I turned a Raspberry Pi and mini PC into a portable homelab that fits in my backpack
…What I wanted was a self-contained homelab — an offline-capable setup that runs on a private network and is fully under my control. That’s what led me to turn the…
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Your self-hosted setup is a mess of IP addresses until you do this one thing
…For a local-only setup, internal DNS can already solve a lot of the mess. With the right router, Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, or firewall appliance, you can just as easily map…
Your smart home needs both an ESP32 and Raspberry Pi 5, not one or the other
…proxies to publish data to Home Assistant. I stopped choosing between Pi 5 and ESP32 after I learned that the best setup isn’t about building one using a single board. It…
Gemini for Home sounds impressive until you realize Home Assistant already does it better
…Google is building an assistant, but Home Assistant is building an architecture. Until Gemini can run entirely offline and control every obscure Zigbee device in my drawer, Home Assistant remains the king…
A modern NAS replaced my smart home hub, backup solution, and media server
…That centralized backup also extends to other aspects of my smart home. My Unifi Protect setup records security camera footage and the NAS gives me a centralized place to store and manage…
Your old laptop is too weak for Windows 11, but somehow strong enough for containers, VMs, and a homelab
…It's a perfect fit in a home lab setup where it can serve a new role. I have personally dedicated multiple old devices, including laptops, as servers running Docker containers and…
I over-engineered my home lab on purpose, and it's the best decision I've made
…That said, it's only a matter of time before you get bitten by the home labbing bug and start building an overkill setup. Sure, most consumers don’t need to go…
My homelab needed a lightweight dashboard, so I had Claude and a local LLM race to build it
…It also disabled the Portainer SSL verification, a reasonable assumption given that self-signed certs are common in homelab setups. However, this isn't always a good thing, and I would have…
Four NVMe slots changed how I think about home lab storage, and a $170 mini PC made it click
…Sign in to your XDA account A Raspberry Pi still makes sense in plenty of home lab setups, especially when the job is small, quiet, and specific. I’ve used them for…
I almost threw away my old laptop and now It’s my most reliable Home Assistant server
…What it actually does Light automation and a smart home that finally feels smart I started with the obvious setup: installing Docker to isolate services, then setting up Home Assistant for automation…