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!

  • @[email protected]
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    1882 years 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      24
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      2 years 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!

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years 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!

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years 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.

            • @[email protected]
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              12 years 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

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                good to know! thanks

                With the right permissions you can get to them. ( i needed root, well started with root)

    • MaggiWuerze
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      32 years ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years 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
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          12 years 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

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        112 years 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!

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    182 years ago

    I’d recommend you to look up *arr stack and Jellyfin. Good start is Trash guides. It will guide you step by step on how to properly set it up. It can completely replace Netflix and all other streaming services and its all free.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 years ago

    Trillium notes and Bitwarden.

    The note is packed with features and it can build maps from your tags aromatically. It helped me easily recall things

    Bitwarden, because password need to be secured.

  • @[email protected]
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    362 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    502 years ago

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

  • agoramachina
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    272 years ago

    Home Assistant is nice! Have it integrated with some smart lights and smart plugs. Makes it easy to monitor and control everything locally.

    We have it set up in our room so that one widget controls the lights, one controls the fans, one controls the monitors, then there’s a master button that we use to turn off everything that doesn’t need to be always on whenever we leave the room.

    Want to play with some fancier stuff with it too, but that alone is incredibly convenient.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Do you have a recommendation for smart plugs and/or bulbs that work well w/Home Assistant and have decent security?

      • zeekaran
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        12 years ago

        I use Phillips Hue bulbs and Kasa outlets. I try to avoid WiFi when I have ZigBee and Z-Wave but the outlets have been flawless for me for years, and on sale their incredibly cheap. Dunno about security.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I wish Home assistant was more conducive to running on Kubernetes. I tried it but so much of the local discovery doesn’t work without being in the same LAN as all your IoT devices.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        I run my instance via docker-compose, and it’s just a matter of setting network_mode: host on the container (in the YAML).

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          I’ll have to take another crack at it sometime. You can do all kinds of container privilege modification in Kubernetes and maybe I just missed the one I need to set. I’ll try to find the analog for the one you shared here. Thanks!

      • Buelldozer
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        2 years ago

        There’s an easy answer to that…don’t use IoT devices. I recently rebuilt my HA setup into a VM running on Proxmox, added a Zoos USB to ZWave dongle and then replaced every device that needed a network connection with a Z-Wave device. I have nothing left that needs, or can even connect to, the Internet and all of my routines / automations are fully local. I can turn my Router off and the only thing it will impact is remote access and voice control.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        Looks like it’s not all that hard, jsut have to give home assistant some additional permissions to networking at a lower level of the stack

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      Oh yeah totally agree with you. Got a Google Coral stick the other day after waiting for OK prices and it’s a really nice game changer if you have cameras around the house. Managed to get notifications when my cats are nearby, all through Home Assistant.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Do you have a recommendation for smart plugs and/or bulbs that work well w/Home Assistant and have decent security?

      • agoramachina
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        2 years ago

        Honestly? I just grabbed the cheapest stuff I could find online, hah. Everything I use is basically a mishmash of whatever was on sale at the time. Home Assistant has worked with every device I’ve hooked up so far, and even when they’re different brands I’ve been able to group them up nicely in Home Assistant’s interface.

        Can’t speak to security, unfortunately. While it’s certainly an important concern, my budget has been pretty limited to whatever I can find in multipacks for under $30 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        I’ve used stuff from IKEA (TRÅDFRI). They work great with HomeAssistant but I should let someone else comment on their securityI suppose.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 years ago

          I’m far from a security expert, but if you use them with a generic ZigBee USB dongle rather than the IKEA hub they should be pretty secure as they don’t have internet access.

      • Buelldozer
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        12 years ago

        I recommend you stay away from anything that requires any kind of portal to setup. If you have to download an app and create an account in order to pair the device or get it setup then don’t use that equipment. There’s a near endless array of sensors and things you can get now that work using Z-Wave, ZigBee, and even HomeKit that work DIRECTLY with HA, meaning that they don’t require commands to be sent up to the cloud via the Internet and then come back down to your device.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 years ago

    A NAS or Nextcloud or some other way of having files available remotely.

    Having a big box with a lot of storage that you can put things on from anywhere is so incredibly useful.

  • @[email protected]
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    172 years ago

    For me nextcloud was the biggest gamechanger. A raspberry pi and a SSD and suddenly I didn’t have to store anything at Google drive anymore. And it’s really beginner friendly, especially when using NextcloudPi