Set up your homelab for schedules, game servers, and group planning this weekend (August 28 - 30)

Published Aug 27, 2026, 12:15 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. It's that time of the week again. Now that we're a few weeks into the new school year, it's time to rethink how your family is organizing their tasks and calendars, as well as how everyone games at the same time with your homelab taking a central role in your routines. Get your home in order this school year with Homechart Calendars, task lists, and even health information all available in one location Are you tired of people in your house forgetting when events are? Or maybe you use multiple apps for calendars, task lists, shopping lists, contacts, and more. Regardless of how your household runs, it could probably benefit from Homechart. Homechart offers a hosted version of its household management service, but it also lets you self-host most of its ecosystem of tools at no cost. It's designed as your "one private household dashboard" rather than just being another family calendar. Designed to handle things like calendars (where it can import iCalendar feeds and also supports CalDAV, while also functioning as its own independent calendar), task and shopping lists, health information, contacts, notes, and even password storage, Homechart is a do-it-all system to help simplify your family's life. It's an easy-to-deploy Docker container with Docker Compose, and only needs one CPU core and 512MB of RAM to function, making it a fantastic option even if you don't have a powerful server at home. So, if your family needs an organization hub for the new school year and buying a Skylight is out of the budget, spin up Homechart in your homelab and give it a try. Host your own Minecraft server with Crafty Controller Why pay for online hosting when you have a perfectly good server sitting right there? I've hosted Minecraft servers for both my single-player worlds and survival multiplayer worlds for friends for years. While I've used several different pieces of software over the years to accomplish this task, Crafty Controller is the self-hosting platform I always come back to. It works with both Java and Bedrock servers, and allows you to manage everything through the web interface, including file and player management, seeing performance metrics, handling backups, and more. There are also user roles that can be restricted to server or capability, meaning you can share access to friends or family members and only give them what they need to be able to control. Deployment of Crafty Controller is super simple, and it runs on both normal desktops and Raspberry Pi, though you'll need a good bit of resources if you want to run servers with more players or lots of mods. I'd recommend starting off with just a vanilla Minecraft server to get things going. That'll give you good experience with the server tools and how Crafty Controller works. From there, have fun deploying modded servers either from modpacks or by building your own modpack! Make planning group outings simple with Rallly Group texts can get messy, so Rallly makes things simple Sometimes, finding the perfect time to do an activity with friends or family can be complicated. Requests and schedules can get lost in the group text, and it's hard to just nail everything down. Rallly is designed to help with that. Rallly is an availability-polling service. If you've never heard of that, it basically is a place to propose several dates or times with groups of people. You create an event, add in the options, and then share a link with whoever will be going. Those with the link can vote on what works best for them, and then you can plan the event better. Rallly handles things like time zone conversion so that way if you're working with a group that's in different areas of the country, everyone sees it in their own local time. Rallly also works without requiring people to create an account, making voting super simple. Once the decision has been made, the host (you) can schedule the winning time, close the poll, and send calendar invites out to the participants via email. Rallly is a bit of a heavier project and is actually a multi-container Docker Compose stack, consisting of Rallly itself, PostgreSQL, Garage object storage, and Traefik for the reverse proxy and HTTPS handling. You'll need at least 2GB of RAM for Rallly to run properly, as well as some form of domain and port forwarding setup for it to be accessible outside of your network. Also, make sure you have a transactional email that works with SMTP for outgoing mail to function. If you need something free, I have had great success using Resend in the past. Put your homelab to work for you this weekend Your homelab should make your life easier. I know I say that often, but it's true. So, put your homelab to work this weekend. Take the stress off your family's planning routines, host some game servers for weekend gaming with friends, and make planning group events and outings so much simpler by just taking a few minutes to get these Docker containers spun up before Monday rolls around.