almost all the value in the product. It’s hard to say how much things like home sensors will increase in price. Many specs like RAM aren’t discussed for these products. Will we get new sensors in 2026 and 2027 with hidden, anemic amounts of RAM, giving us weird side effects hard to attribute to low memory?

A couple years ago, amidst all the firmware updates for Matter support, I was talking to someone involved with this transition at a smart home company. They told me memory capacity in a device was a key part of why some products were able to update with Matter support and others were not.

Inspirational smart homes

I’m thoroughly enjoying Smart Home Solver Reed’s series where he tours other people’s smart homes. I found recent episodes covering Game Room Theater and Joel Hawksley really inspiring. I love the creative, and contrasting use of screens in both smart homes. They inspired me think about what I could with more screens too. Joel also has more details about his custom e-ink solution on his website.

The schedule

I’m hard at work on some new videos coming your way soon. In the meantime, I had fun doing another live stream on Friday.

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,

Eric