I want to share a project I've been building over the past few months: MEeL-HUB — a self-hosted media platform that works 100% offline.
What it does
MEeL is a personal media hub that combines:
- Video Streaming with HLS (adaptive quality, gesture controls, resume playback)
- Music Player with WebAudio visualizer and Spotify-style mini player
- Digital Books (Manga/PDF) with built-in reader
- Cloud Drive with RBAC (20GB/user quota for members)
- Arcade Games (Dino Run, Chess, Snake) for fun
Why I built this
I wanted a media platform where I actually own my content. No subscriptions, no data harvesting, no tracking, no walled gardens. Perfect for privacy-conscious users or areas with unstable internet.
Technical Highlights
- Offline-first architecture — no internet required after setup
-
RAM disk optimization (
/dev/shm) for transcoding — reduces I/O by ~60-70% - Stream-copy HLS — 8-15x faster than re-encoding
- Cross-filesystem move handling — supports external HDDs
- FFmpeg + yt-dlp integration for URL downloads
- Hardware-aware — tuned for real hardware constraints
Tech Stack
- PHP 8.0+ / MySQL
- FFmpeg 6.0+ (HLS segmentation, thumbnails)
- HLS.js + Plyr.js for streaming
- HTMX for SPA-like interactions
- TailwindCSS for dark monospace theme
Repository
You can check out the full source code here:
🔗 https://github.com/mifada2543/MEeL
License
GPLv3 — free for personal and commercial use (with open source requirements)
Feedback
Would love to hear your feedback or suggestions! Any contributions are welcome too.
Built with ❤️ for private media streaming
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