What things do you self host (or know about) that are fun/interesting/useful to you? I’m thinking of setting up a home server and am looking for things that would be useful or fun for me to run on it. I want to host things that are useful/fun, but not a project itself (I’ve got enough projects), if that makes sense.
Most of the lists I see online are mostly lists of technical projects like docker, kubernetes, grafana, nginx, etc. I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself. ETA: the infra is important, but not “interesting” in this context as I deal with infra at my day job.
Examples of the type of service I’m looking at: a media server, photos app (to replace Google Photos), game servers, recipe management, home automation… What other things do you know about that are fun/interesting/useful?
Edit: thank you everyone for your awesome responses!
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Game servers are always fun! I set up a custom Minecraft modpack and have it set up on my domain. I also run an Arma 3 server, but it’s a hackjob of a self-host solution and I’m ashamed of how it works.
To address your examples directly:
Media server: Jellyfin, along with an *arr stack (Radarr, Sonarr, and qbittorrent and gluetun) to automate everything for you.
Photos app: Immich is your direct Google Photos replacement. Automated uploads, object detection, facial recognition, etc, all ran locally on your machine. Just remember: you still need a proper backup!
Recipe management: Mealie is the best I’ve used. It can import a recipe from almost any website. Very easy to cook with and follow along each step. It also lets you categorize meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), rate your meals, and randomly pick meals for you.
Other things I have going:
Frigate NVR - A couple PoE and wifi cameras set up around the home record everything. Frigate records and timestamps things based on the settings - A person walks up, something loud happens, etc. My only gripe is that there isn’t a good Android app to go with it. I’d like to receive notifications on my phone, too.
MeTube - Rip videos from almost anything. Friend sent you an Instagram video, but you don’t have Instagram? Chuck it into this and it’ll give you the video. Here’s all the websites it supports.
IDK how Frigate handles alerts, but Blue Iris will write an alert to MQTT topic if it matches object recog, and I have an app MQTT Alert that watches that and goes nuts if it comes up. The BI android app is underwhelming in its alerts.
I’d have to figure Frigate has some sort of MQTT capability. I tried using Frigate but it was pretty basic for my needs, so I moved on.
My only gripe is that there isn’t a good Android app to go with it. I’d like to receive notifications on my phone, too.
Home Assistant can do notifications for Frigate that are very similar to Ring’s notifications.
Frigate is the next big rock on my migration to lower power hardware. How are you running it? I’m trying to move to incus but I tested it on Docker. I need to get off my my W10 blueiris install.
Running it on Docker on my debian server. It runs great.
The config setup is a pain in the ass though.
Home Assistant.
If you want smart devices but not the data collection that goes with it, then Home Assistant is your friend. Just be forewarned that it is a seriously deep rabbit hole.
Hello from the rabbit hole. I haven’t seen the light of day in years.
I barely know what food, water or sleep is anymore. But hey! I can turn my lights off and have them come on when sunset occurs. Or they track when I leave my apartment complex property with my cellphone so I don’t waste power and there’s no 3rd party corpo breathing down my shoulder.
You have to show me that truck, how you got out of your apartment while remaining in the hole. That’s some Goyo Satori stuff right there.
I used them for Christmas lights with that sundown condition (+just a time trigger for off at night).
Also came in handy for a light switch that was unfortunately on the wrong side from a table, now its just uses a motion sensor when someone walks to the kitchen and tells a third reality smart switch (screws on top of regular switch, so it works with any light type (e.g. fluorescent)) and is renter friendly.
Bonus points for no lag at all compared to crappy cloud dependent garbage and no need for apps for each device manufacturer. Just look if it is home assistant compatible and no cloud before buying devices since it us a lot harder or impossible in some cases to de-cloud them later.
Edit: plus same motion sensor concept to link several lights on the living room (those are just dimmable smart lights on table and floor lamps). Makes the place look cozy and feel well illuminated vs the usual single light with a wall switch. Aquara Wireless clicker to toggle between dim percentages. Its awesome (third reality or other home assistant friendly brand would work, I just already had this one).
Personally:
Nextcloud (file backup and so much more, I use it to backup files from my computer. Might explore some of the other features soon)
Immich (image backup, I use it to back up photos from my camera + phone)
Radicale (CalDAV + CardDAV for calendar and contacts sync)
Forgejo (GitHub alternative, and the backend of Codeberg! I use this as a local backup to my git repos in addition with cloud backup with Codeberg. They work nice together, when you set two remotes per git repo)
Vikunja (to-do list syncing, don’t use this anymore as I mostly use Joplin for this now)
Joplin (Markdown editor, supports cloud sync with nextcloud, I use this for both notes and to-dos!)
I used to run ConvertX (to convert any file type, whether it’s document, image, video, etc. Think a self-hosted CloudConvert), but I somehow messed up the user permissions and couldn’t log in (100% user error on my part), so I didn’t bother.
Another thing, “Navidrome” is a self-hosted spotify alternative (I don’t use it, I just have the MP3s and OGGs stored locally for offline playback!)
Jellyfin is a self-hosted netflix alternative. Where you get the media is up to you…
I run all of this on my old laptop with Debian installed, and it works quite well!
Home Assistant seems like a really good option if you want smart home stuff, but I personally have a “dumb” home and not planning on getting wifi light bulbs any time soon.
I don’t see any mention of games so far.
A minecraft server is always a good time with friends, and there are hundreds of other game servers you can self host.
I’m interested in which game servers you can host yourself…
Can you give me a few examples or a link to a list?
https://linuxgsm.com/ could interest you!
Here is a list of games they support. Could give you some ideas: https://linuxgsm.com/servers/
Here is my list:
- Open WebUI to have browser access to ollama
- AUTOMATIC1111 Stable Diffusion Web UI to generate images
- HomeAssistant to automate my home
- Immich to backup pictures from family phones and computers and make them accessible like Google Photos
- PeerTube to store and make accessible family videos
- PieFed to access the threadyverse
- Mastodon to do microblogging
- Uptime Kuma to check that all my services are up and running
- Synapse Matrix Server for Text, Video and audio chats with family and friends
- Syncthing to share files
+1 for Home Assistant, though the Docker implementation doesn’t allow add-ons. That may be fine at first, but a lot of the more complicated setup requires add-ons. For me, it was worth it to just go ahead and grab an HA Green to run my HA stuff.
Yeah, I’m still running on my raspberry pi for that reason, and for my parents we also bought a HA green.
Or just a VM running Home Assistant OS. Works great for me in ProxMox.
I just found and set up Gameyfin (a play on Jellyfin). Still in the testing it out phase, but I love the idea of a collection of my friends and my DRM free games that we can all share with less reliance on big companies.
CalDAV calendar/tasks server s.a. Radicale (with Cfait as a tasks manager/client)
Your own wiki, and your own social media-type service
I post miscellaneous notes to my social media-type service, and save lists and more organised information (including recipes) to my wiki.
I haven’t gotten to hosting my own wiki, but i do host an internal-only personal knowledge static site built with hugo. I have it set to build the site on my server which then serves it. Very useful to have something like that or a wiki.
I used to do it that way too, but my wife is not technically inclined, so we settled on something with a web UI for editing.
There are a few areas where the wiki is marginally better for me, the main one being the ability to do quick edits from a smartphone.
I do really like the simple approach with a static site builder thoughOut of curiosity what wiki are you hosting? I have a community that we were thinking about moving our docs to a wiki to be more accessible to non tech savvy people wanting to contribute
wiki.js
It has a few UI editor options, but I can definitely recommend the WYSIWYG markdown editorThanks, I’ll take a look!
Maybe not a service in the typical sense, but setting up your router+server to route your home network traffic through a VPN is a fun project.
My router (MikroTik) supports WireGuard, so I can use it with Mullvad for the whole house—but wg is demanding and it’s a slow router, so while it can NAT at ~1Gbps, it can’t do WireGuard at more than ~90Mbps. So, I set up WireGuard/Mullvad on a little SBC with a fast processor, and have my router use that instead. Using policy based routing and/or mangling, I can have different VLANs/subnets/individual hosts selectively routed through the VPN.
It’s a fun exercise, not sure I implemented it in a smart way, but it works :)
An open tor exit node, a proxy to a pedopornographic website, a guide to mass shootings, a wiki on how to get untraced firearms, or a Minecraft server
spoiler
/s obviously
But on a more serious note, hosting things like StirlingPDF, Nextcloud, Lufi (for encrypted file uploads), or even a mailcow instance is nice
RSSHub. Being able to get all my updates in one place changed how I view the internet for the better.
- media: jellyfin for videos, navidrome for music
- photos: immich
- game servers: +1 to foundryvtt if you’re into tabletop rpgs. While the core software isn’t open source, most systems are, and the pf2e system in particular is the best virtual tabletop experience you’ll have on any platform.
- recipes: i settled on tandoor. Very much a fan of it.
- if you’re a data nerd then chartdb for database diagraming, and cloudbeaver for database management
Tandoor: I ended up there because it has an API that I can access and cross-reference to my grocer (Kroger.com also has API) to get current pricing, calculate recipe costs, nutrient costs, or find what’s on special this week. It’s theoreticcally possible, but I haven’t sorted out how to integrate that directly into tandoor & its shopping lists.
Nice! I haven’t dug into the API yet. The big thing for me was actually pretty small feature but tandoor let’s me scale recipes up and down on the fly with just a click of a button. I couldn’t find that in Mealie. We do a lot of home cooking for guests and large parties so being able to quickly see the portions and scale a recipe up/down saves a lot of mental math or errors.
Edit: though looking at mealie demo again i see some recipes let you adjust the serving. But others do not.
Edit 2: seems to be related when ingredients aren’t parsed
I started with NextCloud, mainly so I can start synchronizing Joplin notes. Maybe I could hook it up to also sync Logseq?
I chose this VTT because it’s dead simple and description on owlbear legacy did not sound encouraging
Then, on my list I have
I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself.
Well, you kind of have to have the infrastructure to make the fun happen. Docker is probably one of the more easy to deploy from the standpoint of someone just standing up a server.
- media server: Navidrome is what I use, but there are a plethora of choices
- photos app: Immich is quite popular, but again there are a list of them
- game servers: There are several that I know of like Doom , Minecraft, iirc there is a Quake server, I think you can integrate Steam. I can’t run games because of a seizure condition, but maybe others can chime in.
- home automation: HomeAssistant, NodeRed, N8N, Ansible, just literally tons of automation
These and thousands of other apps can be deployed via Docker. You don’t have to use docker, you can install on bare metal as well, tho containers make things neat and tidy.
As far as ‘fun’, to me it’s all fun. I selfhost for the utility, privacy, security, and anonymity of it, the educational part of it, and because it’s fun. My version of fun is going to vary widely from yours probably, but I find learning quite fun. Sky’s the limit pretty much.
