Important
This repository is a working design/prototype snapshot, not a polished product. I publish projects like this so the architecture, experiments, and code are useful even when my focus moves elsewhere. Maintenance is real but sporadic, and roadmap items should be read as ideas under active exploration, not promises.
DELLigieren turns a low-power control node (e.g. an Optiplex-style office PC) into the central committee of your homelab.
It wakes your high-power workstation only when tasks require it, supervises activity, and aggressively suspends it again to eliminate idle power waste.
This creates a fully automated, eco-friendly compute mesh where heavy workloads run on demand, not 24/7.
Modern homelabs often rely on a big, power-hungry machine for tasks like:
- AI workloads
- compiling
- video encoding
- gaming / streaming
- media processing
…but these machines waste huge amounts of power when idle.
DELLigieren solves this by introducing a lightweight “manager” node that:
- stays always-on at minimal wattage
- detects when services or workloads need compute
- wakes the heavy machine instantly via HID / WoL
- tracks state and activity
- suspends the worker as soon as it's idle
- provides an API + registry for services to request wake time
This achieves massive energy savings without sacrificing performance.
DELLigieren consists of three layers:
- Runs DELLigieren daemon
- Monitors service activity
- Sends wake signals (HID, USB, BTLE, or WoL)
- Suspends the worker when idle
- Hosts registry of tasks and uptime windows
- Provides heavy compute on demand
- Runs tasks triggered by the controller
- Auto-suspends after work is done
- Rich state machine (awake, idle, pending tasks, cooldown)
- Service registry with priorities & time windows
- Network activity monitoring
- REST API for orchestrating tasks
- Event-driven scheduling
For full architecture details, see the complete design document:
Prototype / Architecture-first
The core idea and design are real, but this repository should currently be read as:
- a documented homelab orchestration experiment
- a place to publish the current design and implementation direction
- something that may move in bursts rather than on a steady release cadence
Feedback, issues, and contributions are welcome, but please assume the project can sit unchanged for stretches while I am working on other things.
- 🔌 HID-based wake (uHID virtual keyboard)
- 🌐 Wake-on-LAN as fallback
- 🔋 Aggressive power-saving policies
- 📡 Service-aware scheduling
- 🧠 Multi-stage state machine
- 🛠 Systemd-managed daemon
- 🖥 REST API for external orchestration
- 📊 Dashy/Home Assistant integration planned
- 🔒 Clear separation of control vs. worker nodes
Not every item above exists yet. Some are implemented, some are partly tested, and some are still design targets.
Discussions, ideas, and pull requests are welcome — especially for:
- Linux input & HID subsystem quirks
- systemd integration
- Python daemon structure
- suspend/wake edge cases
Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3).
This ensures DELLigieren remains free, collective, and open for all.
Together, we can build an energy-aware, worker-driven, eco-conscious homelab that only consumes power when the people demand it.