A $10 OpenStick device turned into a homelab server running multiple self-hosted services

Blogger Bosscher has described how he turned an OpenStick, bought for about 10 dollars including shipping, into a homelab server. The OpenStick is a small 4G-modem-style device that can serve as a tiny server for self-hosting projects, meaning running services under one's own control.

Hardware

The device has 512 MB of RAM, of which about 450 MB is usable, four 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores, 4 GB of eMMC flash storage, 150 Mbit/s Wi-Fi, a 4G modem and GPS. It is passively cooled, so it runs without noise. The author says installation is fairly involved, but afterwards the device runs Debian with systemd and the Podman container tool.

Services running on it

The author lists several memory-efficient tools:

• CastSponsorSkip skips sponsored segments and sometimes ads on Google Cast devices.
• AdGuard Home blocks unwanted domains at the DNS level. After adding blocklists, 60% of queries are blocked. The author runs his own fork that handles large lists efficiently; it needs about 40 MB.
• Zeroclaw is an AI agent harness supporting 30 channels, including Telegram, email and WhatsApp. It uses about 3 MB when idle. The author uses it to monitor the device, asking about logs and disk space.
• Cloudflare Tunnel allows secure access to the services without opening ports.
• Beszel (about 20 MB) shows memory and CPU usage and sends alerts to Telegram.
• Dozzle helps manage Podman containers and their logs.
• Gatus (10 MB) monitors whether the author's services are running.
• Fusion (22 MB) is an RSS reader.
• Shiori (10–20 MB) is a bookmark manager that automatically archives pages.
• Diun (9 MB) sends a Telegram message when container updates are available.

The author concludes that a device like this still has enough power to be a good entry point into self-hosting.