Beta has been wild and the patch log keeps growing thanks to your reports. I want to make sure the next stretch of work goes where it actually helps you, not where I assume it helps. If you have 60 seconds, drop a reply with: 1. The single most annoying / missing / broken thing about SparkBox right now. 2. Which bundled apps you actually USE day-to-day, and which ones you turned off and never came back to. 3. If we eventually offered a paid tier on top of the free bundle — chat support, off-site encrypted backup of your config, proactive alerts when something on your box breaks, early access to new modules — would it be useful? Would you prefer a monthly subscription (something like $5/mo) or a one-time flat fee? And what price would actually feel fair to you? 4. Anything else you wish I'd build, fix, or kill. Prefer DM? I read them all. To be clear: SparkBox stays free for beta testers. None of the existing apps are going behind a paywall — the question is only whether managed services on top would be worth building. Either way, your answers shape the next two months. Thanks. The fact that this community gives real, technical, unhinged feedback is the only reason this project hasn't stalled. How to currently support SparkBox? The easiest ways to support development of this project is to use my affiliate links. Surfshark is our preferred and best pre-wired VPN choice. It's also super cheap at $40-50 for 2 years. This is what you would use for the ARR stack to keep your IP anonymous and clean. Bonus is that you can use it outside of this project for general anonymity or any other needs. https://get.surfshark.net/affc?offerid=1126&affid=9447&affsub=u4ypca Secondarily, if you haven't signed up to Incogni, it's also one of our favorite partner products, since it makes it so you can't get doxxed! This means that less of your info is avail online for anyone to find--meaning you friends, family, and ofc--yourself, can't be doxxed by some idiot you got into an argument with on the forums XD. (Not our demox forums ofc, because we are amazing here ;)) https://deal.incogni.io/affc?offerid=2&affid=1512&urlid=186&affsub=7493ck <!-- [feedback-thread:v1] --
34 replies
GamerX06 wrote:
1. Not too sure as I have only been in it for a few minutes before I caused Chaos lol but I did try to set up my NordVPN account for access and that was a bit confusing lol. Whenever I get back in to try again ill try to explain how I got confused. 2. is Plex an option for folks like myself who are already set up on it 3. I was ready to send you $50 for a pro license but I wouldn't want to do a subscription. I would hope pro just meant getting bumped to the top of the support list. Maybe there is a subscription model that comes with some DDNS services and the ability to help people order a Host box and then get them set up from scratch? 4. I'm just happy to be here
fellini wrote:
1. Nothing particularly annoying yet as you've been responsive with what issues I couldn't resolve. There's a section way down in your doc that has examples of the URLs as seen by various components to other components and that was pretty handy. A little more about WSL quirks (like networking and file system mounts) might be helpful for newbies. 2. Right now I'm mostly doing torrent/arr with jellyfin/moonfin to keep on top of series from services I've dropped, as well as get my old library usable on my apple TV. I'll also switch to this stack for pihole. Next thing I tackle will probably be music. Not sure I'll bother making available outside my lan. Overall, light requirements, light usage. 3. Not really needing paid tier features. I'm a bit spoiled by the attention you're giving it now, but once it's all running I'll probably leave it alone. Did pony up for the surfshark deal though.
Seez wrote:
I respect that the v2.0 will be paid. But what will it include over the current “free” version? 😀
Mrdjsilva wrote:
I do like the works that been done with the SparkBox project i find it very easy and simple to use for someone fairly new to homelabbing Only real issues I got is the vpn side of things which is with NordVPN but aye can always be fixed While I would like to have a free version or something other then subscription base I would like if possible maybe to pay for the license that I keep then extend the license for like updates for the year as a option rather then subscription Been testing it on VMware and I love it pretty easy like I said
tomspark wrote:
Hey siv — genuine thanks for picking up Surfshark through the link, that directly funds the project and means a lot. Two bugs, two takes: a. Click-does-nothing-then-opens-on-home: that's a new variant for me — render-target issue, not the dead-handler I've been tracking. Logging it. b. The 500 on save is separate. If you can grab the F12 → Network tab response body from one failed save attempt, that pins it. Just the red row's response. Feature ask: no native "send magnet to SparkBox" yet, but qBittorrent's WebUI works on your phone — http://YOUR-NAS-IP:8089, paste the magnet, Sonarr/Radarr auto-import once it downloads. Bookmark it, works on Tailscale if you're remote. A one-tap "share to SparkBox" Android target is on my list — noted as +1. Thanks for the detailed report and the kudos.
return wrote:
I do want to say thank you so much setting this up has been a pleasure and completely turned what felt like was going to be a huge task into something that got of the ground very quickly. It has been fun tinkering with everything and figuring out all it can do. All that being said I do have a few suggestions. 1. Incorporate the media drive storage location in the settings page. I am running on a minipc and added extra storage after. I missed the directions at first in the dashboard and tried to migrate myself. I looked stuff online and had permission issues. I was getting really frustrated until I found the nicely laid out instructions for this very issue and it works great now. 2. Is there any possibility of including an ARM stack for ripping our own blu-rays. Thanks again I do really appreciate how well this works.
feedbackarr wrote:
Hi Tom, SparkBox is fantastic. Here are some thoughts for consideration, based on your four items - 1. Re: most annoying / missing / broken thing - Just a minor annoyance - VPN Settings: Mullvad country and city naming conventions are different than those for Surfshark ('USA' vs 'United States', 'Los Angeles CA' vs "Los Angeles'), so the dropdown menus during startup don't work correctly and it is necessary to go into Settings, re-enter, and restart. Ideally it would be nice to be able to type them in in the startup pop-up, rather than be required to enter entries that I know won't work, and then having the build fail. 2. Re: which apps do I use / not use - I use: Media Stack I self-host separately: Frigate, Home Asst, Pi-hole, Talescale, Vaultwarden 3. Re: a paid tier - Not for me, I prefer the one-time support 4. Re: additional apps I'd like to have available - Dockhand, as a more featureful alt to Portainer (https://github.com/Finsys/dockhand) BentoPDF, as a privacy-friendly alt to Sterling PDF (https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf) A server monitoring dashboard app such as Pulse (https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse) or Webmin (https://github.com/webmin/webmin) for those who don't prefer Prometheus + Grafana A music requester added to Media Stack, such as Aurral (https://github.com/lklynet/aurral) or MusicSeer (https://github.com/HabiRabbu/MusicSeerr) A data exploration tool with DBMS, such as Datasette (https://github.com/simonw/datasette, https://docs.datasette.io/en/stable/installation.htmlusing-docker) An offline knowledge library platform, such as/similar to Project Nomad (https://github.com/Crosstalk-Solutions/project-nomad) Thanks!
tomspark wrote:
1. Fair. We still have a bit of work to do, but the goal is to make this a one shot solution that ANYONE can use, without any technical experience. The problem is that goal is very ambitious but we plan on achieving it. There are plenty of dashboards out there, but most of them require just as much technical experience as doing it yourself, they just look prettier. I want ours to do both. Be pretty, and require no experience. 2. We can look into Plex, but honestly, it's worth rethinking it. Plex is not a good company, has a history of monetization tricks and data breaches. 3. Fair enough. Before transitioning to the free paid beta, I had already setup some of this infrastructure, so thanks for that feedback. The problem is that if we have a ton of people doing that, it can get a bit messy since I'm the only one working on this 🤣 4. Thank you!
Cthe_Enigma wrote:
1. I think everything’s been great! All the issues I ran into during setup ended up being local on my end. If I had to mention anything, it would just be a couple UI suggestions—like making the system stats section four even squares, and maybe adding the search bar next to the Launcher heading. I think that would look really clean. Just small ideas though; overall it’s great! 2. I am still slowly playing around with the media center; I got my first movie up and running on Jellyfin, and I set up Tailscale on my phone. Now working on trying to access my server and the apps from remote devices, and the how to share my Jellyfin with people. I am very interested in the Local AI, Cloud Storage, & File Browser apps; but I am just taking this one step at a time lol 3. I guess it would depend on how the updates and upgrades would be handled. Would it be a flat fee forever with free updates? or would a new version cost a fee or something? in that case I would go with the subscription. I don't think it would matter either way as long as it was affordable. I could do $35/year or a $60-65 flat fee. 4. Same as the last guy, happy to be along for the ride! Thanks again for the help before!
tomspark wrote:
Thanks so much for the feedback!
tomspark wrote:
Thanks for getting that deal, that alone supports us amazingly. Yesterday I made a guide for the pihole integration, and added a module support if you want to selfhost bitwarden as well! Let me know if you have any issues.
waffle38930 wrote:
1. I've got to be honest, I havent noticed anything broken or missing. I've been running the service just under a week and its all been pretty seamless. The only thing I did that required a little work was keeping my library on a NAS pool. But it wasnt to difficult to turn on NFS and just mount the share in the VM and point the directory there. 2. I use the media app pack, and the backup apps. I like that I can keep it all secure. I'd normally say tailscale too, but I have my own thing set up which allows me access to sparkbox from my tailscale activated connection on my work laptop. 3. I'd pay for something like this. I'm glad I dont, but I also do support where I can. Much like GamerX06, I'd rather a lifetime licence style product than a subscription. Keep up the great work!
tomspark wrote:
Thanks waffle!
noliver2761 wrote:
1. Ive mostly struggled with the documentation so far! Not a big problem as you have been super helpful. Maybe a dedicated video about NAS set up on YT would be great? 2. Ill update this after a few days of using! But 3. Definitely seems like a one time payment thing (a lot of people are doing stuff like this cause theyre tired of subscriptions I presume) 4. I agree with GamerX06 about Plex. To be honest Jellyfin/Moonfin isnt avaialble on my PS5 which is the number one place I watch stuff . Also Plex is just the number one used, and the most userfriendly. My dad also has a plex library that I watch from and I wanted to invite him to my own library so he could check mine for content before download and vice versa, I also have a bunch of friends with their own plexs too. Its a bit of a niche case but I know you guys said you wanted this to be customizable so even if you could just add an extra plex app it would be amazing!
frdrck wrote:
I just want to say Sparkbox has been great, thank you so much for your continued effort. I love some more dashboard themes. This project reminds me of the 3DS hacking scene and how a community grew around custom AIOs.
tomspark wrote:
Hey I also hacked my 3DS! 😭
siv wrote:
1. Bugs a. Minor bug when clicking on edit VPN Settings in Settings - Network does nothing but when immediately switching to the home screen the edit VPN menu is open. b. Bug - Unable to save new VPN settings, Network panel is in error 500. the Post/Put command seems to fail. 2. Can't say I've used it enough to say 3. I'm a cheap dude, I wouldn't probably be here if it wasn't free :D but I would say one time paid upgrade for support and cutting edge would be my suggestion. See Tabular editor 2 and tabular editor 3 model for transitioning commercial. Also with AI it just becomes easier to replicate the longer it goes on for. It likely also frees you to tackle the next idea or project rather than be tied to maintaining this forever. All of us are here dabbling in this to get away from subscriptiions not really to replace it with another one. That said really loving what you've done here. Can't kudos enough. 4. Not that savvy to recommend. This project is the first time I fired up WSL and went back to linux after decades :D I got the surfshark sub from your link tho happy to support you thought of a feature this might already exist and I'm just unaware. some of the content I need might not be able to be picked up by the indexer or prowler. If I'm on the train away from my computer in my phone if I find a torrent or magnet link is there any way I can jsut send that to spark box and it does the rest of the arr stack of downloading and showing my media?
Big_Totoro wrote:
Hey Tom, I'm still getting used to this but i'll give you a short feedback from a new user. 1. The media bundle. For me I use a seedbox and syncthing currently to pass down my torrents to my NAS. I'm not ready to completely ditch that setup yet. I use ProtonVPN and have never been successfull in setting up the VPN portion on the media bundle. 2. A bit to early but the media bundle i removed as it was too difficult to setup. 1/2 the containers didn't work or wouldn't start. 3. To me all of those things you listed wouldn't interest me. That said, if there was some other offering i'd be interested in I'd entertain a one time fee. Subs are the cancer of the tech industry. 4. Just looking at the stuff I run now in docker under unraid, truenas and proxmox Id say that Id use Mylar3, syncthing, lidarr, speakarr. Id also like to have the "Arr Stack" standalone without having jellfin etc added to is as the "Media Bundle". I run Jellyfin on separate hardware that has hardware transcoding availble. All my other home lab stuff (including sparkbox) is on my Dell r720 server. Thanks for listening!
trulyinsane1 wrote:
I backed the project before I ever had plan to install it, I just wanted it to succeed. I've now installed it and am looking through it as a all in one box replacement on bare metal for a lot of tasks, I very much like the new style interface. The only thing that does bug my OCD on it is how the icons are sized, if it has 2 lines of text/wrap around, it makes it bigger than the others around it and it throws it off. I know, stupid gripe. As some others have mentioned, Plex would be nice to have integrated with Tautulli or a Tautulli like interface in the system. I've got a lifetime license in Plex since it was $75, so not really looking to switch just yet, but they're pushing it. A little change that would be welcome as well would be instead of the 3 dot menu on the icons, have a popup menu when you right click on it. The core infrastructure shows NPM installed, but I don't see any way on the dashboard to open it or manage it, I'm guessing this is a future planned feature, hopefully to enable SSL for the containers And finally, Tom, I want to offer to sponsor a giveaway. I want to give you $100 so you can offer 2 keys to people on your youtube channel. I'm doing that for several reasons. I believe in the project, I like what you're doing so far. Truly. I also want to bring more interest to it, and get more people using it. The more than do, the more you're going to be willing to work on it, it's a win win for them, you and me. I love home labbing, but I work so often that sometimes it gets tough to manage all of the stuff. So yeah, it's for selfish reasons lol Hit me up with a paypal address or something so I can F&F you a bill to get that done. Thanks for the hard work brother.
badted86 wrote:
Hi Tom, Great tool you have created. I just thought id let you know a few issues I have spotted. on the main page in the status box where the system shows the hdd usage, it shows the amount of hdd space used but states it is the amount free. also when editing the vpn settings, from the vpn status bar, the pop up box was not scrollable (the page behind just scrolled) and you have to zoom the page out to get to the bottom input boxes. (I'm using brave browser if that is of any consequence) hope this helps.
DjunaBug wrote:
Ah! New user here facing down a similar challenge. Having cobbled together arr stacks in Windows thrice before, I'm excited that I was able to get all going in one foul swoop with such an accessible and beautiful interface! But this is my first go working within a WSL virtual environment and I'm now hoping I can find an easy way to point Plex at external drives. I'm setting this up for my mom, on her mini PC, and hoping she'll be able to mount/dismount/remount drives without tunneling to them through terminal prompts. I'm grateful to hear there might be instructions for something like this and am now off to find them. Or see what the AI agent suggests... Many many thanks!!
DjunaBug wrote:
Ooh! Plus 1 on the music hunter!
Chris wrote:
Thank you for both of these, and sorry it took so long for anyone to come back to you. They're real — I reproduced both in our own code. The disk one: that figure is your used space out of total, but the line it sits on tacks the word "free" on the end. So the number is right and the label is wrong. Nothing is off with your box. The VPN dialog has no height cap set, so on a short window the lower fields fall off-screen with no way to scroll to them — zooming out is genuinely the only way in right now. Brave isn't the cause. I've flagged both to Tom with the exact spots in the code. — Chris
tomspark wrote:
Coming back to this one late — sorry! Since you wrote it the docs got a big overhaul (per-app guides for basically everything now), and you read my mind on the video: a full start-to-finish setup video is being filmed right now. On Plex: it's genuinely the most-requested thing we get, and I hear the PS5 + family-library case loud and clear. I'm not promising it yet — there are real licensing and support trade-offs — but it's on the list I look at every time we plan, not the list where things go to die.
tomspark wrote:
Very late reply, but this deserves a straight answer since the plan firmed up after you asked: the core product stays free — full stop. All the apps, the dashboard, updates, backups. What paying gets you (one-time, not a subscription): the built-in AI assistant that can diagnose and actually fix problems on your box, the phone app with push notifications, the enhanced dashboard, and priority support. Think of it as the free version is the product, the paid tier is a mechanic who lives in it. Details are on the site if you're curious.
tomspark wrote:
Never replied to this and it aged well: what you described is almost exactly what we landed on. One-time payment, the license is yours forever, no subscription — and updates just keep coming for everyone, free tier included. VPN setup has also had a pile of fixes since May, so if NordVPN was fighting you, it's worth another shot on the latest version.
tomspark wrote:
Owed you a reply for a while. Two things since you wrote this: the media bundle has had a LOT of reliability work (the half-the-containers-won't-start era is behind us), and ProtonVPN specifically got real attention. If you ever feel like a retry on the latest version, I'd honestly love to hear how it goes. The standalone arr-stack-without-Jellyfin idea is a fair ask from someone with your setup — you're not the only one running the player on separate hardware. Logged it for real, along with Mylar3, Lidarr and Syncthing. Subs are the cancer of the tech industry — agreed, that's why there isn't one.
tomspark wrote:
Late but genuine thanks for this one. The storage-location suggestion is simply right — you shouldn't have to find a doc to move your media drive; it should be a thing the Settings page just does. It's logged as a real item, and your frustration-then-relief arc is exactly the argument for it. The blu-ray ripping (ARM) idea is nichier but noted — you're not the first to ask, which is usually how things end up shipping here.
tomspark wrote:
I owe you an apology — this somehow slipped past me for weeks, and it's one of the nicest messages this project has ever gotten. Yes. Absolutely yes, and thank you. Send an email to support@tomsparkbox.com with 'giveaway' in the subject and I'll sort the details with you directly — not going to do payment logistics in a public thread, and honestly your $100 may stretch further than two keys once I match it. On your actual feedback, because it was good: the tile-sizing thing got a real rework in a July update (two-line labels shouldn't blow up the grid anymore — tell me if yours still does), right-click menus are logged, and custom domains/SSL are managed from Settings with NPM driven under the hood — a direct NPM panel is on the list. Thanks for backing this before you'd even installed it. That's the whole reason this works.
tomspark wrote:
This is a genuinely useful report and you diagnosed it exactly right — the country/city lists are provider-specific and the setup popup pretends they're not. That's a real bug on my list, not a quirk: the dropdown should only ever offer names that will actually work for the provider you picked. And thank you for the app list — all six are logged (the music requester already got a +1 from another user, which moves it up). This is the most useful kind of feedback we get.
tomspark wrote:
Welcome — and setting it up for your mom is exactly the use case this thing exists for. Two pointers: there's a dedicated guide for running SparkBox on Windows/WSL on the site (search 'SparkBox Windows'), and for the external-drive mounting specifically, ask the built-in assistant on your dashboard — walking through mounts and permissions without the terminal is precisely what it's for. If you hit a wall, post here and we'll get her sorted.
tomspark wrote:
Following up: this is fixed as of today's 1.6.513. SparkBox now translates place names to whatever your provider actually uses — type 'United States' or 'Los Angeles' and it becomes 'USA' / 'Los Angeles CA' for Mullvad automatically, during first setup and in Settings, and it tells you when it adjusted a name. Digging in, it was worse than you reported: the setup popup was auto-filling the wrong style for every US Mullvad user. Genuinely useful report — thank you. Your box picks the fix up on its next update.
Wolf21 wrote:
I did the same… I backed the project before any installation. Of course, I had wasted a full week (I’m retired, so a full week literally means I spent many hours per day over 7 days!) prior, struggling with my own arr stack, then one of the “ultimate” automatic stacks I found on GitHub. Lost count of how many times I rebuilt a VM because of issues and conflicts. Went all in on spark box, and outside of a few issues (and conflicting info between the built in AI and the Chris AI here on Demox - which Tom has fixed in recent updates so no longer a concern) I am totally impressed and glad I found it. I’ll contact Tom and see if I can also match your $100.00. That’s how impressed I am!
Chris wrote:
Wolf21, thank you for writing this out — a full week of rebuild-and-retry pain before finding SparkBox is exactly the frustration this project exists to solve, so hearing it worked out is genuinely great to read. Reaching out to Tom about matching the $100 is entirely your call — that's between you and him directly, not something I arrange from here. Also glad the built-in AI and I are staying consistent now; that was a real fix, not luck. Welcome to the community, and glad you landed here after all that.