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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Headscale with headplane UI for access across servers
Openwebui for LLM stuff with tika for doc processing
Nextcloud for data and such
Immich(migrating away from photoprism) for better photo management and phone upload
Caddy for reverse proxy
Not used as much: Monica for contact management Mealie for its ease of importing recipes
Parties, dinners, other events.
Orgies.
key party
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
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
Maybe an IRC server/bouncer
https://docspell.org/ for organizing your documents using machine learning.
Jellyfin and Immich, first and foremost. From there, Nextcloud, Home Assistant, RustDesk, Docmost, and Nephele.
(Full disclosure: Nephele is my own service. I find it quite useful.)
Speaking of RustDesk, I think that Meshcentral is also a very good software to remotely control your devices.
RustDesk is shady Chinese software and not recommended.
EDIT: Source (Reddit)
AdventureLog is pretty cool. Pairs with Immich nicely too.
Paperless NGX is awesome. Of course Immich. I also really like Firefly-iii and Home Assistant.
Off the top of my head:
- Paperless ( Digital filing cabinet, tagging is local LLM backed
- Immich (Google Photos replacement)
- Nextcloud (Replaces the rest of Google Cloud functionality)
- LubeLogger (Vehicle maintenance logger)
- Home Assistant (Home and other things automation)
- Jellyfin (Primary media server)
- Hoarder (Online bookmarking, tagging and summarizing service, Local LLM backed. I think this project has changed names)
- Audiobookshelf ( Does what it says on the tin. Audiobook server, kinda like audible but I can actually find the books I already own. )
- Navidrome (Not sure if I’m keeping this one. Like the features but it largely duplicates the music side of Jellyfin)
- Minecraft Server (Again, does what it says on the tin)
There are other services I run but those are the ones I use most often and can rattle off when I’m as tired as I am right now.
Hoarder is now Karakeep
I much prefer navidrome for music over jellyfin. Better presentation and usage, tracks meaningful data and displays it by default, and won’t delete your music library data if a folder gets moved. In other words jellyfin just gets rid of that data but navidrome will track missing songs and make you explicitly confirm removing them from the database.
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.
Great list - saved!
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.
I run it on Docker, works fine that way.
Is there documentation and stuff for an Android app to be built? I might be interested in building one.
https://github.com/sfortis/frigate-viewer
This is the closest thing to an android app, but it just adds a check to see if you’re on your local network or not. Other than that, it’s just a web frontend.
The frigate documentation also has some info about installing it as an app, but either I’m doing it wrong or it’s the equivalent of a bookmark on my homescreen.
Yeah, that’s a progressive web app, not a native Android app. I’ll check it out, I have a few cameras I want to play with.
- 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
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.
Couple of things I have running on my home server no one has mentioned yet.
FoundryVTT is a self-hostable platform for playing tabletop RPGs online. It supports a vast selection of game systems and user/community developed mods making it extremely versatile.
Pihole is probably something you’ve heard of before and despite the name is hostable on a wide variety of systems. In case you haven’t it’s a network level ad blocker that works by taking over the role of DNS server on your LAN and blocking queries to domains used to serve ads or track telemetry.
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.
Searxng. Just use a private instance.
