Build a private location timeline and simplify your media server this weekend (August 14 - 16)

Published Aug 13, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses. With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, six years ago, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published there there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more. In his free time, Patrick loves to create projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also a youth pastor at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. As the weekend approaches, it's time to take a look at another three homelab projects you should try out! This weekend, I'm focusing on building a private GPS tracking system and some simple-but-useful homelab tools you should definitely be running. Dawarich is designed as a private alternative to Google Timeline, but better Credit: Dawarich It can be kinda creepy to see the location history that some companies have on you. Tools like Google Timeline, Strava, and more can track every single step you take. Now, these tools make the data look fun and useful, showing things like routes, heatmaps, visited places, trips, and more. However, it can feel like a very big invasion of privacy. That's what Dawarich aims to help with. Dawarich offers a paid, hosted service, but it also offers a fully private self-hosted location history platform. There's an app for both iOS and Android that tracks your location and reports it to your own private Dawarich server at home. You can also import existing data from Google Takeout, OwnTracks, Strava, GPX, and others. Plus, Dawarich is compatible with trackers like OwnTracks, Overland, and several others. One of the best parts, though, is that Dawarich can work in multiple ways. You can have it local on your network and only sync whenever you get home, or you can connect over a VPN, or open up HTTPS on your network with a reverse proxy. The choice is yours. Dawarich does rely on reverse-geocoding services to convert coordinates into addresses, but that's disabled by default and is something that you need to manually turn on. However, if you want, you can actually self-host the Photon dataset to have the reverse-geocoding done 100% locally, so long as you have the storage to support it. Deploying Dawarich isn't all that difficult. You really just need the Docker Compose stack and your own credentials to get it going, so take some time this weekend, export your data away from Google, and take location tracking into your own hands. Put the calculators, converters, encoders, and more that you need right in your browser If you run a homelab, you basically work in IT already, so having a set of tools on hand for various tasks is never a bad thing. IT Tools is a custom-built self-hosted web app that is made for just that. Deploying IT Tools is actually super simple, and, like many homelab projects, is handled through Docker. Once you have IT Tools deployed on your network, the benefits appear instantly. There's a demo page for IT Tools that shows just what it's capable of doing. For starters, it can create a token for you, hash text, generate a UUID, encrypt or decrypt text, convert Base64 files or strings, and so much more. The assistance that IT Tools will provide is more one-off than ongoing, but instead of trying to hunt down a website to do a specific task in the homelab, there's a good chance that IT Tools can do it. Just keep in mind that IT Tools is designed to be a utility, not a monitoring or administration package. It won't actually do diagnostic work, there's no authentication layer, and it's just a simple web service to run in your homelab. Stop manually adding people to your Plex or Jellyfin servers Wizarr makes sending invitations and onboarding new users a breeze If you run a Plex server and have ever tried to invite someone in your home to it, then you know how annoying it can be. Plex is relatively easy to handle once you get the hang of it, but Jellyfin is a whole different animal. Wizarr is designed to make sending an invitation and onboarding users to an existing media server way more painless. Instead of having to manually create an account and explain which client to install, you just generate an invitation link and the recipient does the rest. The invite links will walk them through creating an account, explain client installation, and anything else that your homelab might have running in it. The great part about Wizarr is it's not limited to Plex and Jellyfin. Wizarr is designed to work with Plex, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, RomM, Komga, Kavita, and Emby. That's a lot of services. Audiobookshelf is one service that I have running in my homelab that everyone in the house loves. With Wizarr, I'm able to streamline inviting people to my Audiobookshelf and Plex servers, which is something I have been wanting to do for a long time. Wizarr doesn't actually replace any of the services, but just makes connecting new people to them much easier, lifting some of the administration off your shoulders and placing it on the service itself. Wizarr is simple to deploy and can easily be set up within a few hours, leaving the rest of your weekend to enjoy your newfound time now that you're not having to manually onboard people to your media servers anymore. Just know that you'll probably want to put Wizarr behind a reverse proxy or Cloudflare Tunnel if you want it accessible outside your local network. Take some time to spin up homelab services that help you this weekend I far too often focus on the homelab projects that are fun for me to do, like Audiobookshelf, Plex, RomM, and many other services that I self-host. But the maintenance and administration of those services can be quite annoying. So, this weekend, I'm going to set some time aside to get Wizarr up and running, as well as deploy Dawarich because it could genuinely help me with something that I've been wanting to try out.