Homelab Dashboard - Part II
A homelab is a centralized conglomeration of services and devices. For example, an old computer tucked away in a closet quietly running Nextcloud and connected to an old hard drive for home storage or perhaps connected to an old printer to give it wifi and share it with all users. Google home devices all connected to Home assistant software would be considered a homelab. Amazon's Alexa platform could almost be considered a homelab. However your devices connect together is likely a loose definition of a himelab,
The Dashboard?
Well think of it as a visual command center or control panel. Much the way you can make your car do anything from the driver's seat, thanks to the dashboard. A homelab dashboard is a way to link all your devices and services together, add a layer of internet on top to make it extra juicy!
So I wanted a way to do this. I have a couple devices that use Google Home, several that use Alexa, a few software tools etc... I wanted a way to bring them all together. Of course, with home automation being so new to the scene and then the conundrum of every household using different tools, of course there is nothing on the general market that can fit the needs because they are so niche and specific. That is also the reason it would be impossible to develop because it is not cost effective to make a product that only fits 200 people.
So I built my own!
My hoimelab dashboard displays all my camera feeds, controls my climate and lighting, maintains my grocery shopping list, alerts me to take my meds, displays my weather, my debit card balances, news feeds, Gmail messages, rells me when favorite YouTube channel posts a new video, shows my Google Calendar agenda, offers me my websites stats, health and status, and even shows my WiFi router's internet connection status! All this from a single control center, a homelab dashboard
In the next post I will show screenshots of how it looks on my phone screen and let you see some of my design and development blunders. Be sure to check back if this type of thing engages you!