re: Making my own cloud at home?

There isn’t going to be anything to really match Apple’s cloud for that. You will have to use iTunes to back all those things up. So you will just basically need a computer at home that you hardwire your devices to, to back them up.

You can back your photos up through certain apps and other things like documents, but if you want full backups, iTunes is the way you have to go or iCloud.