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Project PiRack - Homelab

Raspberry Pi is a versatile computer and while strong on the maker sene there is another side that sometimes gets overlooked. Self hosting homelab!

James Mitchell

15 Jul 2025 • 8 min read

Inspired by Jeff Geerlings Project Mini Rack - This is my attempt at an exclusively Raspberry Pi based homelab Mini Rack.

For those that don't know: What is a homelab?

According to a popular Search tool "A homelab is a personal, home-based environment for experimenting with and learning about IT technologies and infrastructure.". This explanation kinda hits the nail on the head.

Homelab is hosting services at home on your own hardware which can range from enterprise level server racks, to your Dads old PC in a cupboard under the stairs typically both are connected to your home network.

How far and how deep you want to go when building your own homelab, depends on how much time and money you want to spend. Some of the better homelab setups I have seen are from Network/IT professionals having a full floor to ceiling server racks running all sorts of software and services.

So you can imagine the Raspberry Pi would fit in nicely. Until the most recent releases (Raspberry Pi 4/5) it was difficult to get more than one service running reliably. The Pi3 would be a great addition to your lab but virtualization and containerization were really reserved for more efficient and powerful hardware (namely dads PC, server or large clusters of Pi's).

The Raspberry Pi 4 changed quite a lot with its Quad core you could start to look at running a few more services. Pi Hole, a Network-wide Ad Blocking service got the power it needed and people at home started to put Raspberry Pi's on their network unknowingly starting their first homelab.

Today we have the Raspberry Pi 5 which is 2 to 3 times faster than the Pi 4 and going up to 16gb RAM we can finally consider the Pi 5 as a base for a homelab...

Built using a DeskPi T1 RackMate 10inch server rack and some 3d printing. I have some cool stuff going on. Starting from the Top

Ritos: Raspberry Pi 4 connected to the Official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 mounted using a 3d Print

The Row of 3 Pi's in the middle mounted using JaredC01 Labstack system:

Rosie: Raspberry Pi5 with a 52Pi P33 M.2 NVMe 2280 PoE+ HAT
Halio: Raspberry Pi5 with the AI Hat+ from Raspberry Pi
Robin: Raspberry Pi5 with Pimoronis NVMe Base with 512gb NVMe and also connected to a 4tb USB Harddrive
Of course there is room for another Pi

The almost bottom self is where the power and networking live:

TP-Link PoE switch
UGreen USB C Charger 200W GaN Power supply
TP-Link Travel wifi unit (only used when on the go)

As I said I used some 3D printing goodness to sweeten the build.

Official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 Mount

I have the bambulab A1 mini so I was very limited to the build plate size but I made a model for bigger print beds but I have to say for glueing 2 halfs together the print turned out wonderfully (I am also amazed I managed to get the screen center!)

STL's are available for download here on Github

DeskPi T1 Rackmate Replacement Ikea Skådis Walls

This hands down has to be my most favorite mods! Again because I have a small print bed I created a set of files that can be stacked to replace the acrylic wall of T1 RackMate.

The design has each plate interlocking with the next which makes the wall stronger so if you pushed it in the wall wont bend inwards.

Since the Skådis system has holes going through it. This means you can use the inside for cable management or like I did mount a harddrive up the side so its safe and secure

STL's are available for download here on Github

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Worth noting that the skådis wall is only sized for the T1 RackMate (for now)

Software

At the moment only the Raspberry Pi 5 called Robin is running anything of worth the rest I am still working on but Robin is what I am using for all the homelab services right now. Rosie will be a backup and maybe share the load at a later date.

Whats on Robin

Portainer : docker management system. I have a free 3 node license for the Business edition.
Cloudflared : zero trust reverse proxy service (allows me to connect from the outside world)
Nextcloud : self hosted replacement to google services (drive, doc, chat etc) I only used it for drive
Mealie : web based recipe management system (used by all the family)
J ellyfin : Media system that can be used on systems like fireTV stick or android TV so you can watch or listen to your content anywhere
Navidrome : Media service for my music collection
Octoprint : Monitor your 3d prints (admittedly I don't use this anymore but its still there)
Homarr : Dashboard system
3x Ghost websites : YES this is one of those websites!

Currently Robin is running all that without much of a complaint. The active cooler does come on when under load but for me and the family that does not happen often.

Whats on Ritos

Ritos is running another project I worked on with my good friend MeWho. He designed this wonderful animated website that looked and sounded like the Cerritos from Star Trek Lowerdecks and we worked together to have a standalone version running on the Raspberry Pi: Github

Also running on the Ritos is my Camera Project called CamUI which is a user interface for the python picamera2 camera interface. I needed to use the Pi4 for testing older Pi's with my interface.

Raspberry Pi Connect

All my Pi's are using Raspberry Pi Connect which allows me to connect to either the desktop or Terminal from anywhere or from any device.

Many times I have lost connection to cloudflare services and was unable to reach my portainer instance to restart the container. Raspberry Pi Connect is a life saver! If you don't use it install it now!

Resources

If you are going to use portainer you should look into pi-hosted. Its a repository of docker compose templates that are tested on Raspberry Pi and allow for quick deployment

Sadly the creator of Pi-hosted (Don Hui aka novaspirit tech) passed away earlier this year.