In my last post, I introduced CultivatorsLedger — a local-first cultivation telemetry platform built on Next.js, PostgreSQL, and Docker. One of the first architectural decisions I made was how to handle sensor data ingestion. In a grow environment, WiFi is not reliable. Network drops happen. And when they do, standard HTTP posts lose data. I needed a queue. The Contenders I looked at three options: Kafka — powerful, but way too heavy for a homelab setup. I don't ne...