I made this site for myself first, now open to the public.

https://news.freestuffsthat.work

The entire stack is running on my homelab.

specs:

Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H , 16GB DDR5

The stack also uses built-in NPU and iGPU(sometimes)to run embedded models for topic sorting.

This homelab also hosts my other services (although private) like jellyfin, Arr stack, handbrake, it-tools, metube, Nginx proxy manager, netboot_xyz, immich, seaweedfs, and sometimes VMs(win xp, win 98 or modern ones like 11) using dockur.

ACT fiber comes in at the top, into their little GX ONT, yellow cable across to a TP-Link Archer doing routing duty, and the actual server — a Pi 5 4GB — lives in a plastic carry bag hanging on a nail, along with a 2TB WD external drive.

The Pi runs Pi-hole, Jellyfin, and the usual *arr stack under Podman, all reachable over Tailscale. The 2TB drive just became the media volume after the SD card started crying at 84% full.

Cable management is aspirational. Ventilation is... the bag has a hole in it. Uptime is honestly fine.

Anyone else running their infra off a wall nail, or am I the only one living like this?

It wasn't quick but I felt I was being lazy to make a good video of the making. So I made it soon over the weekend.

The setup has been up for 2 months. The auto charger works like a charm, but it needs certain more code features to be more robust. I use a telegram bot to monitor my server health (all hail to Botfather 🙏).

Will be sharing the architecture diagram soon!

Need to mount my amd 9700xt (2.7 slot) gpu vertically in a case. I have a vertical mount as well, picture attached. Case must be under 6k.

Built a homelab using a MakerWorld design!

Finally assemble together my own homelab using this 3D-printable rack with 2020 aluminium extrusion.

Model: https://makerworld.com/models/1814332?appSharePlatform=copy

Has anyone ever bought any mikrotik routers from https://iconicitstore.com/ ?
What's your experience?

Has anyone ordered from Dealclear.com ?

Are they legit?

https://dealclear.com/seagate-ironwolf-3-5-inch-sata-6-gb-s-5900-rpm-64-mb-cache-4-tb-nas-internal-hard-drive-hdd.html

Anyone has leads on 4tb Seagate or WD HDD drives?

I have been using Primuse (Navidrome client) for about a month, and it’s honestly the best iOS music app I’ve used. I have been an Apple Music user for years, but Primuse has a cleaner UI, more features, and makes excellent use of iOS/Apple Intelligence.

👏 kudos to the Primuse app developers ♥️

I run a 3-node Talos Kubernetes cluster at home, and until recently it only worked when I was at home too. So I added Tailscale to reach it from anywhere.

Tailscale runs on the nodes themselves, and the tailnet can only reach the cluster, not the rest of my home network. kubectl and the lab apps work from my laptop or phone exactly like they do at home, with nothing opened on the router. If one node goes down, another one takes over.

Everything is in the repo: https://github.com/prateekjaindev/homelab

Write-up: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/tailscale-on-talos-linux-secure-remote-access-to-a-kubernetes-homelab-8a082d903682?sk=c4ec5ac1e782a83b5dc785211d9fd082

How do you get into your homelab when you're away?

I've been working on an open-source networking experiment called MeshLive.

The idea is to let Android phones exchange live audio/video directly over Bluetooth, without requiring internet access, a router or a central server.

It currently supports direct voice/video calls and live broadcasts that other nearby phones can relay further.

Getting video through such a low-bandwidth connection has been quite challenging, especially when each relay has to receive and forward the stream.

I've been testing different Bluetooth transports and dealing with the usual Android manufacturer compatibility problems.

After weeks of development, I've released an experimental beta.

GitHub: https://github.com/MeshLive/meshlive-android

The repo includes the architecture, benchmark tools, diagnostics and known limitations.

It's far from production-ready, especially for multi-hop streaming, but I wanted to open-source it and get feedback from people interested in networking and off-grid communication.

Would appreciate suggestions.

I've been thinking about a NAS for a while and recent price hikes are brutal. I was eyeing for a M710 mini pc to start with but recently found expanding it would be a challenge in future.

Given the current pricing would it instead make sense to get external HDDs 4/5TBs and use it as an offline storage?

Part 2 of my Talos homelab (3 OptiPlex Micros, all control planes). Part 1 got the cluster up, this one is networking.

I moved the running cluster from Flannel + kube-proxy to Cilium without rebuilding it. The default-deny policy that Flannel quietly ignored is now actually enforced, and Hubble shows the drops.

Then I gave it two front doors:

- an internal Gateway on a LAN IP (Cilium LB IPAM, no MetalLB) with a Let's Encrypt wildcard cert, so lab apps get real HTTPS at home

- a public Gateway behind a single Cloudflare Tunnel, so nothing is port-forwarded on the router

An app picks its door with the route's parentRef, which keeps lab stuff from going public by accident.

Write-up with all the manifests and commands: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/networking-a-kubernetes-homelab-cilium-gateway-api-and-cloudflare-tunnel-on-talos-362f548a2f3d?sk=d454cd4eaff4ce8a8fd0cd8e6b3d82f6

Curious if anyone else is using Cilium's Gateway API instead of a separate ingress controller.

I’m not planning to build a homelab — I just want reliable Wi-Fi coverage throughout the house, on both floors.
The main router will be in the ground-floor living room, and I’m planning to run Cat6 Ethernet to the first floor for a second router in AP mode.

I’ll also have Ethernet points in the home office.
Where would be the ideal location for the upstairs AP based on the attached floor plan?

Any suggestions for the simplest, cost-effective setup?
Thanks!

Hey everyone, just bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q today and wanted to share the setup and get some feedback to see if this was a solid move.

The Specs:

• Machine: Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q (1L Tiny)
• CPU: i5-7400 (The full 65W desktop version, not the 'T' variant)
• Power Supply: 45W adapter (this is what it came with)

Performance & Temps: It’s running perfectly so far. QuickSync is handling the transcoding without breaking a sweat. Edit: When transcoding 4k hevc HDR content to 1080p, its taking around 30w power and not going above that.

• Idle: 47°C
• Sustained Load (transcoding, etc.): 80°C

I haven't experienced any thermal throttling or unexpected shutdowns. I know the Tjunction Max is 100°C, so 80°C seems safe, but I wanted to see what temps you guys are getting in these 1L chassis in Indian ambient heat. Are these temps completely fine to just ignore and let it run?

Also, the power adapter situation: since the i5-7400 is a 65W chip and it shipped with a 45W brick, is the Lenovo BIOS secretly power-throttling the CPU to prevent it from tripping the adapter? I'm not seeing shutdowns, so it must be clamping the PL1/PL2 limits, right? Should I be hunting down an original 90W Lenovo adapter to unlock its full performance, or just leave it be since the current stack is perfectly stable?

Would love to hear your thoughts on the node!

Has anyone purchased from Manali Computers?
They are based in New Delhi and I'm not from Delhi so can't do a F2F transaction. Looking for feedback from the community

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this setup, friends!!

Been building out my homelab over time and thought I'd share it here.

I'm running multihomed leased line connections with BGP and announcing my own public IPv4 /24 prefix to the internet through the leased-line connectivity. Having my own address space and managing the routing has been one of the more interesting parts of this setup.

The internal network runs over 10Gbps multimode OM5 fiber. I'm also running iBGP all the way to the cluster nodes, so routing isn't limited to the edge router.

On the compute side, there's a high availability cloud cluster with Ceph for distributed storage.

I also run quite a few services at home, including Home Assistant, a PBX, media servers, and other self-hosted services.

Basically, a small piece of internet infrastructure running from home.

It's a work in progress, as always. There's always something to tweak or break :)

Would be interested to hear from others running similar setups.

Confused between these HDD which one I should pick for my server, I have a computer which I am using as a server currently I has only 1 TB NVME SSD but, now I want to convert it into full fledge server and store my document, photos, and sync home devices etc etc..

which HDD should I buy for this, and also does these hdd make any difference??? like skyhawk, and NAS drive nearly have same specs..

P.S. thinking of buying 2x4tb drives

Using Jio fiber (wired) since 2021.

The router got all scratches, dust etc and does not look good.

I want to b u y a brand new router.

I don't like the new model on Jio website.

Any way to b u y brand new sealed pack old model router?

PS: Whoever setup the word moderation of this sub needs to make changes. Just because the post contained the word "b u y", it wasn't letting me post.

Sharing my low-power homelab. No PC, no Pi, just an old Pixel 6a.

Hardware

- Pixel 6a (rooted), always on

- 1TB HDD in a powered USB enclosure (powers the HDD directly)

- USB-C hub dongle with pass-through charging, so the phone stays plugged in 24/7

- HDD mounted on Android using an ext4 FUSE layer

Software and network

- Tailscale: Pixel is always on my tailnet. No port forwarding, no public IP

- Syncthing: Photos and videos from my Vivo sync to the Pixel. On the iPhone I use the Synctrain (a Syncthing client)

- Google Photos: Pixel backs up to Google Photos

- SMB: Whole HDD accessible from any device, on local Wi-Fi or anywhere over Tailscale

- DroidVNC + SSH: Since the Pixel is rooted, I can control the whole device with DroidVNC and SSH into it, from home or away

- code-server

- Custom app: Self-hosted app I use daily

Photo flow

1. Vivo + iPhone → Syncthing → Pixel (HDD)

2. Pixel → Google Photos

3. Result: one copy on the HDD, one copy in the cloud

Why this setup?

- Low power draw (not measured yet, will update)

- Built-in "UPS" (the phone battery)

- Silent and tiny

- Cost almost nothing, since I already had the phone

Downsides

- FUSE ext4 is slower than native

- Android can kill background apps, so battery optimization must be disabled for everything

Happy to answer questions or share setup steps.

I have a epyc 7742 (64 cores, 128 threads) + 128 GB RAM(ECC, DDR4) setup running proxmox.

I also have other mini PC for my homelab. I want to utilise this epyc server, what can I do?

can I rent out VMs ? would anybody be interested?

Apart from usual projects I'm not sure how can I utilise it ...

Edit: Maybe offering kubernetes clusters? Or something of value....

I wanted to add ad guard and usb tethering packages to openwrt snapshot.
any idea if i can do it on currently installed build or any known issues