Privacy & Security
Data stays home. DNS filtering, a self-hosted VPN, network segmentation by VLAN, and zero reliance on third-party cloud for personal data means my family's information belongs to us.
Home Lab
The Lab
Notebook
Self-hosted. Self-taught. Self-sufficient.
85+
Connected Devices
4
VLANs
15+
Self-Hosted Services
100%
Open Source Core
Purpose
Why I Do This
A home lab isn't just hardware. It's a statement about how you want to engage with technology — on your own terms, at your own pace, for your own reasons.
Surprise & Delight
The best moments are the ones nobody expected — lights that respond to the room, music that follows you through the house, buttons that just work. Building small magic for my family is the point.
Continuous Learning
No formal training — just research, YouTube, tinkering, breaking things, and fixing them. Every problem solved is a skill earned. AI now accelerates that loop faster than ever.
Experiment Freely
A lab exists to break things. Virtualization means experiments are isolated. Backups mean mistakes are recoverable. The cost of failure is low; the learning dividend is high.
Share the Knowledge
This site exists because homelabbing shouldn't be mysterious. The more people understand why self-hosting matters, the better decisions they make about their own data and privacy.
Background
How I Got Here
No computer science degree. No formal certification. Just a curiosity that refused to stay quiet and an internet connection that enabled it.
It started the way it always starts — a problem to solve and a YouTube video that made it look possible. One rabbit hole led to another. A Pi-hole became a VPN. A VPN became a home server. A home server became a virtualized cluster with a dedicated backup node, 85+ connected devices, and services that my family uses every day without knowing they're self-hosted.
What YouTube gave me in foundations, AI is now giving me in velocity. The projects I take on today — AI pipelines, knowledge management systems, automated workflows — would have taken months to figure out solo. Now they take days. The learning curve is steeper than ever, but the tools to climb it are better than ever.
Phase 2 — Proxmox & Virtualization
Moving from bare metal to VMs and containers. Home Assistant, Docker, Traefik reverse proxy, and the ability to run multiple services cleanly on one host.
Phase 3 — Network & IoT
UniFi stack, VLAN segmentation, 85+ IoT devices across Lutron, YoLink, and Flic ecosystems — all orchestrated through Home Assistant.
Infrastructure
The Network
A flat network is a security risk. Every device is segmented by purpose across four VLANs, with the UDM-Pro enforcing inter-VLAN policy at the edge.
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Compute
Services & Software
Everything running in the lab — VMs, containers, and the self-hosted services that run daily life.
Proxmox VE Host
Docker Host VM
Primary container host
Home Assistant VM
IoT orchestration
Ubuntu Desktop VM
Minecraft server host
Traefik LXC
Reverse proxy
Cloudflare Tunnel LXC
Public service exposure
SearXNG LXC
Private metasearch
Docker Services
Mealie
Recipe database
Linkwarden
Bookmark & archive
Paperless-NGX
Document scanning
n8n
Workflow automation
Syncthing
File sync
Uptime Kuma
Service monitoring
Network Services
Pi-hole
DNS ad blocking
Unbound DNS
Recursive resolver
PiVPN
Self-hosted VPN
Local DNS Records
Internal name resolution
AI & Automation
Ollama
Local LLM runtime
qwen3:8b
Primary chat model
phi4:14b
Heavy reasoning tasks
n8n Pipelines
Linkwarden → AI → Obsidian
Automation
IoT & Smart Home
Every automation runs locally through Home Assistant. No cloud dependency, no subscription, no data leaving the house.
Lutron Hub
52
Devices
- Smart switches throughout the home
- Motion sensors in key rooms
- Scene-aware lighting automations
- Idle light shutoff sequences
YoLink Hub
26
Devices
- Leak sensors — basement, bathrooms, kitchen
- Refrigerator & freezer temperature monitoring
- Outdoor temp / humidity sensor
- Garage door openers & entry sensors
Flic Hub
5
Action Buttons
- Find my phone
- Spotify music controls
- Bedside light on/off — no getting up required
ESPHome Sensors
12
Sensors Deployed
- Raspberry Pi Pico W with headers
- BME280 temp & humidity sensors
- Flashed with ESPHome firmware
- Native Home Assistant integration