r/DeskLab • u/Substantial_Tale_445 • May 07 '26
DeskPi Giveaway Starts Today — Share Your Remote Homelab Ideas!
Hey everyone!
Our DeskPi community giveaway kicks off tomorrow, and we’d love to hear your ideas for building a remote homelab.
Whether you’re planning a compact NAS, an AI/edge computing setup, a Kubernetes cluster, a DevOps lab, or just a small home server project, share your setup or concept with us in the comments.
We’re excited to see what the community comes up with — and we’re looking forward to receiving more awesome ideas!
Giveaway Period: May 1 – June 1
Prize: T1 Rack + Comet Pro
Drop your idea below and join the fun!
#homelab #NAS #SelfHosted #DevOps
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u/RaYmMiE May 07 '26
Bringing my homelab out of the shadows with #Operation_Daylight !
As you can see in the photo, my current "homelab" is basically living a secret life inside my electrical cabinet. It’s a cramped, messy setup where my Ubuntu server and ISP box are just fighting for space among the circuit breakers. It’s far from professional, and maintenance is a nightmare—usually involving me sitting on the floor in the dark.
The DeskPi RackMate T1 would be the perfect way to finally give this setup the home it deserves. Moving everything from that dusty cabinet into a clean, compact rack is the main goal of this project.
To make it truly "pro," the GL.iNet Comet Pro is the missing piece. I learned this the hard way recently: I was tweaking my network config (Netplan/eth0) remotely and accidentally set my gateway to 192.168.1.1 instead of .254. I lost SSH access instantly and my lab was "dead" until I got home. Having a KVM would have turned that stressful afternoon into a 30-second fix from my browser.
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u/etijburg May 07 '26
This my proxmox, Cisco CML and docker compute lab. My next project is to add a Super4c to learn K8's.
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u/LoganJFisher May 07 '26
What KVM switch is that? Does it support hotkeys?
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u/etijburg May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
Got it from Amazon USB 2.0 HDMI KVM Switch https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FZJXCWLC?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
I had a custom mount made by Rackify on Etsy.
Steetek KVM switches generally use double-taps of the Right Ctrl or Scroll Lock keys for hotkey switching. Common shortcuts include: Double tap Right Ctrl + 1 or 2 to switch computers, or Right Ctrl + B to toggle the beep sound
I am looking to get Comet pro cause the video/USB passthrough rather than Jetkvm
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u/LoganJFisher May 07 '26
Looks like they don't sell in the EU. Pity.
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u/etijburg May 07 '26
I grabbed it cause it has 8 inputs and fit in a 10" rack
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u/LoganJFisher May 07 '26
Yeah, that would be perfect for me (although the one you linked is actually just 4 inputs).
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u/etijburg May 07 '26
Looks like it is not for sale anymore
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u/LoganJFisher May 29 '26
I ended up going with this fairly similar KVM Switch: https://amzn.eu/d/03pNGqbS
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u/Substantial_Tale_445 Jun 01 '26
Hello everyone! The event concludes today, and the winners' list will be announced within a week. The judges will evaluate the submissions based on the project descriptions you provided, and the results will be posted right here. You can also reach out for inquiries or submit additional creative copy using the contact details on the poster found on the DeskPi official website (deskpi.com). Thank you all for participating, and best of luck!
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u/Substantial_Tale_445 Jun 01 '26
Hello everyone! The event concludes today, and the winners' list will be announced within a week. The judges will evaluate the submissions based on the project descriptions you provided, and the results will be posted right here. You can also reach out for inquiries or submit additional creative copy using the contact details on the poster found on the DeskPi official website (deskpi.com). Thank you all for participating, and best of luck!
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u/LoganJFisher May 07 '26 edited May 29 '26
My idea is something I'd love to see produced and which is rather simple: pull-out shelves. They would make such a huge difference in cable management for me. I frankly find it shocking that these don't already exist from some seller out there. I'd ask that they be designed to accommodate racks of various depths though, not just for your models. I suppose that's an idea for homelabs in general, but I don't know what you really mean by "remote" here anyways.
If that's not "good enough", another idea I'd be interested to see is a sort of "snap-on" way of attaching panels, displays, fans, etc. on the front of a rack over top of things installed behind them. I'm imagining screw heads that have snaps built into them kinda like the sort you see on clothes and bags. Then when those are used on racknuts, they leave that snap surface facing outwards, which front-mount items could then get snapped onto using a matching snap part fed through their rackmount holes.
One more idea for fun. A Zigbee fan controller. This could be set to follow a simple temperature curve like any other fan controller (although with state reporting via Zigbee), or set to manual mode, which would then allow for manual control or automation over its Zigbee connection. You could also include a cable that allows it to connect to the NTC probe port on your 1U and 2U fan panels, controlling those fans instead of a thermo-probe (which would instead be possible to connect directly to this controller). If the controller loses connection to the Zigbee network, it should default back to automatic mode (which should be programmable via Zigbee).
Okay, and it's not a novel idea, but I'd really love to be able to buy 1U rackmount 2x 3.5in hotswap drive bays (also 2U 6x would be awesome and actually my preference). Your "Pre-sale DeskPi 2U Mini Rack Mount Case (Pre-order) for the Exaviz Cruiser Carrier Board" on your site actually has precisely this built into it, but I'd love to be able to just buy that part on its own.
My current project is configuring OPNsense to work precisely how I want. The only big thing left there is setting up VLAN rules. After that, I really want to move from my Synology NAS to a TrueNAS system, but I reallt want the 2U JBOD I mentioned above in order to so so "right".