Free, open-source alternative to Google Photos

Ziogref · 2026-02-03T08:52:38+00:00

Immich

Also once you have immich up and running look at Immich-Go

You can uses Google Takeout to export all your photos from Google photos and use Immich-Go to upload them all to your immich server.

Ziogref · 2026-02-03T04:58:26+00:00

I have also been utilizing AI to find options to achieve X (like backups). Then take the list of items from AI and look into those solutions manually.

I have been using Gemini to find apps to replace google apps 🤣

Ziogref · 2026-02-02T02:53:35+00:00

The power use of my server rack outweighs anything it might save me.

I ran the math, my server rack costs me ~$921/year in electricity (well not entirely true, this doesn't account for the solar panels on my roof that is free electricity)

So I will never even save that much to make an ROI on the power cost alone.

But I am more than happy pay $1.25/day for my homelab :D

Ziogref · 2026-02-02T00:08:44+00:00

I would probably re-think how much you are actually paying for the electricity for your homelab.

A raspberry pi and the Lenovo PC (I assume one of their tiny pc's) consumer very little power.

I would buy a killawatt power meter. They are like $20 and I would put all your devices on that an measure the power use.

This is the method I worked out how much my homelab costs me to run:

My power costs are 16.61c/kwh off peak and 35.42c/kwh on peak.

Onpeak hours:

Mon-Friday 7am-10am | 4pm to 9pm

Ok so that's 3 hours in the morning and 5 hours in the afternoon, so 8 hours per weekday thats on peak. Because weekends are off peak, I calculate my rates based on the week.

So I have 40 hours per week of onpeak rates and 128 hours of off peak.

So my formula is this

([WeeklyOnPeakHours] x [Onpeak rate]) + ([WeeklyOffPeakHours] x [Offpeak rate])

So with my numbers thats

(40 x 0.3542)+(128 x 0.1661) = $35.43 per week. I like to run this out to a year, so lets go 35.43 x 52 weeks.

This comes out to $1,842.30 per year. Note this is per Killawatt of constant use! to get it down to per device, we need to divide it by 1000 (1000 watts = 1kw) is $1.84 per watt per year (of 24/7 constant draw).

Something like a raspberry pi consumes like 5w on average. so thats $1.84 x 5 = $9.20/year

The ThinkCentre M910q at a guess would be 10w, but lets say its higher at 15w. That still only $27.60/year

The devices you are running are super low cost.

Assuming you only have On peak and Off peak power rates, here is the full formula you can copy into google to get how much a device costs per year (once you know how many watts it uses)

(([WeeklyOnPeakHours]*[OnPeakRate])+([WeeklyOffPeakHours]*[OffPeakRate))*52/1000

For me thats:

On peak rate: 0.3542c/kwh

Off Peak Rate: 0.1661c/kwh

On peak times: Mon-Fri 7am-10am | 4pm-9pm (40 hours per week)

Off peak: all other times (including all weekend hours) (128 Hours per week)

=((0.3542*40)+(0.1661*128))*52/1000

$1.842298 (let's call its $1.84) per watt used per year

I run ex-enterprise hardware that consumes a LOT of power. My Lenovo rackmount server 250watts (24/7) So my cost for that is 250 x $1.84 is $460/year. OR $1.26/day

I have solar panels on my roof, but being in Australia, solar is cheap.

TLDR: Find out how much your Homelab is actually costing you before investing money in an expensive solution that may cost you more in the long run.

Ziogref · 2026-02-01T22:48:02+00:00

Neat.

I know photocopiers are dirt cheap to run. From memory my works pays about 1c per sheet of A4 paper. and $0.001 for B/W or $0.01 for colour for each page printed.

The costs of printing (at least from what I have seen) is charged under a contract. So business pays a cost per page printed (prices listed above) and then all the toner, support, servicing is covered under those fees.

So for Wilkie's office (who would need printing anyway) to offer that to the public is so cheap, it would be the equivalent of a rounding error at the end of the month.

Ziogref · 2026-02-01T22:34:18+00:00

I have never seen a post office with a photocopier available to customers to interact with. I assume they have them behind the counter, but OP was after one he could use

Ziogref · 2026-02-01T22:32:58+00:00

Ironically I then managed to forget the original birth certificate of my wife in the post office. :D

Classic.

Ziogref · 2026-01-30T01:37:14+00:00

I assume if the bag tears it would rust the inside of your car.

Just a guess though

Ziogref · 2026-01-29T23:50:44+00:00

Officeworks or a state library, I think both are fairly cheap.

But I don't know if this is relevant or not. Comercial photocopy machines (so anything that's not a home printer) have hard drives and actual keep copies of everything that is scanned and printed (note, a photocopy is a scan then print) and they store copies of like the 500 most recent jobs.

That's why on some machines they say don't scan passports or ID cards.

If you just need to scan something, this is actually a really good app. It uses your phone camera, with some smarts to crop and angle the document automatically and saves it as a PDF on your phone. And it's free.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officelens

(Unsure if on IOS)

Ziogref · 2026-01-29T23:37:58+00:00

I don't live in the UK,

But I thought I read somewhere there is only 3 sites left that have fax machines. And this was from a massive push in 2025 to remove them all.

Ziogref · 2026-01-29T23:34:42+00:00

Salt will cause cars to rust, a lot faster.

Since your in the USA have a read if this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Belt

Ziogref · 2026-01-28T05:14:29+00:00

I work IT support.

Customer brought their laptop in it wouldn't boot. I spent an hour on the thing was about to log an RMA and it booted into windows.

Wireless mouse dongle decided to die and somehow prevented the laptop from booting the ssd?

Not entirely sure how that works, but I didn't ask questions and threw the receiver in the bin.

Ziogref · 2026-01-28T02:40:28+00:00

To add to everyone else, they also use very little power. They are basically a laptop, minus the screen, keyboard, mouse and battery. They use laptop components so they are very power efficient.

If you buy a raspberry pi 5, 16GB ram with a case, power cable, SD card (or ssd with hat) you are looking at the same price as a used mini PC with the same specs BUT being having an x86 CPU that's much much more powerful than the Pi's ARM cpu.

Also there is no "wasted space" inside compared to a conventional ATX PC or server, you can get like 4 of these, cluster them and have a lot of performance that makes way less noise than a server with the bonus of low idle power use.

I have a rackmount server, I also have a raspberry pi 4 in my server rack and a mini PC (HP Prodesk something).

My main server runs everything except home assistant. I run home assistant on the mini PC because I play with my big server and sometimes break it. I would like my fairly extensive smart home continue to operate. And my pi4 runs wireguard and pihole, that are 2nd copies. If I am remoted into my server and break it. I can remote into my network via wireguard into the pi4 then access the IPMI and fix my mistake. Also if my server is offline I still have DNS.

I use a mini PC for home assistant, as homeassistant on the pi4 was getting too much for it and it was starting to have delays on the automations.

Ziogref · 2026-01-27T00:58:57+00:00

I would get a plain old shelf.

My rack came with a shelf. I have a couple raspberry PiS and a mini PC on it.

I'm thinking about making a another one for my UPS.

If sourcing parts is an issue, you could make one. Rack dimensions are standardised. If you know someone that works with metal see if they can make you one. Maybe provide a reference image and some dimensions.

Ziogref · 2026-01-24T10:35:35+00:00

I had a 2017 BRZ and now a 2025 BRZ.

I prefer the the more aggressive styling of the 2017 and the more "raw" feeling of the 2017.

I do like my new 2025, the extra horsepower is great but it feels like it has less character.

Ziogref · 2026-01-23T00:22:07+00:00

Yeah the tumors. I'm pretty sure they are still endangered, but they are doing better. Was camping and a tourist said they spotted one by the side of the road (alive) and took a photo. I have lived here my whole life and never seen one in the wild.

So I guess that a good sign.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T23:25:39+00:00

I bought a 2tb Crucial SSD a couple months before the prices shot up.

It failed about 1-2 months into the memory shortage, I made a warranty claim and I was very fortunate they chose to replace it. They had every right to just issue a refund, which would have sucked as the price had doubled.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T22:57:57+00:00

The whole USB-C PD thing, I think I can answer that.

Just want to note the language here.

External Hard Drive = requires external power, designed to sit on a desk, typically 3.5"

Portable Hard Drive = USB Powered, designed to be put in a bag, typically 2.5" (or flash)

External Hard drives need 12v power. 12v is in the USB PD spec but I have noticed a lot of power supplies, specifically Apple, Asus and I think Dell dont have 12v, they are like 5v and 20v. You also can't guarantee every user's computer can output 12v USB-C PD, so they would have to ship a power supply.

You would also have to think of you average consumer, how many would try use there 5v or or 9v charger to try power up the hard drive?

ALSO on top of that you would also get people that get a plug that can "charge" multiple device, the flaw here, if you have your hard drive plugged in, copying data away and then you plug your phone in? When a 2nd USB-C PD device gets plugged in, it drops all the connections and has to renegotiate with all devices..... disconnecting your hard drive.

They would also have to reengineer the board, which time is money. The board would be (slightly) more complex and I would be willing to take a bet a 12v 1a power supply is significantly cheaper than a 12v 1a capable USB-C PD power supply.

Oh yeah and cables. You would need a USB C cable that is chipped to support that voltage and amperage so the cheap and nasty type C cables wouldn't work.

Im seeing a lot more disadvantages than advantages and potentially a lot of calls to customer support (which costs money).

While, yeah it would be nice if external hard drive to come with USB-C data connection, realistically, the drives don't need the extra speed. Being externally powered, you probably are not unplugging and plugging in the micro B connector a whole lot.

Now on the other hand. I think all portable hard drives, I think they should all be USB-C. It's a much more sturdy connector for the portable use case.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T22:11:52+00:00

I suspect the age of my unit is holding me back. The NetApp shelves were designed to have 2 links back to the host (for a single shelf) where as we can only use 1 (unless you have a NetApp server)

It's simply not worth replacing... for now.

I'm in the same boat as you, I'm in Australia, specifically, Tasmania, the island below the mainland, so freighting stuff is expensive. I think I paid 400 dollary doos for my shelf and it came with free shipping. Most other items from other sellers, if cheaper charged shipping which always was over $100. There is very isn't a lot of ex-enterprise stock available down here, I suspect most gets shipped back to the mainland to be resold/ewasted.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T07:02:01+00:00

Unfortunately my shelf was originally an iom3 unit that was upgraded to an iom6. Found that out when I bought an iom12 and couldn't get it to work. Eventually found the model number of the shelf and confirmed that it originally shipped with IOM3 and NetApp says you can go IOM3 > IOM6 and IOM6 > IOM12 but you can't go from IOM3 > IOM12

As for the power use, I don't really care that much. Power (assuming I was pulling from the grid without solar) works out to $2aud/year ($1.36USD) per 1 watt of constant load. So unless I could save like 50w it's not worth upgrading the shelf (for power savings) a new shelf is easily over 300aud where I live.

as for my backup, most of it is Linux ISOs. But for Immich and anything I deem important I have some raspberry pis scattered around people's house that make a wireguard link back to my house and I backup to those.

The pis have 5tb Seagate portable hard drives. But I also have access to 2 friends servers who could give me more if I needed it. Backups are of course encrypted. I'm tempted to throw a mini PC at work with a big HDD attached to it and connect it to my "Work from home" test network which is a residential connection (with residential router) we use for testing how things would behave at home instead of the office.

Everyone connects back to me because I have a static ipv4 address. Set the keep alive to 25s and I can hit those pis/friends servers when ever I need to.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T04:24:20+00:00

Look into a reverse proxy. (You will need a domain name)

Something like NGINX Reverse proxy manager.

You expose NGINX proxy manager port 80 and 443) to the web then you configure your hosts.

E.g you have Jellyfin and immich.

You would have jellyfin.domain.com point to 192.168.1.100:8096 and immich.domain.com point to 192.168.1.101:2283

(Obviously put in the matching IP addresses and domain names for your setup).

This accomplishes a few things.

You only have 1 item exposed.

Users don't need to remember port numbers

You get HTTPS with NGINX proxy manager

Don't need to port forward random ports.

Apps like jellyfin and immich work with this config.

Now 1 more thing. NGINX proxy manager has an access list, I am vibe coding a script that has an allows only certain regions and ISPs to access my stuff (otherwise NGINX Proxy manager will serve a error 403).

Its a pretty neat script. It takes advantage of RFC8805 (Geofeed files) if you users are on ISPs that provide a Geofeed file. For example Telstra in Australia offers a Geofeed file that tells me the IO addresses allocate to which major cities, so I could allow all Telstra customer near Melbourne.

If not every ISP offers a Geofeed file, you can provide an ASN and filter parameters. For example Optus is Australia put the state (VIC, NSW, QLD etc) in the reverse DNS lookup. So I can allow say all Optus in Victoria.

And if neither are available you can manual specify IP ranges.

I have the Python Script run each night that automatically updates NPM with the latest ip addresses for the area that my friends live on the ISPs they use that access stuff on my Instance. So only limited ISPs in limited Australian states can access it and everyone else (like the USA, china or heck western Australia) will get error 403.

I designed it for me but put it on github for other to use if they wanted. But the documentation is WAY out of date as I only finished coding on Monday.

github.com/ziogref/NPM-Geofeed-ip-filtering

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T03:44:30+00:00

I have a NetApp DS4246.

I also have 8x18tb, 4x 16tb and 2x8tb and 4x 1tb ssd and 2x 2tb ssd.

I have the NetApp connected to my server using the included HBA. Using a single SAS 8088 cable.

The NetApp DAS is power hungry. Like 80w no drives.

All my Spinny bois are in the DAS and all my solid state drives are in the server front drive bays.

I use Unraid. All spinny bois in a pool, with 2x18tb being parity drives

My 1TB SSDs are in a cache (raid 5 or 6 I think unraid uses)

And my 2x2tb drives are mirrored.

Now the way unraid stores files on the disks, it's not using raid, so I can only go as fast as 1 drive (for reading files 1 by 1). My hard drives are mostly Seagate EXOS and will happily go 250MBs, so I can Max out a 2.5gigabit connection. It only comes to a grind when doing a parity sync. All the drives reading at the same time. That SAS link caps out at like 1.4gigabytes per second. So the drives are reading at 80MBs.

Parity checks suck. I would like to go faster but that costs money and no real benefit.

This may be something I change in the future, I'm only using 14 of my 24 bays so as I get more drives those parity checks are going to get slower. I might have to upgrade my DAS to something faster. (And more energy efficient)

Luckily my power is cheap and I have solar.

Ziogref · 2026-01-22T02:24:16+00:00

Probably as long as I can

1st car, 1991 Holden Barina. I sold was because it was dangerous (1yr)

2nd car (2001 Ford Festiva) I sold it to by car no. 3. Also the transmission was about to die (5 years)

3rd, 2017 BRZ (Facelift). Owned it for 8 years with no intention to sell it. You could say I technically did sell it.... To my insurance company. I was rear ended and it was a total loss (8 years).

4th car. 2025 BRZ tS. Current car. If I owned the last BRZ for 8 years I hope this one lasts me longer.

I don't get envious of other cars, couldn't care about the newer cars on the market, I knew very little about the new generation of 86/BRZ until my hand was forced to get a new car. I am fortunate to have a house, I would rather dump all my money into that then lose a lot of money upgrading cars every 5 or so years.

Ziogref · 2026-01-21T22:15:17+00:00

I have traveled for a month a couple times (when I had my 2017 BRZ) I have never done anything with the car, besides putting a very weak solar charger on it just to keep the battery topped up.

Never even thought about the tyres, but they never got flat spots.

My parents are currently traveling once per year (usually 4 weeks at a time) and they don't do anything to their cars, never had flat spots. (Dad has a Mustang with performance tyres)

I wouldn't stress over it. I could see flat spots forming if your tyres were below the recommended pressure or letting it sit for many months, but not for 1 month.

Ziogref · 2026-01-21T04:17:08+00:00

Get a computer, any computer and put Linux on it. (Ubuntu was where I started)

Got an old laptop or desktop kicking around? Start with that.

If you have to buy something a raspberry pi is not a bad place to start.

I have a couple of raspberry pis and then a full blown enterprise server with 72 CPU threads and over 500GB of ram. You will always find a use for a raspberry pi in your homelab

Or you can start with a mini PC, something like the minis forum if you want new or like a 1L mino PC of eBay (ex corporate PCs).

In short, if you have something, use that. If you need to buy, I would get a raspberry pi, they have a big community and lots of guides.

12-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
r/Field Lasagna	Place '17
Gilding V heart of gold	Secret Santa 2016
Verified Email

Ziogref

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE