MakerHouse’s Overkill Network Setup

Here at Maker House, “overkill” is our middle name. In this episode of overkill, we’ll be sharing our state-of-the-art home networking setup — and how you can set up something similar for yourself.

What can our software do?

Left to right: Our status indicator panel, home energy monitoring, and network-level ad blocker

1. Network-level ad blocking: Ads and trackers have taken over the internet and your privacy. We’re able to block these invaders at a network level, which makes all of our devices faster — and blocks them on devices that don’t have their own ad blocker controls (such as smart home devices).
2. Smart home device control: For the ultimate in convenience, we have nearly 100 devices in our house that are hooked up to voice, app and automated control — including lights, projector, air conditioners, and even our espresso machine.
3. Status & occupancy indicator panels: To minimize conflict with shared resources, we have LED panels on each floor of the house indicating what’s in use (such as the laundry machine, massage chair, gym and 3D printer).
4. Air quality monitoring: After the California wildfires, we got more proactive about our lung health and installed a home air quality monitor that allows you to quickly check if additional filtration is needed.
5. Energy monitoring: To cut down on our utility bills, we’re able to monitor the house’s energy status real time, including how much power our solar panels are producing, how much energy is stored in the batteries, and how much energy we’re consuming.
6. Home theater media server: We have a shared library of movies and shows that anyone can watch in the home theater with a single click.
7. 12TB shared network drive: We have a massive shared network drive that anyone in the house can use for projects, backups, etc.
8. Shared workshop computer: We have a shared computer that’s hooked up to all of our tools (laser cutter, CNC, robots, etc) so that you can quickly make things without having to set up all the software on your computer.
9. Shortcut URLs: We have dozens of shortcut URLs to quickly access all sorts of features. For example, you can go to go/glowforge to laser cut something, go/air to see the indoor air quality, or (meta) go/go to manage the go links.

Our home network setup is the culmination of years of experimentation from our members (we built our first voice-controlled home automation system back in 2014, before Alexa existed) — and it’s constantly improving!

To help anyone enjoy these benefits and contribute to its future, we’ve created an open source GitHub repo complete with setup instructions.

Happy hacking!

Mkr.house