I’ve been utilizing Umbrel at home for the final 12 months and a half. Previously, I used a Raspberry Pi 4 to energy my Umbrel server, however I lately upgraded to the brand new Umbrel Home, which incorporates all the things prebuilt and prepared to go. 2023 has been the 12 months after I’ve actually been pondering arduous about the place my data is, which corporations have entry to it, and the way I can higher management my prices. After spending a few weeks with Umbrel Home, I fully advocate it as a streamlined smart home hub for Homebridge whereas additionally permitting you to construct your own private cloud.
HomeEquipment Weekly is a collection targeted on smart home equipment, automation suggestions and methods, and all the things to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
Why Umbrel Home vs. constructing your own?
You can actually construct your own Umbrel utilizing off-the-shelf instruments, and that labored nice for me for the final 12 months and a half, but it surely wasn’t the type of {hardware} I needed to construct my private cloud on. Having a prebuilt and supported gadget is way more excellent for long run utilization. Umbrel Home is powered by a 2.9GHz Quad-Core Intel N5105, 16GB Dual-Channel RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD, and gigabit Ethernet. It’s extraordinarily highly effective but suits within the palm of your hand.
Yes, you may construct it cheaper utilizing a Raspberry Pi package, however if you happen to’re prepared to dive deep into the concept of a home server, I believe the acquisition value for Umbrel Home makes it a more enticing product general.
Why Umbrel for HomeEquipment?
Until Matter is in each product you need to use with HomeEquipment, Homebridge continues to be one of the most effective methods to get all of your smart home merchandise – regardless in the event that they help HomeEquipment or not – into Apple’s platform so you should use it with Siri, HomeEquipment scenes, and HomeEquipment automations. Homebridge is a very versatile platform that may run nearly wherever, together with macOS, Windows, inside of Docker, and so forth. Umbrel Home is one of the best methods to run Homebridge, although. You can go from unboxing to including a smart home to HomeEquipment by way of Homebridge in about 20 minutes. I like that Homebridge is a easy however maintained app within the Umbrel app retailer, so that you’ll have a straightforward manner to improve your occasion as new releases come out.
The backside line is that Umbrel is the quickest but simplest way to use Homebridge in your HomeEquipment setting.
Matter is a implausible protocol, however I consider it’s going to be a number of years till it’s included in each product that comes out. It’s nonetheless a bit buggy in varied merchandise, whereas different producers have walked away from it. Building a commonplace is difficult, and also you normally find yourself right here.
Why Umbrel in any respect?
After almost a decade of my life spent on public clouds and letting others handle my data, I’m turning into much less assured that’s the route I need to go. There are a couple of causes. The first is price. I’m paying for a number of cloud providers, and it’s beginning to add up over time. Many of them are beginning to see value will increase on the subscription as properly. With Umbrel Home, it’s potential to retailer all of your docs (Nextcloud), photographs (PhotoPrism), passwords (Bitwarden), films/TV reveals (Plex), social media updates (Nostr), recipes (Mealie), and far more.
Do you see the pattern right here? Instead of needing to ship your data to storage you don’t management, you may retailer all of it regionally with {hardware} you management. Owning and controlling your data is one thing I consider might be a key pattern within the subsequent decade. I’m not on the level the place I’ve ditched providers like iCloud and Google Drive for my data, however I’m slowly shifting that manner.
What’s subsequent?
I like all the things about Umbrel Home. It’s a self-contained box that may act as my Homebridge server for HomeEquipment, handle my passwords, retailer my docs, sync my passwords, and far more. What I need is a manner to encrypt the data and again it up both offsite or to one other Umbrel in one other location. I don’t need the one copy of my data to be in my home. I wouldn’t thoughts a one-way encrypted sync to Backblaze as a fail-safe backup, however I’d additionally settle for an choice to sync a number of Umbrels collectively in separate areas. I need to own and management my data, however I additionally need to guarantee there are a number of variations of my data in a number of areas.
I got here to Umbrel initially for working a full Bitcoin node in my home. I began tinkering with it as a Lightning Node after that. I finally got here to the conclusion that it was a lot more! It’s designed to be the middle of you taking again management of your data.
I extremely advocate Umbrel even for simply a rock-solid Homebridge implementation, however there’s a lot more as you dig into the product that I consider it’s going to turn into the usual in home servers for the subsequent decade. It’s a implausible product at a implausible value. I haven’t minimize off all my cloud subscriptions but, however that’s the finish aim thanks to Umbrel.
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