# Homelab Control Panel (Rapture Landing Page) The Homelab Control Panel is a highly customized BioShock-themed webpage hosted on the web-portfolio VM (172.30.1.201) and served publicly via Cloudflare Tunnels. This page combined custom Art Deco auesthetics with dynamic backend systems monitoring and synthetic sound effects. --- ## 1. Architectural Overview & Data Flow The portal acts as a central landing page for the homelab. It displays node metadata (IPs, roles) and integrates dynamic polling script that updates VM online/offline states. ```mermaid sequenceDiagram autonumber actor User as Developer Browser participant CF as Cloudflare Edge participant WebVM as web-portfolio (172.30.1.201) participant Monitor as homelab-monitor.service participant Nodes as Control & Media VMs %% Background Monitoring Loop Note over Monitor, Nodes: Every 10 Seconds Monitor->>Nodes: ICMP Ping (1s timeout) Nodes->>Monitor: Echo Reply Monitor->>WebVM: Write /usr/share/nginx/html/status.json %% Frontend Fetch User->>CF: Request dashboard.shooey.xyz (HTTPS) CF->>WebVM: Tunnel Forward to port 80 (HTTP) WebVM->>User: Serve index.html, style.css, script.js, bg.jpg Note over User: Page Loads & AudioContext Init loop Every 10 Seconds User->>WebVM: HTTP GET status.json WebVM->>User: Return {"control": true, "web": true, "media": true} Note over User: JS toggles status indicators (Cyan/Red) end ``` --- ## 2. Design System & Thematic Style The styling is designed to mimic a run-down, water damaged post-civil-war terminal inside the underwater city of Rapture: * **Color Scheme:** Sourced from my Konsole colorscheme: * *Base Background:* Deep forest-teal balck (rgb(14,24,23)). * *Card Panels:* Frosted glass using rgba(11,20,19,0.92) with a heavy backdrop-filter: blur(24px). * *Accents:* Bioluminescent cyan (rgb(51,224,208)) and oxidized Art Deco gold/brass (rgb(212,174,44)). * **Visual Enhancements:** * *Double Frame:* A double-line gold outline border (outline: 6px double var(--rust-accent)) * *Vignette & Scanlines:* A dark viewport vignette shadow simulatoring deep-water claustrophobia, combined with horizontal CRT scanlihnes layerd behind the text cards to keep typography sharp. * *Flickering Lights:* CSS @keyframes simulating power grid failures by randomly toggling oppacity on the header title and status indicators. * *Slow Bubbles:* A fixed background layer animating glowing teal bubbles floating lazily upward. --- ## 3. Rapture Broadcast System Instead of playing raw audio, the dashboard implements a vintage vacuum-tube AM radio weidget utiliizng the browser's Web Audio API: 1. **CORS & file:// Bypassing:** To resolve browser security policies (which block Web Audio manipulation on external domains), a 6-song playlist of 1930s jazz tracks (Al Bowlly & Django Reinhardt) is downloaded locally and saved to website/audio/. 2. **Bandpass Filter:** The audio stream is routed through a BiquadFilterNode before hitting the output destination: * type = 'bandpass' (cuts deep bass and high treble). * frequency.value = 1100 (centers the audio in the mid-range where vintage speakers peaked). * Q.value = 1.8 (narrows the band, creating a tinny, lo-fi vacuum-tube effect). 3. **Continuous Playlist Loop:** JavaScript tracks ended event handlers to aumatically load the next local track and update the "Now Playing" string. --- ## 4. Real-Time System Monitoring (Dynamic Pinging) The status lights on the cards are backed by an automated server monitoring script: 1. **Python Script (ping_status.py):** Deployed to /usr/share/nginx/html/, it loops through a dictionary of VM hosts and runs `ping -c 1 -W 1 `. It writes a dictionary of booleans directly to /usr/share/nginx/html/status.json. 2. **Systemd Service (homelab-monitor.service):** Configured as a background daemon running an infinite loop with a 10-second sleep, starting automatically on boot: ```bash [Unit] Description=Homelab Nodes Status Monitor After=network.target [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/bash -c "while true; do /usr/bin/python3 /usr/share/nginx/html/ping_status.py; sleep 10; done" Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target ``` 3. **Frontend Poll:** The JavaScript fetches status.json asynchronously every 10 seconds and updates class names to .online (pulsing cyan) or .offline (pulsing red). --- ## 5. UI Micro-interactions & Sound Synthesis The gaming-interface feel is completed with custom cursors and dynamic sound effects: * **Custom Cursors:** Base SVG custom cursors (gold pointers) and hover states (cyan pointers) are embedded directly inside style.css using Base64/SVG URIs, ensuring zero asset lag. * **Synthesized Switch Replay (Radio Switch):** When clicking hte radio ON/OFF switch, two oscillators (triangle and sawtooth waves) decay rapidly from high to low frequencies over 0.12 seconds, synthesiizng a heavy physical relay switch clack. * **Hover Tick (Card Enter):** Moving the mouse cursor into any card triggers a sine-wave oscillator decaying from 1400Hz to 400Hz in 0.03 seconds, creating a clean, mechanical UI selection click. --- ## 6. Infrastructure Deployment Automation All Nginx, firewall, SELinux, and service setups are fully automated in the Ansible playbooks: * **deploy_website.yml:** Installs Nginx, opens ports via firewalld, and synchronizes files. * **deploy_monitor.yml:** Registers the background Python monitor and configures the systemd service, executing restorecon as an idempotent handler to fix SELinux labeling on /usr/share/nginx/html.