About
Small shop, strong opinions. Under Your Roof Tech is a local business that sets up and repairs technology people can actually own. Under Your Roof Tech is a local business that wants to put people back in control of their data.
Most of what you do with a computer now happens on hardware someone else owns, with terms of service they can change whenever they like. We think that is a bad deal, and we fix it one house at a time.
Over the last fifteen years, most of what people do with computers moved into rented space. Your photos are on Google's drives. Your camera footage is on Amazon's. Your passwords, your documents, your thermostat schedule, your kid's homework, all of it lives on hardware someone else owns.
It works fine until it does not. Prices go up. Features move behind a higher tier. A product gets discontinued and the device on your wall stops working. An account gets flagged by a machine and ten years of pictures are gone with nobody to call. None of that is made up. Here is the list.
We started this business because none of that is necessary. The software to run all of it in your own house exists, it is good, and most of it is free. What most people are missing is someone to set it up properly and stand behind it.
That is the job.
Five rules we work by.
- 01
You should own it.
Hardware in your house, data on your drives, keys in your hand.
- 02
Local first, internet optional.
Everything we install keeps working when the internet is down. Remote access is a bonus, not a requirement.
- 03
Fix it before you replace it.
Most electronics die of one cheap part or a decade of dust.
- 04
No lock-in, including to us.
We install open source software on standard hardware and leave written documentation. If you ever want someone else to take over, they can.
- 05
Plain talk.
We tell you what it costs, what it does, and what it does not do. If the cheaper option is the right one, we will say so.
How your data lost its warrant.
The plain-English version, in four dates.
- 1976
United States v. Miller
The Supreme Court decides your bank records belong to the bank. Once you hand information to a third party, the Fourth Amendment mostly stops protecting it.
- 1979
Smith v. Maryland
The numbers you dial are the phone company's business too. Collecting them needs no warrant.
- 1986
Stored Communications Act
Congress writes rules for data held by providers. Some of it needs a warrant, some only a subpoena, and the provider often does not have to tell you.
- 2018
Carpenter v. United States
A rare pullback. Your phone's location history needs a warrant. The court was careful to say the old rule still stands for most other records.
Put together, that is the third-party doctrine. It is why a police department can ask a camera company for your doorbell footage and sometimes get it without a warrant and without asking you. It is why the contents of your cloud storage are not quite as private as the contents of your filing cabinet.
Footage on a recorder in your closet is different. So are photos on a drive in your house. To get those, someone has to come to your door with a warrant, and you will know about it.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. It is just the reason we think your stuff belongs under your roof.
One shop, one phone number.
Under Your Roof Tech was started by a software developer who spent years building systems for businesses and got tired of watching friends and family pay rent on their own data. The business is small on purpose. When you call, you talk to the person who does the work.
We work in Your Town and everything within about an hour of it. Installs and setups happen at your place. Repairs are handed off by arrangement.
How I got here
As a kid, I recall my dad getting our first computer around 1998 or 1999. I was thrilled. I figured out how to get on the internet and a month later he got the phone bill and it was astronomical. I wasn't allowed near the computer for another month until he needed me to show him how to do something. I haven't stopped helping him and others since.
Fast forward 10 years and I was getting tired of the cycle of getting a computer that fast for a year or two then having to deal with it being slow or having to save up for a new computer. No one tells you that you don't have to deal with that cycle. I started looking for alternatives and learned that often it's one or two parts inside the computer the need upgraded or replaced. That's still the case today.
In 2016, my first idea that made me want to pursue a career in computers happened while working at a rug store. We had recently moved locations and need to set up a few computers that could communicate, share invoices, and had backups of each other's data, a closed circuit system for the store that was accessible by the owner outside the building and program some led displays. I had a blast doing it and wanted to do more.
So I started building crypto currency mining rigs. Building them was pretty easy but tuning them to maximize performance while cutting power consumption was a challenge. I would stay up LATE trying to optimize them. Then get up first thing in the morning and get right back to it. I built, tuned and maintained about 80 rigs for myself and others. There were aspects of it, and techonlogy in general that has always felt like it's intentionally vague or difficult to understand or trying to gatekeep. Simple things like giving a little more information so you know what's going on or that there are other options.
That lead me into software engineering and I have been doing it for about 8 years. In that time I’ve learned more and more about how data is collected, how it’s used by these companies to make them money and how that incentivizes them to do things against your best interest while you get less of a say if what is yours. I don’t like it. That’s why I’ve started this business.
Questions?
Ask. We would rather talk you out of a bad idea than sell you one.