Smart home and homelab projects, from someone who runs it all at home.
You've found my corner of the web. I'm Jack Went, 20+ years in IT by day and homelabber after hours. This is where I share the projects and scripts I've built, from server monitoring to smart home automation, written so even beginners can follow along.
- Role
- Head of Technical Delivery, MSP
- Uptime
- 20+ years in IT
- OS
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
- Host
- Home Assistant Yellow
- Zigbee
- Connect ZBT-2, 25 devices
- Devices
- ~200, 40+ automations
- CCTV
- Reolink + PoE doorbell
- Shells
- bash, PowerShell, Python
- Certs
- VCP 5.1 / 6 / 6.5, Meraki CMNA, +31 more
New here? Start with the thing you came for
Everything on this site runs in my own house first. The guides are the real configs and scripts I use, with the mistakes left in, so you can copy them and skip the bits that went wrong for me.
- Home Assistant
- How I run a smart home of around 200 devices like a production system: local first, the right protocol for each job, and notifications that clear themselves. Then see the devices and automations it all runs on.
- Homelab servers and Linux
- A small MQTT agent that puts every Ubuntu and Debian server into Home Assistant, with pending updates and a reboot button, and the script that patches them overnight.
- AI in the homelab
- Jarvis, the AI agent that patches my servers, checks the fleet every morning and ships code through GitLab, and the rules that stop it doing anything daft.
- Free IT tools
- A subnet calculator for IPv4 and IPv6, a memory and storage converter, and a live map of the attacks my sites block. All of them run in your browser.
- Games
- A Linux escape room, a daily subnetting puzzle, and two arcade games that run on my real attack and vulnerability data. You learn the commands and the maths by needing them.
Projects
Things I've built and use every day, written up step by step with the why behind each command.
16 pages
home-automation/ Home Assistant guides
Smart devices, routines and a connected home, all running on a Home Assistant Yellow.
scripting/ scripts and how-tos
Scripts, tutorials and best practice in PowerShell, Bash and Python to automate the boring bits.
insights/ the blog
Lessons from 20+ years in IT, plus write-ups from the smart home and homelab I run at home.
threat-map/ live attack map
Every attack blocked on my sites in the last 24 hours, flying in on a live globe.
games/ browser games
Four nerdy browser games: a Linux escape room, a daily subnetting puzzle, an attack-blocking arcade game and a patching rush, each with a leaderboard.
Built something cool? I'd love to see it. Send it over and I might feature it on the projects page.
Share a projectTwenty years of servers, networks and the bits in between
It all started with a love of electronics and coding. These days I'm Head of Technical Delivery at a Managed Service Provider, working across servers, networking and the application layer to build secure systems people can rely on.
Tech moves fast, so I'm always learning something new.
- vmware/esxi-3-7 [installed]
- proxmox/virtual [installed]
- microsoft/winserver [installed]
- microsoft/entra-id [installed]
- microsoft/exchange [installed]
- microsoft/intune [installed]
- cisco/asa-catalyst [installed]
- paloalto/firewalls [installed]
- watchguard/firewalls [installed]
- pfsense/firewalls [installed]
- hpe/proliant [installed]
- hpe/storage-msa [installed]
- aruba/procurve [installed]
- veeam/backup [installed]
- ubiquiti/unifi [installed]
- opengear/lighthouse [installed]
- splunk/siem [installed]
- nexthink/dex [installed]
- cloudflare/waf [installed]
- freeswitch/voip [installed]
- linux/ubuntu [installed]
Get in touch
Got a question about a project, some feedback, or something you'd like featured? I'd love to hear from you, and I aim to reply within a day or two.
- info@jackwent.co.ukquestions, projects, hello
- privacy@jackwent.co.ukprivacy concerns
- abuse@jackwent.co.ukabuse reports