I personally just started using Owntracks, which is a standalone location tracker. There is also Traccar which I looked into but opted not to make use of.
Some people use it as a Find My replacement, I personally make use of it as a Google Maps Timeline replacement (and have imported my previous data as a result) as well as for Tile tracker location history (which I’ve got custom scripted currently).
As someone who has a server rack with multiple servers, I would not recommend them to start with as they use up a ton of electricity. I’d recommend a small form factor computer (or a mid sized tower) to start with, it’ll be marginally less powerful but for what you need it’ll get the job done perfectly fine.
If you have an old desktop laying around, that’s the perfect way to get started. Even if you only have some old parts, that’ll cut down on your initial costs. For anything new I generally recommend looking around at places like https://logicalincrements.com to see what they recommend for CPUs and motherboards at different price points. For hard drives I use https://diskprices.com and also eBay. You generally want motherboards that support 4+ SATA connections or have PCIe slots for an expander in the future.
I keep hearing people only on Lemmy bring up Gitea but I haven’t really heard of it otherwise. What’s the appeal and what’s keeping it locked away with the Lemmy community?