Skip to content

Self-Hosting My Smart Home & Network: Current Setup and Future Plans

Living in rural Lancashire with no close neighbours has its perks—peace, privacy, and the freedom to build a powerful self-hosted home network without worrying about ISP restrictions or poor infrastructure. My setup is built around Synology, Raspberry Pi, and Docker-powered services, giving me complete control over my network, automation, and devices. Here’s what I have running today and what I’m planning next.

My Current Home Network Setup

Core Infrastructure

  • Synology RT6600ax Router – Handles routing and VLANs like a champ.
  • Synology DS723+ NAS (32GB RAM, NVMe cache) – The backbone of my network, running Docker containers and hosting services.
  • Portainer – Makes managing Docker containers much easier.
  • Heimdall – A clean homepage for quick access to my self-hosted services.
  • Fing – A dedicated network monitoring device to track all connected devices and detect new ones.

Raspberry Pi Fleet

  • Raspberry Pi 4 (Pi-hole) – Blocks ads and trackers at the network level.
  • Raspberry Pi 5 & Pi 400 – Used for testing, tinkering, and lightweight workloads.
  • Raspberry Pi (Home Assistant) – The core of my smart home automation.

What Works Well?

✅ Reliable Infrastructure – The NAS and Raspberry Pis each handle their own dedicated tasks.\ ✅ Network Visibility – Fing helps track connected devices and alerts me to any new ones.\ ✅ Ad-Free Browsing – Pi-hole ensures the internet is cleaner.\ ✅ Containerisation – Running most services in Docker keeps everything modular and easy to manage.\ ✅ Smart Home Control – Home Assistant integrates my devices seamlessly.

What’s Next? Future Plans & Additions

Monitoring & Dashboards

🔹 Flame Dashboard – A sleek, modern alternative to Heimdall with search functionality.\ 🔹 Uptime Kuma – A self-hosted service to monitor uptime and network status.\ 🔹 Glances – A real-time monitoring tool to track CPU, RAM, and system stats across devices.

Raspberry Pi Monitoring

I want better visibility into the health and performance of my Raspberry Pis. Some potential solutions:

  • Grafana + Prometheus – Powerful but requires some setup.
  • Glances with Agent Mode – Simple and lightweight.
  • PiStats – A dashboard-style web tool specifically for monitoring Pi devices.
  • Raspberry Pi Monitoring Script – A simple cron job that logs CPU temp, RAM, and storage usage.

Automation & Updates

🔹 Watchtower – Automates Docker container updates (used with caution).\ 🔹 Dozzle – A lightweight web-based log viewer for Docker.

Why Self-Host?

For me, self-hosting is about control, reliability, and performance. I don’t rely on external cloud services, I avoid monthly subscription costs, and I can fine-tune everything to my specific needs.

With better monitoring, dashboards, and automation, my setup will become even more streamlined and resilient. Now, the only question is: What should I add first? 🤔