Home automation
Home Assistant runs the house: lighting, climate, presence, and the notifications that actually matter. Automations are written to keep working when the internet doesn't.
York, Pennsylvania
Kurt Gordon
Smart home automation, home-network engineering, and self-hosted services — designed, documented, and kept running on my own hardware.
About
A home lab that happens to be a house.
Most of what I know about technology I learned by taking my own network apart and putting it back together.
I live in York, Pennsylvania, where I run a connected home almost entirely on self-hosted software: Home Assistant for automation, Plex for media, Nginx in front of everything, and a segmented network to keep a growing pile of devices from tripping over each other.
I write up the setups that hold up in daily use — the hardware, the configuration, and the parts that break — so the next person has a place to start instead of a pile of forum threads.
What I do
Systems that keep working.
Four areas I spend most of my time in. Each one is learned by running it at home, not by reading about it.
Network engineering
A segmented home network with separate subnets for trusted devices, appliances, and servers — plus DNS, Wi-Fi coverage, and a reverse proxy in front of every service.
Self-hosted services
Linux, Docker, and Nginx doing the unglamorous work: media, downloads, dashboards, and a browser-based development environment, all on hardware I control.
Cameras & security
Local-first recording and camera placement that covers what matters. No subscription, and no footage living on someone else's server.
Local first, documented, and built to survive a power cycle.
If the internet goes down, the lights should still work. That idea shapes every system in the house.
Projects
What's running right now.
Not a portfolio of client work — the systems currently in service at home, and the notes that came out of building them.
Home Assistant
The automation hub for the whole house: lighting, climate, presence detection, and notifications. Runs on a dedicated host behind the reverse proxy, with local control whenever the internet is out.
Plex media server
A personal media library served from home hardware to the living room and to phones, with remote access handled through the same proxy as everything else.
Reolink camera system
Solar-powered cameras and a video doorbell, recording locally, with no wiring on the perimeter. Documented end to end — including what every part cost.
Home network & reverse proxy
Separate subnets for trusted devices, appliances, and servers. Nginx terminates TLS with Let's Encrypt certificates, so every internal service gets a real hostname instead of a port number.
tehkurt.com
This site: hand-written HTML and CSS, no CMS and no build step, hosted on the same server it writes about.
Writing
Notes from the home lab.
Write-ups of the setups I actually run, including the parts that took three attempts.
A Reolink camera setup that doesn't need a subscription
Three wall cameras, a video doorbell, local recording, and a total cost under $460 — the exact hardware I use, where it goes, and the configuration that has held up.
Read the guideContact
Get in touch.
Questions about a setup, a correction on a write-up, or something you're trying to get working at home? Email is the fastest way to reach me.
kurt@tehkurt.com- York, Pennsylvania
- (717) 779-1503
- kurt@tehkurt.com