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!

  • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
    1872·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • haulyard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      1 year ago

      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!

      • mosjek@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      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!

      • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              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

    • constantokra@lemmy.oneEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        well, there are a few things:

        1. 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.
        2. remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
        3. 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
        4. 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
        5. OCR - the documents content is searchable!
        6. 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.
        7. 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!

        • constantokra@lemmy.oneEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.deEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?

      • AnAnxiousCorgi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        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”.

        • MaggiWuerze@feddit.deEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          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

      • hogofwar@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yep, supports upload folder, normal upload in the application and also automatically importing from email based on folder/label

  • Acid@startrek.websiteEnglish
    1731·
    1 year ago

    Honestly Plex/Emby/Jellyfin whichever you prefer is a gamechanger because if you have a large library of content then it just cuts the cord from the subscription services.

    I’ve always been happy to pay for them until I went on holiday last January and realised that none of my services were working due to going to a country that was out of the way and the only way to access them was to use a VPN.

    So having my own Netflix is a great thing.

    Tailscale while doing the above is also really cool

    • HamSwagwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      1 year ago

      Yep. 100% agree. I have a 175TB server. Sure it was expensive to set up initially, but I have all shows and movies I want, always. From all the different services I would have to subscribe to, I imagine I have recovered my initial outlay and I never have to worry about media being removed from the service or it going out of business.

      I have things that aren’t even available if I wanted to subscribe. Best thing you can do for yourself.

      No commercials, always high quality. Available anywhere, at any time.

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        Same here, 192tb, but sonarr, radarr, plex, and the source that shall not be named (I respect the 2 rules).

        It’s not about outlay, I can watch what I want, when I want, how I want, without anyone tracking, even wrote my own video player interface in python so the mouse buttons handle all the settings.

        Completely ruins you for normal media :/

      • Silviecat44@vlemmy.netEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        Is it useful without piracy though? It would still be expensive to buy all that media? And usually you can’t even download movies etc that you buy online. Am I missing something?

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      1 year ago

      Other than Disney stuff, you can’t really guarantee on your kids favorite show or movie always being available on a streaming service you’re already paying for. Jellyfin has been great for those moments. Used to use Plex, and it’s very good software, but I got tired of the non-free aspects. Made me feel like I was subscribing to one more streaming service.

    • baked_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      Probably an ignorant question but the content you use is pirated right? Should I wonder about legal issues since I would keep it at home and connected to Internet? Protected of course I just don’t see too deep into the issue

      • f1g4English
        3·
        1 year ago

        If you don’t explicitly set a DNS to allow access from outside the local network, all your stuff is private and confined within your local network. As it is with all, let’s say, wifi stuff that goes on in your home.

        Edit. What @notorious said

        • Notorious@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think you mean explicitly open the port on your router, but even then that’s not true. Plex by default will proxy your traffic so that even closed off servers can be reached. It is pretty easy to disable remote access in the server settings though.

  • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
    118·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • a1studmuffin@aussie.zoneEnglish
      36·
      1 year ago

      And it’s so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.

      • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
        24·
        1 year ago

        Not necessarily, I have devices that are cloud dependent. Locally in NZ there aren’t a lot of options, all smart plugs are cloud dependent. Also things like weather integrations will stop working.

        • a1studmuffin@aussie.zoneEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          It’s up to you to make it cloudless, but Home Assistant is the only solution I know of out there that even allows this possibility. I refuse to use anything in my home that requires a third party app or cloud connection (aside from initial pairing so I can flash it with ESPHome or some other local-only firmware). Admittedly it complicates things, but the payoff is so worth it.

          • remus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            I use Home Assistant as well, but Apple HomeKit (and the new Matter protocol) can also be cloudless I think.

            • ScoobyDoo27@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Yup, HomeKit can 100% work without internet. It’s a requirement of being HomeKit certified. I block internet access to all my HomeKit devices and they work just fine.

          • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah you are right, think all other alternatives require the cloud. I’ve just started with HA so I’m still pretty new to it. I’ve found some good Zigbee plugs on Aliexpress that pair well with ZHA. Over time I can replace the un-flashable cloud based smart plugs from TP Link and Brilliant.

        • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.comEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          There should be plenty of zigbee stuff in the market, right? Ikea and Phillips stuff are mostly zigbee and can work with homeassistant + zigbee dongle (zha). Some tuya switch and smart plugs are zigbee too and can pair directly to homeassistant + zha without using a cloud account.

          • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            Locally in NZ we only have Hue which is very expensive. Aliexpress has options but is a bit hit and miss quality.

            • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.comEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              If you can buy stuff from aliexpress, then look for tuya devices with explicit zigbee support as they usually can work with ZHA. Avoid tuya wifi devices if you can.

          • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            Unfortunately not. I mostly get my stuff from Aliexpress; I’ve found some good Zigbee plugs there.

            New Zealand is awesome, but not if you want to have many online shopping options :)

        • tburkhol@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Look for z-wave or zigbee plugs. You’ll need to buy a hub, but unless NZ has banned the protocol, it should get you smart switches, outlets, thermostats and more.

          • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, I’ve recently bought a HA SkyConnect & some plugs from AliExpress and they work well. Whenever I’ll be in Australia I’ll get some Ikea stuff too. Locally the only Zigbee option is Hue which I find too expensive.

    • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I’ll second this, it’s a great thing to have around and there is always something to tinker this. It’s basically a new hobby though if you like automation and monitoring things so budget your time and money accordingly haha.

  • ryncewynd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11727·
    1 year ago

    Self hosting nothing changed my life.

    So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting 😅

  • slackj_87@lemmy.worldEnglish
    772·
    1 year ago

    Vaultwarden is pretty game changing. No more reusing passwords and they aren’t in the cloud.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      273·
      1 year ago

      This is a rare one for which i wouldnt bother self hosting; i trust the centralized server provider, i can take an offline backup of my passwords and it only costs $10. And im the sort to run my own email server because i don’t trust the cloud providers.

      • peregus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        I second your opinion about not selfhosting Bitwarden. About email, have a look at Proton mail. All the emails are encrypted in the server and are decripted client side with your password only when you open them.

      • constantokra@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Vaultwarden is super easy. I’ve not had a single problem with it and I’ve been running it for a couple years.

    • Gubb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      I second this, bonus points if you get a domain through Cloudflare and use their tunnel service to access shrike away from home!

    • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      yeah, password manager for me. love it. I am looking at using the home assistant addon to manage it now, it may make life a little easier.

  • KNova@links.dartboard.socialEnglish
    652·
    1 year ago

    For me it’s 100% Nextcloud. It was a pain to get working at first (and I’m dreading the day it breaks, if that happens). But it is so much more than just a self-hosted Dropbox solution:

    • Maps
    • Calendar
    • Email
    • Markdown editor (I’m using this to try and replace Google Drive for collaborative document editing with my friends; most of what we need can be achieved with Markdown formatting)
    • I haven’t tried it but there is a Talk plugin that allows for video conferencing in browser;
    • a bunch of other stuff I’ve never played with like mind maps, PDF conversion, music player, etc.
    • DengueDucky@lemmy.mlEnglish
      312·
      1 year ago

      My experience has been that Nextcloud can do 1000 different things, and it sucks at all of them.

      • please_lemmy_out@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        That’s a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn’t tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You’re giving up a certain level of ease of use.

      • plo@feddit.nlEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        I tried setting up nextcloud. Just ended up creating a samba share instead.

      • KNova@links.dartboard.socialEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not getting Microsoft Office or Apple quality mail clients, or word editors, but the fact that it’s always available to me is enough to make the trade off worth it. YMMV

      • Entropy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Been using nextcloud for about 5 years, right now I use it for storing files and nothing else, and it still kinda sucks at that.

        Gonna use paperless for any documents I have in NC, after that there won’t be much left in there, just some old dot files. Maybe I’ll get rid of it entirely

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago

      Ive run NC in one way or another for years now, and switching to a docker-compose stack was an absolute gamechanger for upgrades and break fix ease.

    • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.comEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Nextcloud is the Wordpress of cloud storage. You can customize it to do literally everything. You can even write your own plugin if necessary. But unlike Wordpress, the default setup is quite locked down (you can’t just drop php files somewhere and have it accessible to reduce security risk) and you’ll actually have to follow certain formats and standards when writing a plugin, unlike the free-for-all every-man-for-himself nature of wordpress plugin development.

      • KNova@links.dartboard.socialEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I did end up using the docker, probably circa 2019, but I recall trouble with the nginx config as well as some of the required docker networking.

    • Bilb!@lem.monsterEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Yes, Nextcloud. It’s not perfect, but it has made my life easier for the last few years

      • JVT038@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        The problem with OnlyOffice is that it doesn’t allow for editing from Android, because then you’ll have to pay, which is why I switched to Collabora Office.

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • exu@feditown.comEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, I’ve also found that issue a while ago. Though I don’t use the editor on Android anyways, so not an issue for me.
          I had trouble setting up Collabora Office, but maybe I should revisit that.

          • JVT038@feddit.nlEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Before you set up Collabora, you should know that the rendering is done server-side and not client-side. This provides really good synchronization, as the clients will receive the changes simultaneously, but it also results into slower performance, because the server has to do the rendering, instead of the clients.

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

        • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

  • itpcc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    652·
    1 year ago

    PiHole!

    One of the easiest installer I’ve ever seen. Significantly less ads to be shown especially one on non-browser.

    • darcmage@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      This was my gateway into the selfhosting world. I don’t think I would’ve kept going if it didn’t make such drastic difference to my browsing experience.

    • Jason@lemmy.weiser.socialEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I feel like this one needs to be higher up. It so immediately and instantly changes your browsing experience (especially on a phone), that I VPN into my own home network when I’m out just to stay on the PiHole.

      Plus, when you get further along in your selfhosting journey you can use the custom DNS to re-route domain names so you never need to leave your network to use your own services.

      • itpcc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        For me, at least, is a custom CNAME DNS record. I’ve both internal (point to device directly) and external (via reverse proxy) domains. I use a CNAME record to point the external domain back to the internal one for my local split DNS. Technically it can be applied on Adguard; not as easy as PiHole though.

  • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    668·
    1 year ago

    Stay away from Plex, if you like to go with Free and Open source.

    I’ll start with Jellyfin, and Arr family (sonarr,radarr,prowlarr or Jackett), Vaultwarden and immich

    Edit: Learn to spin up docker instances first, as above services would be easier to manage in docker containers and for back ups I prefer Duplicati. And if you run it 24x7 add AdguardHome or PiHole to the mix

    Edit1: if you are extremely new to docker instances and find it hard to learn, just spin up CasaOS and you’ll be good to go as it makes spinning up docker containers so easy.

  • chrono@apollo.townEnglish
    50·
    1 year ago

    FreshRSS, news and websites fetched your way. You can even create feeds for websites that don’t provide one

  • dinosaurdynasty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    431·
    1 year ago

    An RSS reader (I use Miniflux), ended up being extremely useful

    • Almost every piece of software worth selfhosting has an RSS feed for updates (e.g., every GitHub releases page has an RSS feed). I started selfhosting a good deal more after setting up Miniflux.
    • Like omg there is this whole internet out there outside of Reddit/Twitter/etc that does RSS. The vast majority of blogs have RSS (e.g., Wordpress and Substack). I wish I had discovered RSS decades ago, so many websites I’ve forgotten because I would check updates manually and eventually just forget. I even host a personal Nitter instance so I can follow Twitter people in Miniflux.
    • fung@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago

      I should get back into RSS. I used to follow a ton of web comics way back in the day, but once google RSS shut down I never picked it back up. I’ll look into Miniflux, thanks.