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!

  • INeedMana@piefed.zipEnglish
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    1 month ago

    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

  • WingedObsidian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    1 month ago

    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

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    1 month ago

    Weather station, terrestrial/satellite TV DVR (TVHeadend), Git repository (Forgejo for a nice web UI, cgit for a classic UI), DNS resolver.

  • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • JeanValjean@piefed.socialEnglish
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      1 month ago

      Is there documentation and stuff for an Android app to be built? I might be interested in building one.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      30 days ago

      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.

  • 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦@rblind.comEnglish
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    1 month ago

    If you want to get straight to the fun, I might recommend: https://cosmos-cloud.io/

    It will handle all of the uninteresting stuff like docker, reverse proxies, ssl certificates, etc. You can get straight to adding apps either by pasting in a docker-compose, or getting them straight from the cosmos marketplace.

    Also, it works with standard tools, so other than the reverse proxy, it’s easy to migrate away from if you want. I think the reverse proxy is just caddy, but I don’t know where the caddy config file goes or how to pull it out of the funky cosmos config format.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    27 days ago

    • For LLM hosting, ik_llama.cpp. You can really gigantic models at acceptable speeds with its hybrid CPU/GPU focus, at higher quality/speed than mainline llama.cpp, and it has several built in UIs.

    • LanguageTool, for self run grammar/spelling/style checking.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • ohlaph@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    1 month ago

    Home Assistant might be of interest.

    Additionally, pi hole, Immich, and things based on your hobbies might be fun. I recently started hosting a Grafana service to send my garmin data to since I like seeing my health data. I know you didn’t want grafana, but using a hobby as an example. What are some of your hobbies?

  • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • starshipwinepineapple@programming.devEnglish
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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        1 month ago

        I use FinAmp client with Jellyfin for music.

        I agree the Jellyfin interface is not well optimized for music, but FinAmp negates most of that and my phone is how I mostly listen to music anyway.

        I like Navidrone, but it’s a duplicate service that doesn’t really have a big value add over Jellyfin beyond the ability to share tracks with friends. A major feature upgrade, but not something I use terribly often.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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          30 days ago

          FWIW, Plappa works really well on iOS. It’s not the official ABS app, but it was obviously designed around ABS. It has all of the features as the official app, without the whole “try every month to get into the TestFlight beta, because TestFlight hard caps the user count” BS.

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websiteEnglish
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    30 days ago

    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 :)

  • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    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?

    I use:

    • Immich for photo hosting
    • Jellyfin and navidrome for media (video and audio)
    • Calibre and calibre-web for ebooks
    • Minecraft server
    • Mealie for recipes.
    • Home assistant for automation
    • Habitica for habit forming
    • And I have fpp for my Christmas lights (the application is xlights, fpp is the server that runs the scripts)

    All of these I like.

  • Electricd@lemmybefree.netEnglish
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    29 days ago

    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

    • Electricd@lemmybefree.netEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      But on a more serious note, hosting things like StirlingPDF, Nextcloud, Lufi (for encrypted file uploads), or even a mailcow instance is nice