7 tech hobbies that are so much better when you self-host them
Self-hosting is really a hobby in itself. Once you get the bug, it’s hard to stop adding more and more self-hosted services or spending even more money on your home lab setup. Self-hosting also makes several hobbies possible that wouldn’t really work without it.
Building a personal streaming service
Create your own Spotify or Netflix
When Netflix first appeared, it was great. There was one streaming service where you could access a huge selection of shows and movies for a single subscription. It was too good to last; more and more streaming services started to pop up, and now it feels like you need about 12 subscriptions if you want to be able to access all the best shows and movies.
Even worse, streaming services can pull content at the drop of a hat. A show you loved might suddenly no longer be available on your streaming subscription if it moves to another platform or gets dropped completely.
Self-hosting with apps such as Plex or Jellyfin allows you to create your own Spotify or Netflix using your personal media collection. The beauty is that since you’re hosting the content yourself, no one can take it away or block you from accessing it. That show you love will always be available for you to watch, and in addition to shows and movies, you can self-host audiobooks, podcasts, eBooks, and more.
- Compatibility
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Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and various other devices
- Free Trial Period
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Free account available
A Plex Pass subscription takes your media server to the next level, with remote streaming, hardware transcoding, offline downloads, and more.
Setting up a local smart home
Keep your smart home private
Smart home ecosystems like Alexa offer a lot of convenience, but that convenience comes at a price. Even if the service is free (and some major platforms such as Alexa are planning to charge for access to some features), you’re still reliant on cloud services. Things you say to your smart speakers can end up on cloud servers and may even be listened to by contractors.
There are local alternatives. By self-hosting software such as Home Assistant, it’s possible to build a smart home that can run completely locally, with none of your data needing to leave your home network if you don’t want it to.
Hosting a personal weather station
Weather that’s as local as you can get
I really miss Dark Sky. The discontinued hyperlocal weather app was the best one I’ve ever used, and its weather alerts were spookily accurate. Nothing these days can quite match it.
If you want truly hyperlocal weather, you can set up your own weather station. All of the data can be saved to your local server, and you can build automations to alert you when it’s raining or to have your heating turn off when the sun is shining. You can track things such as temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind speed, air pressure, and more, find historical trends, and even create your own hyperlocal short-range weather forecasts.
Running a private game server
Online gaming with people you actually know
Online gaming is fun, but playing online with strangers on the other side of the planet isn’t always as much fun as playing privately with friends and family. A great way to control who you play with is to host your own private game server.
Hosting your own server for games such as Minecraft, Terraria, and Valheim means that you don’t just get to control who can join the server. You also get to control the world, the settings, the mods, the player permissions, and more. Maintaining your server becomes part of the fun, with so many different options to tweak and mods to install.
Wildlife monitoring
Track animals with vision and sound
Self-hosting doesn’t have to be solely about technology. You can self-host services that can help you interact with the outside world, too.
If you have security cameras, you can use them with software such as Frigate to detect a wide range of wildlife. Not only can you record video when motion is detected outside your home, but the software can even identify different types of animals.
Vision isn’t the only option. With a microphone in your garden, you can listen for birdsong, and your self-hosted software can identify thousands of different birds based purely on what it hears.
Data hoarding
Preserve data before it’s too late
The internet feels like it should last forever, but that isn’t the case. Website content and even entire websites disappear all the time. GeoCities websites, Google+ accounts, much of the music once hosted on MySpace, and content from many other once-popular sources have long since disappeared.
Data hoarding allows you to save content from the internet before it’s gone. You can turn this data into your own searchable personal library, ensuring that information is still available even if the original site closes or replaces the content.
Experimenting with local AI
Run LLMs without the cloud
AI is a tool, but running local LLMs has become something of a hobby in itself. Instead of using ChatGPT or another cloud-based AI, you can use open models that you run on your own hardware.
There are multiple benefits to using a local LLM. You don’t need to pay any subscription fees or worry about usage limits, and you’re not at the whims of an AI provider, which can remove your favorite model whenever it feels like it. You also don’t have to share your personal data with these companies; everything stays on your own hardware.
Running your own AI models also allows you to build your own custom AI-powered tools that can perform specific jobs. There’s a lot you can do even on fairly limited hardware.
Self-hosting opens a lot of doors
There’s something incredibly satisfying about setting up your own local self-hosted service to help you enjoy a hobby. Whether you just want to stream your movie collection at home or you want to find out when swifts return to your garden, self-hosting can make it happen.
