homelabinc.uk
A homelab built one avoidable mistake at a time.
Build logs, honest mistakes, and the guides I wish I’d had.
Coming soon
⚒ RigForge — the hardware build planner
Pick a job, get a parts list that actually fits it. RigForge is the tool I wish I’d had before I bought a single-NIC mini PC to be a router — a guided builder for homelab and PC builds that checks the spec that matters before you spend the money. In the forge now.
What RigForge will do →Start here: The Network Journey
The Network Journey
The Network Journey — How a Spare Mini PC Turned Into a Whole Homelab
How a spare HP Mini desktop and a single Ethernet port snowballed into a Proxmox-hosted Omada homelab network — the full origin story.
Latest
The Network Journey — Part 3
Enter Omada: Buying the Whole Ecosystem to Solve One Problem
Why I gave up on the spare-parts router and bought into the TP-Link Omada ecosystem — what it promised, and what I only thought it promised.
The Network Journey — Part 2
The Cheap Dongle That Cost Me a Weekend
How a bargain TP-Link USB 2.0 Ethernet dongle taught me what false economy actually means — in real time, at 11pm.
The Network Journey — Part 1
One NIC and a Dream: Building My First Router From a Spare Mini PC
Building a router from a spare HP Mini desktop with OPNsense — and hitting the wall everyone hits: a router needs two network ports, and I had one.