Solar panels are great for the planet, but have long been a headache for architects, homeowners, and historic preservation boards. That tension between sustainability and aesthetics may finally have a real solution.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Germany have developed a technology called ShadeCut, which applies colored, patterned films to solar modules that can convincingly mimic roof tiles, masonry, or even custom logo designs.
What is ShadeCut and how does the colored solar panel technology work?
ShadeCut builds on an earlier Fraunhofer invention, called MorphoColor, a bio-inspired coating technology inspired by the Morpho butterfly. That butterfly’s wings produce vivid, iridescent color not through pigment but through microscopic 3D photonic structures that manipulate light with minimal energy loss.
ShadeCut enables the customization of PV systems, such as with lettering or patterns.Marco Ernst / Fraunhofer ISE
Fraunhofer researchers replicated this effect on the back of solar module cover glass using a vacuum process, producing stable colors across various viewing angles. ShadeCut takes this further by using laser or CAD-controlled processes to cut precise patterns and transparent cutouts into the colored films.
Layering multiple cutout films also allows the use of additional colors and more complex designs. The result is a solar module that looks like terracotta tiles, stone, or branded graphics rather than a standard panel.
How efficient are colored ShadeCut solar panels compared to regular panels?
Independent testing confirms that ShadeCut modules retain roughly 95% of the power output of a standard uncoated panel. That makes this technology significantly more competitive than comparable aesthetic solar solutions already on the market.
The technology works with all standard photovoltaic and solar thermal modules. It is particularly well-suited for building-integrated photovoltaics, where solar panels are embedded directly into a building’s structure rather than mounted on top.
Historic buildings and design-sensitive projects have traditionally resisted standard black or blue panels. ShadeCut could change that conversation entirely. The modules will be shown publicly for the first time at The Smarter E/Intersolar Europe 2026 in Munich between June 23 and 25.
Are you looking for fun (or unique) pieces of software to expand your homelab with? I’ve been on the hunt for new software lately, and found 10 tools that everyone should try at least once. In no particular order, here are tools that have (or will) change how I run my homelab.
Each of these tools are something that I have currently running, or I have run in the past. You’ll find things ranging from full-blown operating systems to small network tools and everything in-between, giving you quite a few new things to try out in your homelab this summer.
Proxmox
Credit: ProxMox
I have known about Proxmox for years, but I hadn’t actually used it until recently. I wish I had started using it far sooner.
If you’ve never heard of Proxmox, it’s a virtual machine manager. You could liken it to VMware ESXi, but free and open source.
Once deployed, Proxmox simply runs as a hypervisor. You can spin up as many virtual machines as you want to run on your hardware. Multiple Proxmox instances can be linked together in a high-availability cluster to keep your services live even when a machine goes down for maintenance.
Proxmox allows you to not just run traditional operating systems, like Linux or Windows, but also specialized operating systems like TrueNAS. You’re able to use PCIe pass-through (if your host system supports it) to pass devices directly through to the virtual machine.
Using this functionality, an operating system like TrueNAS can directly access each drive instead of a virtualized copy of the drive, allowing it to function properly.
Another use in PCIe pass-through is passing a graphics card to a host operating system, like Ubuntu or Windows. I use this to pass my GTX 1650 through to an Ubuntu virtual machine, where the GPU functions to help my Scrypted server run AI workloads as well as handle Plex transcoding.
At this point, I couldn’t run my homelab without Proxmox, and I definitely think you should give it a try.
Pi-hole is definitely more well-known than Proxmox, but not everyone uses it. I know there are other content blockers out there, but Pi-hole has my heart as it’s the first one I used, and also it handles my local DNS requests.
I like the interface of Pi-hole and the fact that I can keep both of my instances in sync automatically. Pi-hole makes it easy to bypass the block list for certain domains if something isn’t working right, and it does its job as a content blocker very well. You can also set up Pi-hole in just a few minutes through various methods, making it easy to deploy, which is another reason I love it.
Don’t be like me, make sure to prepare for these things before deploying Pi-hole the first time.
Portainer
While I started out my Docker journey on Unraid, I now run all of my containers through Portainer because it’s just simpler and more versatile. If you’ve not heard of Portainer, it’s a web interface for Docker that runs as a container itself, meaning you can use it on almost any host.
Portainer makes deploying and managing Docker containers extremely simple, and is something that anyone using Docker should try out at least once. In fact, just like Proxmox, Portainer supports high availability clusters through Docker Swarm.
High availability Docker means that your containers stay online even if one of your servers goes down. The only downside is that you’ll need three servers running for this to work, but if reliability is something that you need, then Portainer can help you out.
I love the Linux terminal, but there are better ways to manage your Docker containers.
Home Assistant
It’s hard to imagine, but there are homelabbers out there that haven’t used Home Assistant yet. The self-hosted smart home platform is so versatile and powerful that anyone into homelabbing and self-hosting should definitely use it.
At its core, Home Assistant is a smart home platform that integrates with a large number of smart devices on the market today. It also works as a way to integrate smart devices into other smart home platforms where they might not be compatible.
The way that I use Home Assistant is to expand my HomeKit setup to devices without native HomeKit support. It’s worked great for me, and I couldn’t run my smart home without Home Assistant at this point. If you’ve not tried Home Assistant, give it a shot today.
Get to know this open-source locally-controlled smart home platform.
Nextcloud
Credit: monticello/Shutterstock.com
Nextcloud is a service that I’ve tried (and failed) to run in my own homelab as I have a bit of a complicated setup and like to do things the hard way. I’m determined to get it set up how I need it at some point, but I do think that Nextcloud is something everyone should try at least once.
Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Macrovector/Shutterstock
I put off using Syncthing for years, and I regret it. I always thought that Syncthing was trying to be a Google Drive replacement, but that’s far from the truth. Syncthing simply aims to keep the files on two (or more) computers in sync.
I use it to back up my photos from my external SSD to my NAS automatically. Syncthing simply takes all the files inside my photos folder and copies it to my NAS. I have it also running on the NAS to copy the files from my NAS to my laptop in case anything happens. Everything is kept up-to-date automatically without paying a dime.
However, Syncthing can also work outside your local network. So, you could set up two-way syncing between your laptop and NAS, as well as your desktop and NAS.
Syncthing can, whether on your home network or not, upload files from your laptop to NAS, and then download them to your desktop. At home, files would upload from your desktop to NAS, and then back down to your laptop.
The functionality of Syncthing can’t be denied, especially for free. Try it out if you’ve not used it yet.
Automatic, reliable, and completely free—yes please.
Scrypted
Credit: Scrypted
I used to pay quite a bit every month for cloud recordings on my various home security cameras. At one point, I had a Ring, Arlo, and Wyze subscription active. This equaled $5 per month for Ring, $20 per month for Arlo, and another $3 per month for Wyze. All together, I was spending over $300 per year to record my smart home cameras. Something had to change.
That’s where Scrypted comes in. While I have stopped using some of those cameras, I now have more functionality at a fraction of the price. Scrypted’s NVR functionality costs as little as $0.83/month per camera. Scrypted runs on your own hardware, provides AI notification and detection, and stores the footage on your own server.
Yes, there are those that think all self-hosted services should be free, but I’m willing to support the development of an app that I love and rely on. A few bucks a month is well worth it to me, and I think you’ll find the same if you give it a try.
If you don’t need the recording functionality, Scrypted is still great software to run in your homelab. One of the best things Scrypted does is bring non-HomeKit cameras into HomeKit Secure Video, which means you could record those cameras without paying anything extra if you have an iCloud+ subscription.
Scrypted is simply a fantastic security camera hub for your home, and I definitely think you should give it a try, even without the NVR functionality.
Plex is already at the top of almost all “you should self-host this” lists, but I rarely see Audiobookshelf mentioned. However, I feel that Audiobookshelf is just as important as Plex when it comes to hosting a media server.
Launching an Audiobookshelf server is as simple as creating a Plex server, and takes just a few minutes to get up and going. If you listen to audiobooks at all, then you should consider self-hosting your own server—it’s easy and brings one more thing in-house.
Paperless-NGX
Credit: Paperless-ngx
I used to use Neat to keep all of my scanned documents organized. This worked, but Neat is simply expensive. At almost $17 per month, you’d pay $200 per year to use Neat just to keep some PDFs organized.
Instead of that, just deploy Paperless-NGX in your homelab. The software is designed to organize and index your scanned documents, using optical character recognition (OCR) on the scanned documents to enable searching the contained text.
Paperless-NGX is extremely powerful and even does all of its processing locally on your system, which makes it a privacy-focused piece of software, too. If you’re still paying someone to keep track of documents, or simply throwing all of your scanned documents into a folder on your desktop, spin up Paperless-NGX and give it a try.
Overall, Calibre is a fantastic piece of software. Calibre-Web gives you a web frontend interface for the Calibre database, allowing you to interact with, read, and upload new eBooks to the server.
I personally use Calibre as a way to get eBooks to my Kindle that I purchase elsewhere. Whether it’s a PDF or EPUB file, I can upload it to Calibre, have it fetch all the metadata for the book, then send it to my Kindle.
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