Using Proxmox as a Home Server Part IV - HASS and ESPHome

This installment will focus on installing and configuring Home Assistant and ESPHome in a Fedora LXC container using docker-compose.

Home Assistant and ESPHome Explained

Home Assistant (HASS) is a free, open source, home automation platform. Unlike some other platforms, it keeps all your data local unless you choose to send it somewhere else. Its an excellent way of combining multiple ecosystems and devices into one place, and enables a level of automation and monitoring that you couldn’t have if you were using an individual service provider for each of your devices. If you have a smart home device, from a lightbulb to a camera to your washing machine, a local sensor providing information on sound levels or environmental conditions, or even your energy providers API, chances are someone, somewhere, has enabled its integration with home assistant. What that means is that you can turn on your air purifier when your particle counter detects high pollution levels, or have your porch light turn on when you arrive home in your car, or pretty much anything else you could want. Hell, I know someone who has it flash the lights in their house when someone rings their doorbell, because it was cheaper and easier than getting one designed for the hearing impaired.

Using Proxmox as a Home Server Part III - NAS Connections

Now that we’ve created the storage pool and spun up our container(s), we need to be able to connect our devices. There are a range of methods we can use to do this, and if theres a device thats not covered, there is almost certainly a guide out there for it.

Linux Clients

First off, we start with Linux clients. We’ll split this into 2 sections, temporary connections, and auto-mounts.

Using Proxmox as a Home Server Part II - SSHFS NAS

In part 2 of this series of guides, we will create a ZFS pool on our storage media, and then create our first LXC container to provide access to them over the network.

What is ZFS?

ZFS, short for Zettabyte File System, was first released 20 years ago next month (November 2025). It provides not just the functions expected of a filesystem, which manages the data thats stored on a volume, but also functions as the physical volume manager, allowing us to take multiple physical disks, and present them to the OS as a single, formatted, device.

Using Proxmox as a home server part I - Installing PVE

This will be the first in a series of blog posts describing how I use PVE as a base for my NAS, and to host other services. In this installment, I’ll discuss the the hardware required, the installation of PVE, and the initial post-install configuration.

Why use Proxmox?

There are plenty of choices for an OS to build on. Picking one is going to depend on what you want it to do. If all you want is something to host media files on, OpenMediaVault is an excellent choice, as is LibreELEC. I want to goa little further, with a single server to act not just as a NAS, but to run Home Assistant, and several other services. This means I want a hypervisor, where I can virtualise each of these services. While the above choices can all be made to act as a hypervisor, they lack the ease of use of systems designed specifically around it.

Hello (Again!)

Its been a while! I’ve not update this blog, or done anything personal really, in almost a year. The final year of my PhD hit, and I had data to analyse, a thesis to finish, and some private obstables to overcome. That left precious little time to work on passion projects, and what little there was was spent moving into and fixing our new house.

I have now submitted my thesis, am preparing to defend it, and looking for what comes next. Hopefully, that will mean some more frequent updates. I’m aiming for weekly, but thats definitely not hard and fast, and I’ll be happy with monthly updates.

IKESP-Air: Calibrating the BME280

After making a few IKESP-Air air quality units an interesting issue became apparent. Due to the heat given off by the D1 Mini, the internal temperature of the unit was consistently a few degrees higher than the ambient temperature of the room in which the device was placed. This is honestly to be expected, airflow through the box is slow, the board sits at the top of the unit as does the BME280, and the heat has to go somewhere. If we want accurate room readings then, we need to account for this.

IKESP-Air

On a trip to my local IKEA for some other project supplies, I happened upon an intriguing item, a Vindriktning air quality sensor. Unlike its big brother, the ZigBee enabled Vindstyrka, it is a relatively simple box, with just a few diffuse LEDs on the front, indicating the “air quality” of a room. In its stock form, its really that simple. It piqued my curiosity as I wondered what metrics it used to determine the local air quality, and more importantly, if it could be hacked.

Hello

Hello to anyone reading this, I’m Calum. This is the new home for my projects, ramblings, and other nonsense on the web.

I was inspired to start this as a way of recording what I’ve been up to, what I’m thinking about, and to highlight any other projects I find interesting. The thing that finally gave me the push to actually do it was seeing Alex Haydock start their own blog.

Why this site?

So why start a personal blog instead of utilising one of the centralised alternatives? Predominantly, I’ve watched many communities come and go as funding dries up, or a new owner decides they know best. I wanted a place that was a place just for me, where I could post whatever I felt like posting, and not have to worry about content disappearing or the site its on becoming the plaything of some billionaire. Enter the IndieWeb. I’ve watched the rise of the Fediverse and am a big fan of the decentralised web. I’ve seen how it allows people to own what they post, helps prevent one individual or group from dominating conversations, helps to keep users safe from abuse, and allows people to engage in a more open and collaborative way with both their own communities, and the wider web.