I’m already hosting pihole, but i know there’s so much great stuff out there! I want to find some useful things that I can get my hands on. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks all! I’ve got a lil homelab setup going now with Pihole, Jellyfin, Paperless ngx, Yacht and YT-DL. Going to be looking into it more tomorrow, this is so much fun!
Nextcloud-snap is surprisingly easy to setup.
snap install nextcloudis all you need to have a functioning setup. Then run a second command to setup HTTPS and you’re good to go :DSelf hosting nothing changed my life.
So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting 😅
As far as changed your life, there are not too many that i really love, that made a massive difference to how i do things. But there is one:
Paperless_ngx
ALL of my paper work, receipts, transcripts, tax, shares, council rates. Everything goes in there. We no longer have paper lieing everywhere (well, my wife is another matter, still keeps grocery shopping reciepts…). when i get soimething in the mail, i used the paperless app to “scan” it, upload it, then bin the paper.
An actual life change that i didn’t know i needed.
Is it possible for the scans to be stored as files that are readable should paperless crash and I’m not around to get it up and running, or are files stored as weird non-standard file formats?
edit: looks like scans are saved as pdf’s. Thanks for the insight!
The files are stored in a directory and you can define the default path with an environment variable ( file-name-handling ). If you need a more fine graint solution you can also use storage paths and select it on file level ( storage-paths ). I’m using syncthing to sync the folder structure to my other devices.
It creates searchable PDFs, so no weird format locked to paperless-ngx
Thanks for the insight!
yeah, and it will order them in a configurable manner, based on dates, tags, people, etc. and as things change in the meta-data of the document, it moves/renames the file to suit.
Without even opening I had this in mind.
How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?
Yep, supports upload folder, normal upload in the application and also automatically importing from email based on folder/label
Yeah paperless supports an upload folder. My scanner has an ability to scan to a network drive, so I scan things onto a shared drive on my homelab box, paperless consumes the scanned PDF and places it into the paperless “inbox”.
i dont have a scanner, but do use the email function to get my work payslips.
Cool, that’s really easy. I’ll have to bring that up with my gf. She’s basically hoarding printouts and stuff (she’s a teacher) and this might help her in getting it a bit more organized
i use the app, it is essentially a photo which is resized/shaped to be a rectangle.
deleted by creator
And if you try paperless and don’t like it, docspell is another great option.
Yo this shit is awesome. Going to be setting this up asap.
Why is this better for you than using a folder structure with a decent naming convention? I’ve tried to get started a couple times, but I just haven’t managed to get what’s better about it. I know i’m missing something, and I feel like if I knew what it is i’d be more likely to out in the work to transition.
well, there are a few things:
- using the app to take photos (in a scan sort of mode, where it trims it to be at right angles), really quick and easy, no matter where i am.
- remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
- easy & sophisticated search. I have my documents assigned to people (me, wife, child, etc). I also assigned them to things like payslips, tax, shares, legal documents, education docs, receipts, etc. it also helps to automatically tag them to some degree of accuracy
- Automatic dating, it is quite good at picking out the date of the document, as seperate to the upload date. and it is easily updatable if it is wrong
- OCR - the documents content is searchable!
- Ease of tax time. I have some financial year views that make it really easy for me to do my tax (Australia), and i dont need to go hunting for paper that has faded in the heat and is no longer legible.
- folders - the documents are placed in a folder structure of your choosing. if you change the details in the document meta-data, it will move it to the correct place.
so, whilst a folder structure would work. this is SOOO much easier, and provides much more functionality as it is not just storage. it also has WAF!
That was a really clear explanation, thanks. Decent remote scanning would be nice. I guess I just have to wrap my head around tags for some of the niceties to make sense, though I guess i’d be no worse off if I just used folders if that’s an option as well.
you’re welcome.
I tend to use document types more than tags now. note that there are a number of meta-data fields:
- correspondent
- docuemnt type
- tag
i started with tag, but now mostly use a combination of the doc date, type and correspondent. Then use the search bar for specific documents.
Commenting here to save this and also to create engagement.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I also am creating engagement.
Man that was some solid engagement!
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I also am creating engagement.
i thoguht you may be a bot as there are 20-odd replies the same, but my guess is you are using an app which is a bit dicky.
can you delete all the repeats?
Tried, app wasn’t letting me delete either… Funny that it was on this specific post.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
did you know that you can save a post, by clicking the star?
also, appreciate the engagement :D
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Saved for futures reference
That looks really cool. At the moment I scan everything with OneDrive, and sync it with my NAS. However, it doesn’t have e.g. OCR features, it’s pretty basic. Will have a look, thanks!
definitely try it out. You can auto-ingest from the scanner folder and it will do all the rest of the sorting for you. I go in every few weeks/months and look at the recent documents to sort and fix up any meta-data/sorting.
Thanks. I’ve set it up and imported all my existing scans. Works great.
awesome. i think that the initial install “just works”, then you can start to tweak it. just make sure you mount actual directories, not docker volumes, otherwise you cannto see the files on the disk.
Thanks for the suggestion! I tried to do that and have the files reside on a mount (on my NAS) but that didn’t work, resulted in a “chmod” error. So, instead I’ve created a shell script that runs every night and creates a backup & copies the resulting zip file to my NAS :)
By the way, when using docker volumes, you can see the actual files as well. In my case (RPI4) they are located here: /var/lib/docker/volumes/paperless_media/_data/documents
good to know! thanks
With the right permissions you can get to them. ( i needed root, well started with root)
deleted by creator
Oh nice, thanks!
For me, it was a wiki/knowledge base - I’ve had dozens over the years as I’ve tried to find the ‘right’ one, but I’m currently a fan of @bookstack@fosstodon.org. My brain’s not always the most reliable, and so my wiki becomes my ‘external brain’. A lot of people are using things like Obsidian/Notion/etc in the same way.
I might decide to try this for bookmarks. My current problem is I collect all info in various bookmarks. Like open source tools > media/office/bookmarks , royaltyfree > music/pictures/movies, cloud services > storage/VPS/dedicated, temp shares > files/images/video etc etc etc
It ends up with a lot of duplicates because some things fit into multiple categories, I’m at over 3k bookmarks now.
I am curious if it might work well to use bookstack for that instead. Thank you for the idea.May I suggest you benotes for that?
Really happy with it, hast folders, subfolders, tags and search. Still on development, but I like it enough to recommend it every time someone looks for a way to sort their bookmarks
Thanks! I actually did briefly try it as a Keep notes replacement, but decided against it purely because the checklist function does not actually remove the item from the list so it doesn’t work as a shopping list, so the wife would never use it!
I did not consider the potential of using it to store bookmarks. I’ll give it another look. Thanks!
I’m using obsidian at the moment, but bookstack looks pretty nice. I’ll have to look at that more and see if it would be a good replacement. Can I ask what made bookstack your current driver?
The shelves->books->pages metaphor sort of works for me. It lets me categorise my thoughts in a way that works for me. The lead dev is also really communicative, and it’s been really easy to deploy and run. I’ve been meaning to try and find some time to contribute some hacks to it.
Ideally, I’d love a way to make Bookstack and Obsidian work together…
The ability to insert flow charts on the go with the draw.io integration built in is amazing for technical documentation.
Ah yeah that makes sense. That organization would be slick, since obsidian feels like it’s all over the place unless you micromanage backlinks. I’ll look some more into it once I wrap up with Homepage. Another post got me started on that lol
That’s such a good idea. I may have to look into this. Thank you
Home Assistant. It’s a rabbit hole, but it’s great. I’ve got motion enabled lights, thermostats for “dumb” heaters, and I track device usage (tablet, xbox) of my kids.
Since no one else has mentioned it, I’ll give a shout out to documentation engine Outline. Definitely on the trickier side to set up (requires three auxiliary services to be configured) but creates great looking docs that share easily, allows for collaboration and is super fast.
This looks pretty cool, but I’m assuming the “audit trail” being limited to enterprise users means I can’t see version history on the free version. I’d consider paying the $4/user/month, but the 100 user minimum kinda kills that option for me. If I’m wrong and “audit trail” means something else, I’d strongly consider spinning up an instance!
Can confirm it has a per-page history, presented as a timeline. Not sure what additional capabilities the audit trail feature provides.
Bookstack is also a good one. Haven’t set it up on the home server yet but when I was playing around with it on localhost it was pretty decent for my uses.
Looks similar to Confluence but more of a pain to get set up.
I’m pretty sure self-hosting Confluence isn’t possible anymore, or is being sunsetted as a product. I use Confluence at work and compared to Outline it’s noticeably slower in navigation and search. Agree 100% at the pain of configuring it though, it took me two attempts, months apart to get it running. The nice thing, from a self-hosting perspective, is once you’ve built it you also have object-storage, local auth and a database in your network for other self-hosted services that support those things, or for things you build yourself!
@deeply_moving_queef why is SSO paywalled?
Not sure why SAML is paywalled but there’s a bunch of options for SSO at the free tier. Google, Microsoft, Slack, Gitlab, OIDC. I deployed a Keycloak instance to provide auth.
Is that even possible?
That looks super cool. Thanks!
That looks super cool. Thanks!
Swinger parties?
For me it’s a HomeAssistant instance. Great product that has some very tangible use cases that can benefit ones household in terms of being able to implement nice automations etc, and also a great hub in that it supports such a broad range of products and services. As an Apple user in particular its one of the great ways to get non HomeKit certified devices working with Siri/Homekit on my other Apple products.
It also makes installing addons a breeze including other products people have mentioned here such as AdGuard Home (as a PiHole alternative) and the like.
A few years ago I’d say it wasn’t for the average Joe, but I think the product has really matured and is much simpler than it used to be. There’s a strong community out there too.
For multimedia I’d say Plex personally, but Jellyfin would be another option. Good way to manage personal media libraries.
I always like the idea of home assistant, but I haven’t figured out a practical automation for my home. Maybe you can share some of your most useful automation?
My favourite one solved a long-standing argument between my wife and I. I like to keep my office slightly warmer than the rest of the house, and she hates wasting electricity by heating it when I’m not there. She would keep lowering the thermostat when I was not working (like on the weekends), and I’d come back on Monday and wonder why I’m freezing in front of my computer.
I solved it with Home Assistant and a smart thermostat. Now whenever my computer becomes active, it sets the thermostat to my favourite temp, and when it’s asleep (or away) for more than 15 minutes, it sets it back to the “away” temp. Lights are also synchronized with the whole thing.
My cats like to look out our bedroom window in the morning. We have smart blinds. So I use an Ikea motion sensor to tell when one of my cats goes near our bedroom blinds and one of the blinds then opens just enough for them to look outside.
Another is we have indoor security cameras to spy on said cats when we’re away. But when we come home, I use Home Assistant to turn the cameras to face the wall and when we leave, it turns the cameras to face the rooms.
It’s not the most complicated, but it’s nice.
Ceiling motion sensor above the stairwell leading to second floor that activates hue bulbs in the upstairs hall. Depending on the time of day it turns on for different lengths of times/brightness and at night for ~2 min to red to allow easy travel without upsetting eyes adjusted for darkness.
That and a similar one that we activate via our echos called “Bedtime for babies” that dims all the lights to have our little one start winding down.
Home assistant isn’t only for automations! I just use it as the smart hub for my house in general. I control all my lights and other smart home devices through the home assistant dashboard, it’s just like having one centralized app instead of many individual apps for every smart home device.
I use the esphome intergration to make my own diy smart home devices, and so much more.
Really if you have any interest in a “smart home” or using any smart home products on a reoccurring bases I’d say home assistant is worth getting into.
You can use it for the most basic of things and build from there. My first automation was turning off all the lights around my home at bed time (triggered by a button which makes it less automation and more remote control I guess). From there the bug bit me and I do all kinds of crazy stuff now.
The most practical is my load-shifting power automations. My power company has a rate plan that rewards you with really cheap power if most of the time in exchange for not using power during peak times. I selected this plan and automate a near-complete shutdown of the electrical systems in my home during peak times - the A/C goes off, the water heater goes off, the pool pump off, nearly everything except for lights. Total house power use during this time goes to like 400watts as a result. It has saved me hundreds on my power bill, even with adding an electric car that needs to charge every night!
The most magical is likely the automations around my bed. Both going to bed and getting out of bed are detected and magical stuff happens. When the first person gets into bed (either my wife or myself) almost nothing happens other than the lights dimming in the bedroom to get ready for sleep. Once the second person is in bed a bunch of things happen - all of the lights in the house go off, the doors lock (if they weren’t already), the garage doors close (if they weren’t already), the security system arms for “Home mode”, the HVAC systems go into eco mode outside of the sleeping areas, and a toggle is set for “Sleep mode” that allows me to have other automations make decisions based on it (like if an interior motion sensor turns on a light during sleep mode, the light is turned on at a low dim mode). When the first person gets out of bed after our wake up time of 06:00 the coffee maker will start brewing. Once the second person is out of bed the sleep mode is disabled and most of the home systems return to normal.
Another favorite is the nightlight mode for my kids. Their bedrooms are on opposite ends of a hallway with a shared bathroom in the middle. During sleep mode, if one of them opens their door at night, the lights on their side of the hallway will turn on to a very warm color and very dim, but plenty to walk by. The bathroom lights also turn on dimly and everything automatically turns off a few minutes after motion stops being detected.
I’ve got tons of stuff related to motion detection for security and such too. It’s really a sickness once you get into it. I can’t stop sometimes… send help…
How do you do the bed detection?
There are many ways to skin that particular cat.
I see lots of folks using variations of this homemade dealy: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/fsr-the-best-bed-occupancy-sensor/365795
I however have a SleepNumber bed which heretically has a cloud integration in HASS that provides an impressively accurate presence sensor for both sides of my bed.
If I were to get a new bed I might build my own, or consider the Withings Sleep Mats - https://www.withings.com/us/en/sleep/shop which should just work with the HASS/Withings integration. The Sleep mats are too expensive in my opinion though I really like my Withings Smart Scale.
Not OP, but most people are using load sensors under the bed frame with an esp or raspberry.
In my case: door is unlocked + nobody in the hallway -> notification. State of the door lock accessible via app is nice by itself (did I close the door?).
Generally anything you want to do at home, but often forget.
Sure. I don’t have many enabled right now but some that I’ve used that are probably useful to others
I have a zigbee smart lock that was relatively cheap but didn’t have a sensor on it to detect if the door is open or closed, just a timer built in. To make the lock smarter so that it won’t attempt to lock if the door is open, I’ve used a $10 aqara sensors to detect if the door is opened or not and then combined those with the door lock to say, trigger a door lock after 5 minutes of the sensory closing, but only if the door isn’t opened again.
Another Aqara sensor automation that I don’t use any more as we moved to a house that has a carport rather than garage, but I used a contact sensor on my ‘dumb’ garage door to detect if the door was open or not. If the garage door was opened, the garage light would go on. Could do this other ways such as with motion sensors etc but unlike a motion sensor this would keep a light on until the door closed.
I have a robotic vacuum that I would automatically turn on when every person left the house. If someone was detected returning within a KM of the home, the robot would then return to the dock so it was out of the way when people got home. I really really loved this automation, but I haven’t used it since having kids 4 years ago as there has inevitably been too many toys etc that the vacuum would pick up now days. If your floor is relatively tidy but, it’s a great way to do a vacuum.
I haven’t explored it yet but Home Assistant pulls in my data from my solar panels and battery. In theory I could probably automate some of my appliances based on power generation or battery charge. Haven’t explored that fully yet however.
Those are some thoughts. Right now I use it mostly to bridge devices that otherwise don’t talk together or integrate with HomeKit. Haven’t played around with the automations for a bit, but meaning to go in and have a play with it more at some point. It’s a product I tinker with for a few weeks then let simmer for months before coming back too.
Thanks for the ideas! I really like the third one
$10 aqara sensors
Where would one find these sensors? And, are they supported by the vendor for a decent amount of time?
Anytime I’ve tried finding door-open sensors in this price range, I can never find brands that seem well known and reputable (thinking of vendor updates), or that won’t take two months to ship to my place. Or is that just the trade off for the price?
Somewhere such as banggood - https://m.banggood.com/Aqara-Zigbee-1_2-Version-Window-Door-Sensor-Smart-Home-Kit-Remote-Alarm-Eco-System-p-1149705.html
Usually grab them on sale. Also a few others from the Aqara family such as climate (humidity and temperature) that you can get cheap. Have a motion sensory from them too that works ok but i don’t currently have in use.
I combine these with a Conbee II and in home assistant I use ZHA (over deConz, which is an option too) to manage connectivity to the sensors. I don’t use the Aqara hub any more as I’d rather run things locally via home assistant than using a third party hub which removes any potential concern around privacy. I’m honestly not sure if these sensors are upgradable or not but they work reasonably enough. Maybe once every 6 months I need to spend 2 minutes reconnecting one but it’s not too common. It helps to have some ZigBee smart power plugs scattered throughout the house, even if you aren’t automating power to things, as they form a mesh network which can make battery powered sensors more reliable.
I picked ZHA over deConz largely in the basis it’s development was linked to home assistant so I figured over time it’d see more development from the home assistant devs.
I aim to use ZigBee where I can over WiFi or Bluetooth devices. Lower power and more responsive in my experience. Also frees up the wifi traffic and the more ZigBee things you add the more reliable the mesh network gets.
Thanks for the great response! Especially about the Conbee II and ZHA pieces. I’m slowly piecing things together for my first wave of home automation, and this will definitely help with the analysis-paralysis I’ll hit along the way!
There’s a thread full of people’s favourite automations here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/467348
Same! HA is a really interesting thing to get into. I moved to it from Domoticz, which is easy to get going but you hit some hard limits after a while.
Actual Budget I use to track my finance.
Duplicacy for backups to OneDrive and Backblaze
Photoprism as Google replacement
deleted by creator
We recently set up a magic mirror (showing public transport connections/time/calendar/weather information) on a raspberry pi 3b. But it involved some more fiddling with electronics and software.
(Maybe an alternative would also be possible using small oled (128x64 pixel) screens)
Would be my suggestion if you are up for a challenge =)
We also used to host our own nextcloud, but decided to move it to hetzner as the pricing was unbeatable…
Else a pihole would also have been my suggestion. Maybe a Kodi mediacenter is also worth looking into.
The one that was lifechanging for me is audiobookshelf. I LOVE having full ownership and control over all of my audiobooks, and the ability to enjoy them on any device I choose.
Calibre docker stack; Calibre Guacamole instance, CalibreWeb, Openbooks set to save to the Calibre autoimport folder, and FBreader hooked to the OPDS endpoint for calibre. Its like having an Amazon Books ecosystem of my own.
Lemmy is pretty fun to host. Doubly so if you host a private instance with low latency; you’d basically be defederation proof.
I’m hosting syncthing on my server to sync obsidian notes between my pc and phone, even when one of the devices is offline. I find it very useful. Also, nextcloud, jellyfin, qbittorrent, monero node and netdata for monitoring my server
+1 for Syncthing. Very reliable between my multiple Macs and NAS.
Syncthing and Jellyfin are amazing
I appreciate the jellyfin mention.
