Omnia-OmniCore

A privacy-first smart home dashboard you run yourself, on your own hardware. Nothing about it talks to the internet except the things you choose to install.

Setting it up (no coding needed)

1. Install Docker Desktop.

This is a free program that runs OmniCore for you in its own safe little box, so you don't have to install anything else on your computer. Download it from docker.com and install it the way you'd install any other program.

2. Download OmniCore.

Go to the latest release page and download Source code (zip) near the bottom. Unzip it somewhere you'll remember, like your Desktop.

(Not the green Code button near the top of this page -- that gives you whatever is being worked on right now, which may not be finished. A release is a version that is.)

3. Open a command window inside that folder.

• Windows: open the unzipped folder, hold Shift, right-click inside it, and choose Open PowerShell window here.
• Mac: open the unzipped folder in Finder, right-click it, and choose New Terminal at Folder. (If you don't see that option, open the Terminal app and type cd followed by dragging the folder in, then press Enter.)

4. Type this one line and press Enter:

docker compose up -d

The first time, this takes a few minutes -- it's downloading and setting everything up. You'll see a lot of text scroll by; that's normal.

5. Open your web browser and go to:

http://localhost:3000

Create your account, then click Marketplace to install a theme and some modules -- weather, a calendar, whatever you want on your dashboard.

6. Go to:

http://localhost:4000

With no dashboards yet, this sends you straight to the setup wizard. Give your dashboard a name, pick the theme and modules you just installed, and finish. That's it -- your dashboard is live.

(Afterwards, port 4000 becomes the picker for choosing between the dashboards you've made.)

Turning it off, or starting it again

From that same command window (or open a new one the same way and navigate back to the folder):

docker compose down

turns it off. To start it again later:

docker compose up -d

Everything you've set up is saved -- your account, your dashboards, whatever you installed -- even when it's off.

A limit worth knowing

Ten dashboards can run at once out of the box. If you ever need an eleventh, that needs one small edit to a file by someone comfortable opening docker-compose.yml in a text editor -- not something you'll run into unless you're building something unusually large.

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What it actually does

OmniCore keeps three things apart so none of them has to know about the others:

• Modules fetch data -- weather, a calendar, whatever. They have no opinion about how it looks.
• Themes decide how it looks. They never run on your server.
• Faces are the dashboards themselves.

Because they're genuinely separate, any theme can display any module. Everything beyond the basics -- new modules, new themes -- comes from the Marketplace, built into the account page you created in step 5. Each one is reviewed before it's listed, so you're not installing random code off the internet.

For anyone comfortable with code

If you'd rather run this from source instead of Docker -- to modify it, to build your own modules or themes, or just because you prefer it -- docs/Architecture.md is the real reference, and docs/Building modules.md / docs/Building theme.md cover writing your own.

git clone <this repo>
cd Omnia-OmniCore
npm install
node start.OmniCore

Requires Node 24 (Node 20 and 22 still work). Same pages afterward: port 3000 for the account and Marketplace, port 3999 for the setup wizard, and port 4000 to pick which dashboard to show.

Known limitations

• Ten dashboards at once via the Docker setup above; unlimited from source
• No password reset -- delete your account data to start over
• Runs on plain HTTP; if you ever expose this beyond your own network, put it behind a VPN or reverse proxy first
• Modules are reviewed before listing but not sandboxed -- see docs/Architecture.md §9

See BACKLOG.md for the fuller picture, including what a proper double-click installer would take beyond this.

The wider project

OmniCore is one of three parts:

• OmniCore -- this repository. Serves faces and their data.
• OmniView -- the display client, for putting a face on a screen.
• OmniSync -- planned.

Licence

MIT.