Nathan Reynolds

I spent six weeks spinning up Roon Server on eight different NAS units in my listening room, swapping between a 4,000-album FLAC library and a 60,000-track test library to see which boxes could keep up. The short version: the right NAS turns your music collection into a 24/7 high-fidelity audio NAS without leaving a laptop … Read more

I spent the last three months testing smart speakers across my house to find the best smart speaker for local Home Assistant control in . My home has six rooms, two stubborn Wi-Fi dead spots, and a low tolerance for cloud outages. Local Home Assistant control means your voice stays on your network. No audio … Read more

I switched my family of four off Google Photos, Gmail, and Netflix last winter, and the questions started immediately. Where did the photos go? Why does the TV look different? My kids adapted in about three days, my partner in three weeks, and I have not paid a cloud subscription since. If you are plotting … Read more

I built my first homelab in a closet with a refurbished Dell Optiplex and a blinking Pi-hole, and it changed how I write software forever. Hands-on time with Docker beats every Udemy video because you break things, you fix them, and you remember them. If you are looking for the best homelab bundle for learning … Read more

I have been running Pi-hole with Unbound in my own home for over three years, and the number one question I get from friends is simple: what is the best hardware for a Pi-hole and Unbound DNS setup? After testing eight different devices in my home lab, including Raspberry Pi boards, mini PCs, and storage … Read more

When I first set up Home Assistant, I had a box of sensors, two different hubs, and no clue which devices actually belonged together. After spending three months testing and swapping gear across a 1,200-square-foot apartment, I figured out the right starting lineup. The best gear for a first Home Assistant smart home in is … Read more

I have been running self-hosted Git servers out of my home lab for the better part of a decade. From a Raspberry Pi 3 wedged behind a monitor to a Synology DS923+ sitting in a closet, I have tried almost every class of hardware that promises to host your code without sending it to someone … Read more

I spent the last three months building and breaking my way through eight different setups for self-hosting a personal cloud. I migrated from Google Drive, broke one Raspberry Pi, drowned one server in 4K transcoding jobs, and finally landed on a stack I would actually trust with my family’s 1.4TB photo archive. Self-hosting a personal … Read more

Your family photos deserve better than a monthly cloud subscription that quietly grows more expensive every year. After helping dozens of families set up their own private photo clouds since 2019, our team has seen what works and what wastes money. We spent 90 days testing 8 of the most popular home server options for … Read more

Living in an apartment means every decibel matters. I learned this the hard way when my first home server, a refurbished rackmount unit, vibrated through the shared wall at 2 AM and earned me a noise complaint within a week. That experience sent me down a rabbit hole testing quiet home servers for apartment living, … Read more