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- Radarr movie management 📽, Hosting game servers 🕹, Homelab tours 🗺
Radarr movie management 📽, Hosting game servers 🕹, Homelab tours 🗺
Issue 0003 - All work and no play ≠ the way
👋🏽 Hello, homelabbers!
Welcome to the third issue of Homelab Society! Thanks to everyone who's joined our growing community—your enthusiasm for homelabbing has been incredible, and I'm excited to dive into topics that'll genuinely level up your setups.
This issue is all about turning your homelab into a playground. One of my first homelab projects was setting up a dedicated game server so my friends and I could play together without dealing with laggy public servers or questionable teammates. What started as a simple gaming solution opened my eyes to something bigger: the pure joy of experimentation and discovery that homelabs enable.
Whether it's spinning up game servers, creating safe sandboxes for testing new tools, or building digital playgrounds for learning—your homelab can be so much more than just storage and services.
Let's explore what the community has been building and learning together.
⚡ News & Deals
Helparr automates film additions by generating RSS feeds based on actors, directors, studios, and movie series. Key updates include multi-source discovery, smart deduplication to prevent duplicate downloads, and robust production-ready features like Docker support and auto-sync. It simplifies curating movie collections for completionists and enthusiasts.
UniFi has unveiled Protect 6.0, an upgrade to its physical security platform. Powered by UniFi EdgeAI, the new version delivers enhanced intelligence and control. Key features include "Spotlights" for instant activity highlights, dwell time analysis, multi-camera tracking, and a unified "Find Anything" interface. The update aims for faster awareness and deeper insights, streamlining security monitoring and incident review with smarter automation and improved logging capabilities.
Apache Guacamole's upcoming 1.6.0 release introduces significant rendering performance gains through an optimized protocol. It also enhances Docker support with ARM CPU images and automated environment variable mapping. New administrative features include batch connection imports, a dedicated audit permission, and configurable case sensitivity, alongside a migration to Duo Web SDK v4.
💬 Discussions & Tutorials
Immich is a powerful open-source solution for self-hosting photo and video collections. This platform allows users to manage their media on their own servers via Docker, offering features like automatic uploads, facial recognition, smart search, and optional GPU acceleration for enhanced performance. Immich provides a secure, private alternative to cloud services, giving users complete control over their digital memories, whether as a primary solution or a robust backup.
Discover how to transform your vintage amplifier or Hi-Fi system into a modern smart audio streamer using a Raspberry Pi and the Volumio app. This guide details connecting your legacy equipment to digital music services like Spotify, all controlled via smartphone. It covers essential components, setup steps, and offers an alternative, Moode Audio, for a cost-effective, customized audio experience.
ProxMenux is a promising open-source, menu-driven interface for Proxmox server management. This lightweight tool streamlines complex administrative tasks, such as VM/LXC creation, network configuration, and storage management, offering an intuitive alternative to command-line operations. It serves as a valuable enhancement for both novice users and seasoned administrators, improving efficiency and ease of use in Proxmox environments.
🧰 Resources & Tools
Pelican is a free, open-source game server control panel designed for easy management and robust security. Leveraging Docker, it isolates each server for enhanced safety and scalability, supporting a wide range of popular games. Its user-friendly interface, one-click installations, and active community contribute to a streamlined experience for users managing gaming communities or personal servers.
PufferPanel is an open-source, web-based game server management system designed by players. It allows users to run and manage multiple game servers from a central location with a simple interface. Built with a Vue.js UI and Golang backend, PufferPanel offers a free, no-hassle solution, emphasizing accessibility and community contributions over commercial integrations.
Batocera.linux is a free, open-source retro-gaming distribution designed to transform any computer into a gaming console using a USB stick or SD card, requiring no system modification. It offers plug-and-play simplicity, out-of-the-box controller support, and access to over 200 systems with features like themes and RetroAchievements, enabling easy access to classic games while emphasizing ownership of titles.
RomM, a self-hosted game manager, offers a powerful solution for organizing extensive game collections. It enables users to scan, enrich, and browse their libraries with detailed metadata and cover art from multiple sources. Supporting over 400 platforms, RomM includes built-in EmulatorJS for browser gameplay and provides integrations for various devices, making it a comprehensive, private, and secure open-source tool for emulator enthusiasts.
✨ Miscellaneous
Dan from Gears and Gadgets gives us a detailed tour that showcases a home server closet, ingeniously converted from a coat closet, featuring a rack-mounted IT and smart home hub. The setup prioritizes efficient networking, substantial storage, and robust security, including a Synology NAS and Lorex cameras. Emphasizing practicality, Dan highlights how this custom solution facilitates managing extensive media files and ensures reliable home IT operations.
Rich from 2GuysTek takes us on a homelab tour that features significant hardware upgrades since his 2023 setup. Noteworthy additions include a high-performance 24-bay TrueNAS storage server and a 45Drives Proxinator Proxmox host. The setup now features a Mikrotik 100-gig switch for enhanced networking and an upgraded APC Smart-UPS. A quad-node Supermicro server was also integrated for hyperconverged testing, although a bit impractical for standard homelab setups.
A look back at Google's origins reveals its first production server, established in 1999. This foundational hardware underpinned the nascent stages of what would become a global technology leader, offering a historical perspective on the scale of its initial infrastructure.
This r/homelab post is sparking discussion, inviting members who aren't network or infrastructure engineers to reveal their diverse backgrounds. Redditor comments highlight the broad appeal of homelabs, showcasing a community rich with varied expertise beyond traditional IT roles.
🚀 Quick Links
AdventureLog emerges as a self-hostable, open-source travel companion designed for modern explorers. This application facilitates logging adventures, tracking visited locations on a world map, and planning collaborative trips. Built with SvelteKit and Django, it aims to offer a user-friendly and accessible alternative to existing travel applications, allowing users to effortlessly document and share their travel experiences.
Habitica offers a unique approach to productivity, transforming real-life tasks into a game. This free app motivates users with in-game rewards like leveling up avatars and unlocking features, alongside social support. It allows tracking habits, daily goals, and to-do lists, making health, work, and personal development engaging and achievable for over 4 million users.
TechFi walks us through a comprehensive guide that explores home server and NAS setups, detailing five levels from a simple USB drive connected to a router to advanced multi-server clusters. It covers hardware, operating systems like OpenMediaVault and TrueNAS, and varying complexity, offering solutions for every need and skill set. The guide emphasizes the independence and control gained by self-hosting data.