Welcome to Constantin’s Tech Lab — a personal blog about the intersection of artificial intelligence, self-hosting, and smart home technology.
Who am I?
I’m Constantin, a software developer and tech enthusiast based in Germany. I run a self-hosted home lab on a Raspberry Pi 5 that serves as the backbone for my smart home, AI experiments, and automation workflows.
What you’ll find here
- AI & Agent Systems — From orchestrating autonomous AI teams with Paperclip to building custom Claude Code agents
- Self-Hosting — Docker containers, home servers, backups, and infrastructure on Raspberry Pi
- Smart Home — Home Assistant, Homematic, IoT devices, energy monitoring with solar PV
- Automation — Scripts, cron jobs, n8n workflows, and everything that runs without my intervention
- Tutorials — Step-by-step guides for the things I’ve figured out the hard way
The Setup
My home lab runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 (16GB) with 25+ Docker containers including Home Assistant, Paperclip AI, Grafana, n8n, Gitea, and more. The house is equipped with a solar PV system, a Tesla Model Y charged via EVCC, and a mix of Homematic, Shelly, and Zigbee devices.
Everything is monitored, automated, and — whenever possible — self-healing. When something breaks, there’s usually an agent or a script that noticed before I did.
Get in touch
Found something interesting? Have a question? Feel free to reach out via the comments or find me on GitHub.