Homelab projects to try this weekend (April 10 - 12)
Are you ready to dive into some fresh homelab projects this weekend? Today, I’m showcasing a few fun projects for you to try out, like Calibre-Web, ChangeDetection.io, and even a unique authentication experience with Teleport.
Build a custom ebook reading experience with Calibre-Web
Kindle who?
I’ve written about Calibre many times before, as it’s a fantastic way to manage and organize ebooks for various devices, like your Kindle. However, the reading experience that Calibre provides is fairly limited and not all that great.
A Calibre library is only available on the host system and whatever you sync it to, making it somewhat difficult to access your books if you don’t have one of those devices on you—and that’s where Calibre-Web comes in.
Calibre-Web connects to your Calibre book database, allowing you to access those books from any web browser, anywhere in the world, so long as you have a reverse proxy, VPN, or other type of tunnel set up. Even if you choose to go local only, it still provides access to your library from any device in the house without having to manually sync the device with Calibre.
Once properly set up, Calibre-Web is also a great way to get books into Calibre, as you can upload books. There are also functions to download books in a specific format, email books, and more—all from your web browser instead of the Calibre app itself.
If you’re still managing your Calibre database from the Calibre app, give Calibre-Web a try, you’ll be surprised at just how useful it can be.
Keep tabs on website changes or price drops with ChangeDetection.io
When was the last time your favorite shoes went on sale?
Have you ever wanted to know whenever a website changed? For instance, you could watch for a price drop on a pair of shoes or a dress, or simply know when Apple updates its site with new content. That’s exactly what ChangeDetection.io was built for.
Once deployed, ChangeDetection.io allows you to monitor just about any website in existence, so long as the website is published. It catalogs and stores all changes that it finds on a monitored website, sending you a notification every time it does so. These notifications can come through email, Discord, Slack, Telegram, ntfy, or any number of other services, so that way you can make sure you don’t miss when those shoes go on sale.
You can also configure how often it polls for a new version of the web page, ranging from every five minutes to hourly, daily, or whatever interval you want. It can also even support JavaScript-rendered pages via Playwright or a Chrome browser integration.
ChangeDetection.io runs in a Docker container, making it extremely simple to deploy in your homelab. So, stop manually visiting websites to see if there have been any changes since the last time you checked and just use ChangeDetection.io instead.
Deploy a single pane of glass for your homelab with Teleport
No more authorized SSH keys needed
If you’re tired of having to authorize SSH keys every time you log into a homelab server or deal with passwords for databases and more, then Teleport is the perfect upgrade for your homelab.
Teleport utilizes short-lived certificates instead of static SSH keys. These certificates expire after a certain period of time automatically, and are very easy to re-generate whenever you need to log back in.
Session recording is also available, which means you can replay SSH and database sessions for auditing purposes. There’s a web-based SSH terminal, role-based access, and audit logs for all access events.
Teleport runs in Docker or as a standalone service, depending on how you want to use it. If you’re ready to ditch SSH keys and go with a much simpler approach to managing your homelab, give Teleport a try this weekend.
You don’t have to spend a fortune to start a homelab
If you’ve been looking at this series for the past several months, thinking, “I really want to start a homelab, but just don’t have the cash,” then you’re in luck—you don’t have to spend a dime to start homelabbing!
It’s actually easier than you think to get started with homelabbing, as you really can use just about any old computer you have lying around the house. For instance, my colleague Faisal here at How-To Geek recently ripped the display off an old laptop and turned it into an always-on server for his homelab.
So, go ahead and grab that old laptop, desktop, or Raspberry Pi out of storage, install Linux and Docker, and get that homelab started this weekend.
