Homelab

I built this homelab on an HP ProDesk 400 G4 running Proxmox so I could have multiple VMs running at the same time without breaking the bank. The first thing I set up was Pi-hole for DNS and the data it showed me was honestly shocking. My Amazon Fire Stick was responsible for 30-40% of all blocked requests. I never thought a company would package their ads inside their own domain just to get around a DNS block, but here we are. The overall block rate sits around 80% which really opened my eyes to how much data these companies try to collect.

Setting up Wazuh was by far the hardest part of the whole project and took the better part of a week. It has three parts that all need to talk to each other and getting them to do that was a nightmare. After deleting and rebuilding the VM more than once the fix ended up being the most obvious thing I had overlooked the entire time. The config file just was not updating with the right IP address. Once I caught that, everything connected and I got agents running on all my machines. I use my Kali Pi 5 to scan my own network and then use whatever I find to tune my Wazuh rules and update my Pi-hole blocklist.

One of my Pi Zero 2Ws runs OctoPrint on a broken Ender 3-V2 I picked up from a friend for $50. I can monitor prints and check the camera feed from anywhere through Tailscale. Next up is buying my own router to run pfSense and actually segment my network properly. I also have a solar panel tracker project in the works using photoresistors and servos so I can keep my battery bank charged on road trips without having to aim the panel by hand.