u/GaweGawie

ARTEMIS — a 10" Saturn V-themed home server rack with a live health LED, alarm lamp, and a custom desk status screen

Not a huge lab — three small machines and a switch — but it's got some custom electronics and monitoring bolted on that I'm pretty happy with. Sharing the hardware, how it went together, and the software layer that makes it actually tell you when something's wrong instead of just sitting there.

Hardware

Case: 10" open-frame rack, 3D printed, around real Adam Hall 10U steel rack rails
GPC1 & 2: a Mac Mini M4 (main box, runs all the Docker containers) and a Dell Micro PC (secondary box)
Storage/NAS: a small MAIWO NAS unit sitting on a rack shelf - 2 x 14tb's
Networking: a Cudy 5-port switch in a printed cradle, plus a 10-port keystone patch panel on the front
Monitoring electronics: an ESP32-S3 running custom firmware, an AHT20+BMP280 temperature/humidity/pressure sensor, a PZEM-004T power meter with a clamp-on CT sensor, a WS2812B RGB LED strip, a 12V fan, and a physical alarm lamp
Power: a mains kill switch on the rack's top plate, a small 12V PSU, and a buck converter stepping that down to 5V for the electronics
A separate 8.8" desk screen showing live rack status

How it went together

Behind the rack, mains power runs through an IP-rated sealed box: a kill switch, a current-clamp power meter, and safe wiring back to a UK gang bar and PSU. A second, smaller ventilated box next to it holds the "brains" — the ESP32, the sensors, the buck converter, and a small RGB LED strip that runs up the inside of the rack, glowing through the open side panels.

What was actually programmed

This is the part that makes it more than just a rack full of gear:

The ESP32 runs custom firmware (via ESPHome) that reads the temperature/humidity/pressure sensor, reads the power meter, drives the RGB LED and alarm lamp, and controls the fan — all reporting back over MQTT
A Mosquitto MQTT broker and Home Assistant run in Docker on the Mac Mini, tying everything together
A small script watches every Docker container on the machine and publishes their health status over MQTT
Home Assistant computes an overall health state — ok / warning / critical — based on the percentage of containers currently running, and pushes that to the ESP32
The ESP32 turns that into a colour: white = all good, orange = something's down, red = more than half the containers are down — plus a physical lamp lights up when there's a problem
A second small screen on my desk (a "Turing" smart display) shows live container counts, sensor readings, and power draw, pulled straight from the same data

How it works in practice

Day to day, the rack just sits there glowing white. If a container crashes or something in the stack goes down, the LED changes colour and the alarm lamp switches on — I know there's a problem without opening a laptop.

The desk screen gives me the numbers (power draw, temperature, container count) at a glance. Everything reports over MQTT, so nothing depends on polling a webpage — it's genuinely event-driven and reacts within seconds of a real change.

I've tested it properly too — not just "looks right" — by actually killing containers one at a time and watching the light change colour at each threshold, including confirming the red "critical" alert fires correctly.

Still a work in progress — lots of testing to be done to ensure its a "set and forget" setup. the screen dials and backgound still needs some work too.

Credit where it's due: the rack itself is built around the excellent Saturn V[U] 10" rack design by Dossi on MakerWorld — I just added the electronics, sensors, and monitoring layer on top of his frame: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1381701-saturn-v-u-diy-10-network-rack#profileId-1430257

I also want to point to this earlier Reddit post that first put this rack design on my radar and showed what it could look like built out — worth a look if you like the aesthetic: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1jzx5gq/what_do_you_guys_think_of_my_minilab_saturn_vu/

Ive observed 4 of these adverts, by 3 different sellers in the last week.

Exact same generic pics, exact same title, all priced "too good to be true" at the same price.

I suspect these are compromised ebay accounts that these scammers use.

A buddy of mine bought one and the scammer uploaded 2 tracking numbers.

One RMSD (that ended up going to a random address) and another "Tracked 48" that was never delivered. This seems to resonate with the "2 tracking numbers Ebay scam". Its a fraud tactic where sellers provide multiple tracking numbers to confuse buyers and evade eBay’s automated "Item Not Received" protections

This scammer was since banned and the "sold" listings have been taken down.

Please be vigilant out there guys!

Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, up to 10x the lowest ever tracked prices — 128GB of DDR5 now $3,399

Artimis 10 inch NASA inspired rack.

Apple Mac Studio Scams hit Ebay in the UK - BEWARE