Screw it, I’ll host it myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#101

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #69

mikepurvis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatev…

there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. it’s mostly tough because of the high upfront capital costs (manufacturing, r&d, and marketing). people still talk fondly about discontinued apple routers…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the pitch from the GP, but Wyze seems like it's pretty clearly a hardware + cloud services play, similar to most other IOT ecosystems except maybe Hue. The (optional) monthly cost paid there is for loosened restrictions on an already existing works-anywhere setup— it's an upsell for power users, not a cost of entry.

This seems a lot easier to me than on-prem cloud services, either in BYOH form ("but it's just software") or as a packaged appliance ("another hub to install, really?").

I would say that the closest thing to this right now for paid is coming from the storage side— NAS providers like Synology using hardware sales to support a limited ecosystem of "one click" deployable apps. And for free, it's ecosystems like HomeAssistant, which a lot of people just deploy as a fire-and-forget RPi image, but as expected with a free ecosystem, as soon as you get off the ultra-common use cases, you're reading source code to figure out how it works, and wading through a tangle of unmaintained "community" plugins that only do half of what you want.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#102

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #55

clairity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, from email to storage, to networking, to security, and to smart home. it's actually the direction apple is headed, but they're encumbered by the innovator's dilemma, which leaves an opportunity for an upstart. google and facebook are similarly too focused on adt…

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatev…

Hardware sales. People will pay for the convenience of a device that works out of the box with minimal setup.

On the software side, integrate tightly with your own subscription services (offsite backups, VPS, etc) to upsell to those who want that, and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how.

Open source most components to appeal to enthusiasts, but keep the secret sauce that makes everything seamless and easy to use "source available" so you don't unintentionally turn your core business into a commodity.

Seems viable to me.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#103

Post by 12ian34 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

johnbrodie wrote: post #29

12ian34 wrote: post #8

I'm curious as to for how long you've been using this setup specifically in regard to Nextcloud, and how many and what volume of files you store in it? I've set up a few Nextcloud instances in the last 2 years on Digital Ocean VPSs and Raspberry Pis and I ran into so many problems and difficulties which scaled with the quantity and size of files I hosted on it. I took care in setting up everything to a relatively sol…

We've been using Nextcloud in my home for the better part of a year now, almost completely problem free. I even have auto-updates via watchtower. We have 136 GB of data on it (just checked now). Not sure where that lies compared to your data. It is running on a fairly beefy box though, not a rPi. Only issues so far have been needing to set up cron, which took about 5 minutes doing it the "easy" way (host runs a docke…

Interesting. My volumes were similar and I even had issues with my 'beefy' enough DO VPSs. The primary issues for me were with the clients, especially if I, say, moved a folder of 2000 files from one directory to somewhere else within the Nextcloud drive using the UI. Anyway, I'm not here to troubleshoot that - I've long since decided that it's just too much for my personal simple use case of keeping two folders in sync with each other on different devices. Out of curiosity, how did you install Nextcloud? Snap/Docker/Manual?

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#104

Post by ssivark » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

From what I hear, it’s all pretty nicely containerized/turnkey already. There are even several “meta apps” (Eg: Homelab OS, YUNoHost, etc) which are like the base layer on which many of these services are available as “applications” which have been pre-configured and can be trivially instantiated.

Those curious can check out /r/SelfHosted.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#105

Post by m00x » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

So, what happens if Vultr locks him out? Sounds like an even worse situation.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#106

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #102

mikepurvis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatev…

Hardware sales. People will pay for the convenience of a device that works out of the box with minimal setup. On the software side, integrate tightly with your own subscription services (offsite backups, VPS, etc) to upsell to those who want that, and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how. Open source most components to app…

Isn't this basically Synology?

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#107

Post by Macha » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #83

merpnderp wrote: post #3

I always wonder why people don't trust their offsite back-ups to cloud providers. I know they're trying to get away from getting locked out of their data, but what are the odds a burglar steals their computers on the exact same day their cloud provider locks them out because they violated the 'no making fun of ridiculous cloud provider lockout policies' policy? As long as your house burning down and your cloud gettin…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Use borg or other encrypted backup tool (Restic is also recommended by others in this thread). rsync.net is my offsite backup. Doesn't matter what anyone demands of them, all they ever see is an encrypted blob.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#108

Post by elliekelly » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #38

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

i've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, from email to storage, to networking, to security, and to smart home. it's actually the direction apple is headed, but they're encumbered by the innovator's dilemma, which leaves an opportunity for an upstart. google and facebook are similarly too focused on adt…

I would buy this in a heartbeat. And pay a premium.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#109

Post by minitech » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

api wrote: post #85

mattowen_uk wrote: post #79

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting. Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my o…

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

It’s for people with enough spare time. If you find yourself having to cut your work hours to the tune of $1000/mo (or more realistically, personal time that you value) to self-host some stuff compared to the time it would take to maintain non-self-hosted equivalents, then by all means, don’t – but that’s definitely not how “actual cost” works otherwise.

And two hours a month seems high.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#110

Post by elliekelly » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #69

mikepurvis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatev…

there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. it’s mostly tough because of the high upfront capital costs (manufacturing, r&d, and marketing). people still talk fondly about discontinued apple routers…

> there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet.

I also think it's still a little too nerd-focused for the average consumer. I'd say I know far more about security, networking and hardware than the average consumer but, compared to the HN crowd, I know next to nothing. I struggle to use a lot of the current solutions because they get bogged down in doing cool technical stuff that is so far outside the scope of the average potential user's wants/needs or the DIY solution will be "easy"... for someone with an extensive CS background and years of experience.