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What to do with my next home server?

5 points by kbenson ↗ HN
I recently received an Intel NUC[1] as a gift, which means I'm in the market to create a home server for some use. I've run various home servers over the years, as firewalls and file servers, but those needs are mostly met now by cheap consumer electronics or abundant options for streaming and fast internet. What would you use a compact, fairly powerful general purpose computing platform for if it was suddenly available?

I'm happy to hear any solution, or what you would do in your circumstances, but if you want to tailor it to me, I'm married and have multiple children and pets. I work from home part of the week in a small home office (converted walk-in closet). I also recently received a Nest cam, but haven't set it up yet. I'm not sure if it supports local storage of video or any other local integration, but I probably wouldn't want to invest in a separate camera without good reason. Most media consumption is done through a combination of Roku and Fire TV devices and subscriptions to a few media services. The kids already have computers that aren't all that bad thanks to the office getting rid of a few older desktops.

1: https://www.google.com/?q=dccp847dye

9 comments

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adjagu
We recently created an audio server. Spotify and the like are nice, but we found that there was a large amount of music we like which wasn't on those platforms (or if it was, it wasn't the version we liked, etc).

One cheap Raspberry Pi 3 and large reliable usb storage later and we have our own streaming service. The option to stream is only available locally (didn't want it discoverable on the internet at large).

On the note of you having children, and not knowing their age, I would also suggest a Minecraft server? No idea on what it actually takes to host one of them though.

kbenson
Actually, a Minecraft server isn't a bad idea. My youngest (at 8) is obsessed with Minecraft on the Wii U, but the worlds he creates and hosts on that are only available when he runs that game and hosts them (even if he has lots of friends on the platform that connect). I'll have to look into whether the Wii U connects to regular servers or only Wii U specific ones and whether I can host a dedicated one.

I actually have a Pi as well I have't used yet, but was thinking of tinkering around with Redox Os on that.

Majora320
If he's into programming, he could try writing server-side mods with the Spigot framework.
amingilani
I created a Mac backup app called ChronoPill[1] at one point. But now I use backblaze instead.

I'm going to setup a NAS soon because I found some fairly good $50 Xoaomi WiFi security cameras that can save to a NAS. I intend to create a CnC for IOT at some point. Things like turning off the power for non-essentials when no one is home and stuff.

Rjevski
What do you want to actually achieve with it? In the past I always had the urge to tinker and set up home servers to self-host pretty much everything, but at some point it just gets old and I realised I was just wasting time instead of spending it on either billable work or just take time off to see friends/family. Since then I've given up on all of that.

So unless you have a specific goal in mind that can't be achieved with an off-the-shelf device or affordable SaaS solution, don't bother, and sell/give away the NUC if you have no use for it.

SkyLinx
Maybe a Nextcloud server?