LoL, we dont. Accounts are issued to individuals. My local sysadmin cosplay group encourages people to make their own instances with small user counts and to federate the services with each other. That way if one users network goes out as residential networks are want to do, communication is not completely down for the collective.

Public facing services should pantamime security best practices. I recognize its not realistic for most solo-home labs, but you can always improve with practice.

[Cough]

Dito, most major outlets and companies that used to do fun things in the past for marketing or for fun have stopped. It used to be my favorite holiday, now adays… Its dry and the humor just isnt there anymore.

Its pretty similar to Lemmy or anything else in the fediverse, someones full user name includes their home server.

Your admin just needs to have configured the service to except comminication from other servers and not just its internal users.

Teamspeak still requires a license above a small user size, but has multiple clients that can accomodate different target audicences. The TS3 client still looks like it did back in the windows 7 days and the TS5 client is just copying discords homework (Not a clue what happend to 4 and I believe 6 is under development). Both use the same server backend and database structure so both work with one server and different user expirences.

Mumble is still the gold standard for handling large user bases (there is a reason big EvE Online alliances use mumble). It will take longer to set up, the configuration is handled by the server, not through authorized user accounts like TS.

Dito (Synapse server), Element for desktop app and fruitphones, Shildichat for android (its lighter and has an adorable turtle as a mascot).

And seconding the voice coms, the VOIP relay server is a huge pain to set up, same with the registration page. My nerd herd hosts a few services that federated to share services and the admin group just issues people accounts.

TLDR: no… Were not using discord anymore, we have discord at home.

Dont knock matrix for being slow, it updates just as fast as anyone else’s network speed is and it is focused on encryption and security. Given [gestures broadly to everything these days] people moving away from major platforms should really take into account their digital footprint and privacy.

Incorrect, a raspberry pi will run off of a phone charger (it will whine at you if it provides less than 2 amps).

And for some of the projects listed that are meant to be out in the field like Meshtastic, there are plenty of guides to get them hooked up to solar cells.

In addition, to avoid costs of the RAMpocalypse/data centers butt-fucking the local power grid, reduce, reuse and recycle. Older desktops can run hypervisors like Proxmox or other VM/container solutions to split the work load into a bunch of VMs. (Dell Refurbished has decent deals, if you dont mind scratched up cases, but its beena bit since ive checked them)

In my case, the same device hosts multiple services split into several VMs, and I just got the backup server taking nightly snapshots. Wont save my data from a fire, but if hardware issues happen, backups are being taken (still need to test them, but thats a problem for future me).

I host a private Matrix-Synapse service for my nerd herd (we still haven’t gotten the call feature working on them) if you want to talk shop about setting it up for yourself and friends (yah, Homelab). I feel that Shildichat is better on Android, Element is better of fruit phones and desktop.

Ha [Internet high five], there is a thing about EvE online players and being opinionated nerds about VOIP solutions.

Some expirence on some self-hosted VOIP solutions from my EvE online days and I self-host a Teamspeak instance (my nerds like it, get off my lawn).

Mumble in terms of its UI and user expirence, the worst of the major VOIP projects (looks very 2008), however it is by far the best in terms of server stability, plugin compatibility and security. To quote my old EvE admin “Mumble will take the team two weeks to set up correctly, and drive them mad, but once thats done they will not need to touch the config again”. Plus it not requiring a license allows large orgs to use it freely. Ever have a need 2.5k+ VOIP users all trying to talk over eachother? Mumble is the only free application that will handle that without issue.

Teamspeak3 is what I run, and for small communities its perfect. TS5 exists, and the devs keep trying to make “We have Discord at home” and its just a UI fork, they all run the same server backend. As for features, TS3 has the best of ease of set up and granular permissions with API tools to allow for remote or automated managment. For user counts, anything beyond that of a small guild in any game will require a license, they are cheap (I just renewed my 30$ a year license and didnt have to reboot). Its drawbacks are that it struggles after several hundred users (its heavier on server hardware than mumble is) and user accounts with permissions can break the server. Fortunatly settings are managed by a local database so backups of server state and files are easy.

I remember Ventrilo existing, thats about it.

Hardware wise, a new pi should be fine, older models might have issues based on expected user load. Network load is not significant for normal hobbiest user counts, security is not any different than normal homelab internet services.

Let me know if there is anything I can help with.

VLAN setting are probably your best bet to prevent communication with your normal devices and lock the IOT devices off in their own section of the network where they cant snoop around. Same goes for Wi-Fi, make a new SSID for just IOT stuff and let them only see themselves and the default gateway.

Wern’t there a few AI maze projects in the works? I wonder if running one of those for a bit will cause you to be added to an ignore list, clearly they dont respect your robots file.

Open registration is a flag in your config file. Its normally not there by default. Plus half the mobile apps do not support account creation pages of you have the flag turned on.

Room settings are what controls view/join roles from federated instances.

Im pretty new to this space, so if your up for talking shop.

We believe in you, there are other write-ups and guides on how to get it working. Its was great learning expirence for VMs and Proxmox (thats what I did and it did make it harder, but I feel more confident when im cosplaying as a sys-admin)

Guide

This one is pretty close to whats needed, but go into it expecting each step to open a new tool/application that needs to be researched before you press enter. Also look up how to set it to a PSQL db before you start inviting users, it defaults to SQLite and that will cause problems eventually.

Hell yah, TS3 crew all the way. (Or TS5 for the zoomers…)

My nerds herd recently also set up a cluster of Matrix Synapse servers so we got our little “We have Telegram at home” set up. Getting non-tech people to accept that this is how to find me has been tricky without sounding like a digital prepper.

Note for Obsidian, there is a git plugin that can auto-push/pull from a repo. I put my repo on a server and have multiple devices use it as a sync feature (there is also a VPN to my home network involved). Not sure how well it works on the android app (its pure lazyness as to why I haven’t tried that yet…)

My last expirence with XMPP is very dated, my old groups in EvE online used it and it was perfect for its role as a sort of internet pager to summon the horde of nerds. Im aware there are many new related projects, discounting it seems a bit premature now, if you have any recomendations I would love to read their docs.

My concern is that I would have to pitch what ever project we landed on to a semi-technical group of gamers with a handful of admins to run things. (Trying to avoid a platform that gen-z would complain about, and they already roll their eyes at me when I mention spaceships and spreadsheets).

Oh, that one was a blast! I need to get my nerd herd to revisit it… Although all we did was play liars dice while the ship was on fire.