utsav@homelab:~$
cd ~/homelab/watchdog
HOMELAB WATCHDOG
> U5 · BMC, WHO WATCHES THE HOME SERVER
utsav@homelab:~/homelab/watchdog$ cat README.md
Monitoring that lives on the same box it is monitoring is not real monitoring. If the home server
goes down, its own alerting goes down with it. So there is a second, tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W
whose entire job is watching the home server from the outside and staying quiet unless something
is actually wrong.
utsav@homelab:~/homelab/watchdog$ ./features --list
▸ Pings the home server every 10 seconds
▸ Alerts after 3 consecutive missed replies, not just one blip
▸ Own Tailscale identity, resolves public DNS independently
▸ Deliberately kept dumb and separate, one job, done reliably
utsav@homelab:~/homelab/watchdog$ docker inspect watchdog --format stack
HARDWARERaspberry Pi Zero W
NETWORKTailscale, configured not to depend on the home server's own DNS
CHECK10 second ping interval, alert threshold of 3 failures
DELIVERYTelegram, same alerting channel as the home server's own bots
utsav@homelab:~/homelab/watchdog$ git log --reverse --milestones
2026-06-16Built alongside the home server's automatic update rollout, so a bad update always has an independent second opinion watching it
2026-06-18Confirmed alerting after real, deliberate downtime tests, on its own network path so it does not go blind if Pi-hole itself is what fails
ONGOINGQuietly running, no news is genuinely good news here
utsav@homelab:~/homelab/watchdog$