A homelab enthusiast repurposed a Raspberry Pi 4 from running Home Assistant to serving as a dedicated network monitoring node. The setup includes Pi-hole paired with Unbound for local recursive DNS resolution, ntopng for passive traffic analysis and bandwidth monitoring, NetAlertX for device intrusion alerts, and Tailscale for secure remote access to all dashboards without port forwarding. The Pi draws only 3–5 watts continuously, making it an efficient always-on appliance that keeps the main mini PC free from monitoring overhead.
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Pi-hole manages DNS for my entire home networkPi 4 tells me what’s happening on my networkTailscale makes the entire stack reachable remotely232 Impressions