My First Server Was Office Trash: A Self-Hosting Story
It all started with a computer my mom saved from the trash heap at her office. It was a standard HP Prodesk 600 G4—nothing special, and since I already had a PC and a laptop, I had no idea what to do with it. Just installing Windows on it felt like a waste. I knew it could be something more than just another desktop collecting dust.
That simple idea kicked off a journey that completely changed what I thought I was passionate about and what I wanted to do with my life.
My First, Clumsy Steps
My first goal was to create my own private server to back up all my photos. I stumbled upon something called Xpenology, which is a clever way to run the software from those fancy, expensive Synology servers on any old computer. I spent a whole night fighting with it. It was a huge pain. The whole thing relied on a specific USB stick that had to be plugged in all the time to trick the software into working. It felt messy and unreliable.
Frustrated, I kept searching and found Proxmox. This was the “aha!” moment. Proxmox is an operating system built specifically to run other computers inside of it. Think of it like a digital nesting doll. It was stable, powerful, and let me create a virtual “computer” just for my photo backups. I could finally experiment and mess around without the fear of crashing everything. The beast was finally tamed.
Finding a Real Purpose (With a Little Help from a GPU)
The server was running, but I knew it could do more. Things got really interesting when I found an old, barely-working GT 1030 graphics card. It was the kind of thing most people would throw out, but I stuck it in the PC, and suddenly, a whole new world of projects opened up.
First, I built my own personal Netflix. I used a free program called Jellyfin to organize all my movies and TV shows into a slick interface. To get the media, I set up a few helper tools that people call the “arr stack” (Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies) that automatically find and download stuff for me. That little graphics card did all the heavy lifting, converting video files on the fly so I could watch anything on my TV, laptop, or phone without any stuttering. If you want more detailed on how to properly set this up, here’s the link https://trash-guides.info/.
Next, I got into AI before ChatGPT was cool. I found a program called Stable Diffusion that can create images from just text descriptions. I had a pretty juvenile idea for a Telegram bot: you send it a picture, which then trigger a web-hook to a script I wrote to identify people clothes and send it to the Stable Diffusion server, which then … well, let’s just say “creatively redraw” the clothing. It was a ridiculous project born from a 16-year-old’s hentai brain, but it taught me a ton about programming and how to connect different services together. Here’s the repository if anyone interested https://github.com/phuchoang2603/telegram-sdwebui.
But the most meaningful thing I built was for my family. I connected our existing security cameras to a program called Frigate. Using the graphics card, Frigate is smart enough to tell the difference between a person walking up to our door and just a tree swaying in the wind. I then hooked Frigate into Home Assistant, which is like a central brain for smart home gadgets. Now, if someone is walking around our house late at night, my entire family gets an alert on their phones with a picture of what’s happening. It’s given us some real peace of mind, all powered by that old office PC.
The Obsession and the Path Forward
I was officially hooked. I found online communities like the r/selfhosted and r/homelab subreddits and discovered I wasn’t alone. There are tons of people out there building amazing things in their own homes.
At first, all my projects only worked inside my house network. But what if I wanted to watch a movie while I was out, or share my photo server with a friend? I learned how to use something called a Cloudflare Tunnel. It sounds complicated, but it’s a super secure way to let my projects be seen by the wider internet without opening up my home network to hackers.
Looking back, it’s wild. This whole journey started with a free computer that was about to be scrapped. In the process of tinkering, I accidentally taught myself about networking, Linux servers, and coding. I wasn’t just building a server; I was discovering something I truly loved to do. It made me realize I didn’t want to be a UX/UI designer anymore. I wanted to be the person who builds the stuff that works behind the scenes.
That old HP Prodesk didn’t just find a new purpose; it gave me one, too.