Why I'm Building a Homelab in 2026
From smart blinds to a full server — how my smart home journey led me to outgrow a mini PC and plan a real homelab.
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This story doesn’t start with a server rack or a network diagram. It starts in 2021, with a pair of manual roller shutters and a new apartment.
Where It All Began
When I bought my apartment in 2021, it still had old-style manual blinds — the kind you pull up with a strap. I decided to replace them with electric shutters, using BTicino components and Apple HomeKit as the control platform. That was my first smart device. And it was the beginning of everything.
From that point, the snowball effect was inevitable. I placed an Alexa in every room. Then I replaced all the light switches with BTicino smart switches. Then came thermostatic valves for the radiators. And a Broadlink RM4 Mini to control the bedroom TV and the air conditioning units — devices that weren’t smart at all.
The house was getting smarter, but the complexity was growing fast.
The HomeKit Wall
As I kept adding devices, I started running into limitations. I have several Samsung devices that don’t play nicely with HomeKit. Automations were clunky, integrations were fragile, and I was spending more time working around the ecosystem than actually enjoying it.
In 2022, a friend suggested something that changed everything: “Just get a mini PC, install Linux, and run Home Assistant.”
So I did. I picked up a small mini PC, set it up as a Linux server, and installed Home Assistant. I fell in love immediately. Everything worked. Every device, every protocol, every weird integration — Home Assistant just handled it. I kept enriching the setup, adding more automations, more dashboards, more control.
Growing Beyond Smart Home
Over the past year, the server started doing much more than just Home Assistant. I began exploring:
- Pi-hole — network-wide ad blocking and DNS management
- Beszel — monitoring and observability for my services
- Authentik — identity and access management
I was learning an incredible amount — networking, Linux administration, Docker, reverse proxies, DNS. Every new service taught me something new.
Hitting the Wall
But here’s where reality caught up. That little mini PC, the one that started as a simple Home Assistant box, was now running a dozen services. CPU was maxing out, RAM was always tight, and storage was a constant juggling act.
I had reached the physical limit of my hardware.
The “Zero to Lab” Philosophy
That’s where this project comes in. The name says it all — I’m going from zero to a real, proper homelab. No more squeezing services onto an underpowered machine. This time, I’m doing it right: dedicated hardware, proper networking, room to grow.
Every decision will be documented, every mistake will be shared, and every lesson learned will become a post on this blog.
What’s Coming Next
In the next posts, I’ll cover:
- My current setup — what’s running on that mini PC today, and why it’s no longer enough
- The smart home that started it all — a deeper look at every device, integration, and automation that got me here
- Hardware selection — the research process and final choices for the new lab
- Network planning — designing a proper network topology
- The first boot — installing and configuring the hypervisor
The journey from a pair of electric blinds to a full homelab continues. Stay tuned.