Pankaj Rupani — A Personal Index
Things I use, love, and would buy again.
Engineer, coffee obsessive, habitual tinkerer. Every item below has earned its place through daily use — curated for friends, family, and the curious.
01
Coffee
The daily ritual, taken seriously — roasters, brewers, and equipment that earns its counter space.
- 2014 Gracenote Coffee Boston roaster pulling some of the best espresso on the East Coast.
- 2018 Broadsheet Coffee Roasters Cambridge roaster with distinctive, impeccably fresh single origins.
- 2021 Breville Dual Boiler Temperature-stable espresso at home — precise, consistent, and forgiving.
- 2026 Mahlkönig X64 SD Single-dose grinding with commercial pedigree — it sent the Opus into honorable retirement.
- 2019 Fellow Stagg EKG Kettle Pinpoint temperature control and a spout that pours exactly where you aim.
- 2019 Hario V60 Ceramic Dripper The classic cone brewer for bright, articulate cups.
- 2019 Hario V60 Range Server The V60’s natural companion — simple, handsome glassware.
- 2019 Chemex Classic, Six Cup An hourglass icon whose thick filters yield an exceptionally clean cup.
- 2022 Cometeer referral Flash-frozen coffee capsules for travel and lazy mornings — the link earns you free coffee.
- 2025 BooKoo Themis Ultra Scale Fast, accurate weighing with live flow-rate readout — equally at home under espresso or pour-over.
02
Productivity
The desk setup that makes long days feel shorter.
- 2026 Keychron Q6 Max A full-size wireless mechanical keyboard — the one that ended the rotation.
- 2021 Logitech MX Master 3S Still the productivity mouse to beat.
- 2019 LG 38″ UltraWide One curved ultrawide that gracefully replaces two monitors.
- 2022 CalDigit TS4 A single Thunderbolt cable for everything on the desk.
- 2023 HyperX DuoCast A USB microphone that flatters every call and recording.
03
Audio & Theatre
Sound and picture worth staying in for.
- 2020 Sonos Multi-room audio that simply works.
- 2023 Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X Detailed, comfortable, and honest — my favorite closed-back headphones.
- 2015 MartinLogan ElectroMotion ESL Electrostatic transparency at a price mortals can justify.
- 2024 Pro-Ject T1 Evo A sincere audiophile turntable with no plastic in the signal path.
- 2022 LG C1 OLED Perfect blacks and superb motion, for film and gaming alike.
- 2021 Apple TV 4K The streaming box that stays out of your way — fast, wired, and free of clutter.
04
Smart Home
Automation that recedes into the background — dependable and unobtrusive.
- 2018 Philips Hue The smart-lighting ecosystem worth building on.
- 2019 Lutron Caséta Smart switches with unshakeable reliability.
- 2021 Aqara Inexpensive sensors that punch far above their price.
- 2023 Schlage Encode Plus The smart lock I trust on my own front door.
- 2024 Sonoff Zigbee USB Dongle affiliate The economical way to give Home Assistant a Zigbee radio.
05
Homelab
Self-hosted and happily over-engineered — the stack in the basement that runs the house.
- 2020 Ubiquiti UniFi Prosumer networking that scales from a single access point to the whole house without drama.
- 2020 Home Assistant Open-source automation that ties the entire Smart Home section into one private, local brain.
- 2014 Raspberry Pi The homelab’s utility player — mine run Home Assistant, Pi-hole, and flight tracking.
- 2020 Pi-hole Network-wide ad blocking; the whole household browses lighter.
- 2017 Plex The home media server my family actually uses.
- 2024 Frigate Open-source camera NVR with local, GPU-accelerated object detection — no cloud required.
- 2024 TeslaMate Self-hosted telemetry and charging analytics for the car further down this index.
- 2026 Immich The self-hosted Google Photos replacement that actually delivers — my family’s memories stay home.
- 2021 Grafana Dashboards for everything that emits a number — the homelab’s instrument panel.
- 2026 Paperless-ngx Every document scanned, indexed, and findable in seconds.
- 2024 Cloudflare Tunnel Publishes internal services to the world without opening a single port.
- 2024 Uptime Kuma Self-hosted uptime monitoring with an unreasonably pleasant interface.
- 2024 Ollama Local large-language models on the homelab GPU — private, fast, and endlessly entertaining.
06
Travel
For staying connected and comfortable far from home.
07
Money
The tools I trust to manage, grow, and occasionally spend it.
- 2024 Monarch Money referral The budgeting app that finally replaced Mint — six months free through the link.
- 2025 Facet referral Flat-fee financial planning that changed how I manage money — up to $1,000 through the link.
- 2019 Rakuten referral Cash back on shopping you were doing anyway — $30 to start.
- 2013 Robinhood referral Commission-free investing; the link adds a free stock.
- 2022 Amex Platinum referral The travel card that earns its keep — 20,000 points through the link.
08
Automotive
One car, no caveats.
09
Retired
Decommissioned with gratitude — gear that served honorably and stepped aside. Kept here for the record.
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2021–26 Fellow Opus Grinder A faithful daily grinder until the Mahlkönig arrived.
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2024–26 Keychron Q10 Pro The Alice-layout experiment — lovely curves, but the Q6 Max won the desk back.
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2014–24 Das Keyboard 4 Professional ×2 Two of them, typed to exhaustion across a decade — honorable discharge.
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2016–21 Baratza Encore Grinder The canonical first grinder; passed along when espresso turned serious.
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2019–22 LG E9 65″ OLED A gorgeous panel, succeeded by the C1 in the theatre.
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2021–26 Tesla Model Y (2021) Five faithful years; handed the keys to its 2026 successor.
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2024–26 GL.iNet Beryl AX A capable pocket router, outflanked the moment UniFi went portable.