panel 1.179.0 · Debian · Raspberry Pi 4 · NanoPi R5S · PC

The boxes at home, run as one.

panel runs your router, your NAS and the box with your apps, each with a page that says how things are in plain words, and manages them all from any one of them.

DownloadRead the manual
panel's Home page: Everything is fine. The disks are well, 1.2 TB free. anna and ben are using the shares. Below, the traffic now, with a reading of a moment on its chart.

A box for each job

Usually each job gets its own box: a router, a NAS, a box for your apps. Each runs panel, and asks what it is for when it first starts. Its menu and its Home page follow what it is. One box can do more than one job when that suits you.

The Network page on a phone: what each device is doing, the unrecognised first.

A router

What every device is doing, in words: "Living room TV · Watching Netflix".

  • Addresses, names, and ads and trackers blocked
  • The internet shared fairly between devices
  • Bedtimes, and daily internet time, for the children
  • Its own Wi-Fi, and a VPN to reach home
The NAS page on a phone: the shares, who is using them now, and the disks.

A NAS

Disks you plug in become shared folders, opened with your panel name and password.

  • Who is using the shares, now
  • Two disks as a mirror
  • Every disk checked once a month
  • Accounts for a TV or a scanner
The Self-hosted page on a phone: Jellyfin, Syncthing and Plex, and what is playing.

Self-hosted apps

Each app in a container of its own, reachable from your home network only.

  • Jellyfin and Plex for films and music
  • Syncthing to keep folders in step
  • TREK to plan trips
  • Moved onto a disk in one go

A page for everyone at home

The people who live with it don't run it. Give them the household role and they get a page of their own, which opens when they sign in: whether everything at home is working, in plain words, and who is home.

  • Pause the internet for a person, a device, or everyone, until a time or until let back on.
  • Bedtimes: set times each week, school days and the weekend apart.
  • Daily internet time, counted only while a device is really used.
  • A few safe buttons: restart the internet connection, let ads through for fifteen minutes, tell the person who runs it that something isn't working.

They can look at the other pages too, read only. The household page

The household page on a phone: everything at home is working; Mila paused by the schedule until 7:00; Daan with 40 minutes left today.

All your panels, from any one of them

Panels on your network find each other. Pair two with a code shown on one and typed on the other, and from then on:

  • One sign-in. Panels that share accounts have one list of people, passwords, second factors and SSH keys. A change on one reaches the others within a second.
  • Manage any of them from here. A switcher beside the logo turns the whole page into another panel's, its menu and its pages. This panel carries the requests, so a box your browser cannot reach is still managed.
  • Every problem on one Home. Each paired panel's problems are on your Home, and its cards can be added to it.
  • One update for all. Install a release on one panel, and the others fetch it from it and offer it. Installing and keeping it stay yours.
  • From anywhere, without a VPN. Through a relay on a small rented server, you open a panel by its own name from any browser, with a certificate browsers trust and a second factor asked. Nothing is opened at home, and the relay cannot read what it passes on.
  • Other places too. Panels at another address join the same relay, and are found, paired and managed as if they were on your network.

How several panels work together · The relay

A change that locks you out undoes itself

A firewall rule, a new address, a Wi-Fi password: panel tries the change and counts down. Press Keep once you see everything still works.

If the change cut you off, no Keep can reach the machine, so it puts the old settings back by itself. Nobody has to drive to it. An update of panel works the same way: if the new version doesn't start, the next start brings the old one back.

How changes wait to be kept

  1. 0:00You save a rule. It is loaded, and the countdown starts.
  2. 0:20You press Keep, over a new connection. It is kept.
  3. 3:00Nobody pressed Keep: the old rules are back.

Tested on

Each release is tested on these. Debian underneath, with its updates installed each night; panel never restarts the machine by itself.

Raspberry Pi 4An SD card image NanoPi R5SA router board with three ports Generic x86 PCTry it from a USB stick, then install Debian 12 or 13On a machine you already run

The manual is on the box

Every panel serves this manual at /docs, for its own version, without the internet. The ? beside a page's heading opens that page's part of it.

Open the manual