Hands-on projects built inside Realm Labs, including Raspberry Pi systems, self-hosted applications, dashboards, automation, networking and experimental software.
Monitoring Realm Labs didn’t start as one big project. Like most things in the home lab, it grew. Initially, I just wanted to know whether a Raspberry Pi was getting hot. Then I wanted to know what Proxmox was doing.…
Portainer is probably one of the longest-running pieces of software in Realm Labs. Long before the current Synology, Proxmox, Home Assistant and centralised automation setup existed, I was already using Docker on a Raspberry Pi. And almost immediately, I put…
When I first started experimenting with Active Directory in Realm Labs, the obvious platform was Windows Server. That’s what Active Directory is built around, after all. I already had Windows Server running virtually under Proxmox, which gave me somewhere to…
Most AI projects start with a chatbot. This one started with KARR. I wanted to build a local AI assistant inspired by the Knight Rider universe, but rather than creating another web page connected to a cloud API, I wanted…
A good smart-home dashboard should do more than display a collection of switches. It should make the house easier to understand and control at a glance. I wanted one permanent interface for Realm Labs, so I repurposed an older tablet…
A Raspberry Pi is excellent for Home Assistant, Node-RED and other central automation services, but it is excessive when the job at the far end of the network is simply switching an LED, relay or model light. That is where…
There is nothing quite like having friends over for a sim-racing session. Between Gran Turismo 7 on the PlayStation 5 and the F1 games on PC, it doesn’t take long before a casual session turns into a competition over tenths…
One of the main goals behind Realm Labs is to run as much as possible on infrastructure I control. That naturally led to an interesting question: Could I host the Realm Labs website from my own homelab without exposing the…
RealmLabs is a website about building, breaking, fixing and improving technology, so hosting it on somebody else’s server always felt slightly at odds with the idea. Instead, I decided to make the website another part of the home lab. The…
I have had some form of homemade darts scorer kicking around since 2021. Like quite a few of my projects, it started with a fairly simple requirement: I wanted an electronic scoreboard beside the dartboard without spending silly money on…