As a complete beginner, what can I do with a raspberry pi 4b?
I’m basically completely new to networking and currently setting up a NAS. I have this raspberry pi 4b that I got but now can’t think of a use case for it…
Any ideas of something that is very useful to host or have running on the pi4b?
Edit: I’m a complete beginner, and will use trunas on another server with jellyfin so my raspberry pi gets blown raspberries atm 👎
Sell it
I’m dead serious. They can go for a decent price which should cover the cost of a X86_64 machine
Why would I want a x86 machine if all I need runs so well on my Pi and uses like under 5 Watts?
The mini-pcs that people typically recommend use around that at idle, and are much more powerful and have more reliable storage. But if you all you need is a Pi that’s fine of course.
What are the mini PCs people typically recommend?
Lenovo Tiny series for example, and I believe there are HP and Dell equivalents.
If they’ve already got a 4B there’s no reason not to use it for one of the many low-power low-profile uses, especially when the cost of PC components is going nuts now
Whats an x86_64 equivalent of a pi these days? I’d love to find one, especially worried if pi goes the way of Arduino
Check out the Futro S740. It is more powerful than the pi, uses comparable power and still quite compact.
They can be found (in Germany at least) for 40€ with 4gb RAM and about 50€ for 8gb of ram. Ram is upgradeble, so is storage.
If you want something (much) more powerful, there is the Lenovo tiny line, for example the m710q or m720q (one cpu generation newer).
Much appreciated will check it out! 😃
idk about a 4b these days but the 5’s are stupid priced. You can get a refurbed 6th gen intel machine with 16gb of ram and an SSD for the price of a 4Gb Pi 5. Add an ESP32 running ESPhome or Firmata and you’ve got everything you could do with a Pi and a lot more.
Got a link? I’d love to get me one of those
Something like the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 will do the trick, they are all over eBay
I wouldn’t recommend network apps to a complete beginner. They might loose their network for a while and get afraid of tinkering. My 2p
I’m using Pi-hole for half a year now and am super happy. What is unbound?
A DNS service that gets all its DNS data directly from “root servers”, without the middlemen (like your ISP, Google, Cloudflare, etc).
Pihole is great, little hardware projects are fun (touchscreen calendar in the kitchen). They also make great emulators for old systems if you want to install a gaming oriented OS like retropie or lakka and get a gamepad or two.
I personally wouldn’t use it for a server, but it’s a good learning environment to figure out how to run services.
The beauty of the pi is it is an SD card swap away from doing a different job. You can buy a few fast cheap 16-32gb SD cards and play around with different options and operating systems.
Or you can do what I do: get it all set up, shut it down, and forget it exists until you have some wild idea.
Pihole. Protect your network from ads.
I’m running Home Assistant on mine at the moment. It’s amazing. Really. Apart from being an great smart home solution I’ve found it a good solution to create dashboards for life.
I have set up our family calendar, train schedules that change routes depending on the time. Waste collection notifications. It warns me to get a raincoat and umbrella in the morning. I get news headlines for my interests…
Before that I’ve tried a lot. It was my first step into home labbing 2 years ago. It brought me back to my youth. Breaking the family computer and trying to fix it before anyone noticing it.
Most of the stuff I ran used Docker.
- Joplin notes
- Mealie
- Immich
- Authentic
- Wanderer
- Homarr
- pihole
- portainer
Within a year I grew out of my pi setup and bought a second hand mini Lenovo that now runs Proxmox. Minor investment, huge upgrade. Moved away from dockers also.
The pi is a fun gateway drug.
Big +1 for second hand corporate mini PCs
They’re cheaper and better in every way than the Pi
Only get the Pi if you need a specific HAT or GPIO. And even then get a zero.
Only get the Pi if you need a specific HAT or GPIO. And even then get a zero.
Or if you want to run the machine via PoE.
There are machines (like the Futro s740) that can be powered by POE as well.
And what’s the cost on those compared to a Pi?
That depends on your area. These machines are not available new (at least not at a reasonable price) but they are readily available refurbished for around 35€ (4gb ram) to 50€ (8gb ram) per piece in Germany.
Why no docker?
What’s currently running on mine:
- 10 commodity SSDs through a powered USB hub forming a poor man’s NAS with snapraid + mergerfs
- Podsync for converting my favorite YouTube channels to podcast feeds
- Syncthing for generic file synchronization
- K3s for whatever projects coming to my mind
- Retroarch for occasional gaming needs
- MPD with a floppy disk interface as my music station
- CUPS for printserver
10 commodity SSDs through a powered USB hub forming a poor man’s NAS with snapraid + mergerfs
How did you end up with this setup? Did you just already have a bunch of SSDs from over the years? That’d be cool af if you posted a photo of it.
Here we gooooo, the king of all junk setups.
Yeah, I’ve collected some used disks over the years.
The housing has been drafted in FreeCAD and then sliced out of scrap plywood.
And yes, the temperature is okay.
That’s a pretty big computer. It’s bigger than an American pickup truck. God damn!
Load bearing Mac Mini vs gigantisch raspberry pi. Wonder who would win in a fight?
A Pi 4 can do quite a bit. Maybe start off with some Docker apps. Try and host PiHole for ad blocking at home?
I run Movary on my NAS in a docker container so that my partner has a place to add to our watch-list.
I also run a personal kbase that I built on top of Docbase and Markdown files.
And I recently started using HTTP2Shell to throw commands at a local networked device. This is useful to me personally, maybe not for others, because I’ve written my own automations.
I recently considered adding Home Assistant, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen because we have lamps that don’t remain in an “on” state when unplugged; any devices I might buy to add wifi to them wouldn’t actually turn them on remotely as a result. Shame cause there’s one that’s pretty necessary at night that’s between a wall and a sofa that’s pushed back against it because that’s just the layout of the room. I don’t mind manually controlling the others, but that was the one that would have been nice to trigger from my phone. Our thermostat and robot vacuum would have been on the same system, but they already have dedicated apps anyway.
You’re only limited by your imagination and curiosity (and wallet).
Look into volumio to make a whole home music streaming solution. You can buy various pi Hats to get better DACs than the internal pi one.
- Ubuntu desktop - the whole shebang including office apps
- PiHole ad-blocker
- Jellyfin video server
- Minecraft server
- Local LLMs
- On-site VPN service
- Home Assistant smarthome controller
So many things, and much more…
I use mine as a low power server. Whenever I feel like tinkering with a website or something, I can just ssh into it without thinking about electricity usage. Jellyfin and such is also a good usecase
Pihole+unbound, navidrome for your music. Tailscale for remote connection to your music. Setup your own photo library with immich. An invidious instance
I use them from time to time. Sometimes to tinker on, or have a specific purpose. For instance one runs a display that I can shuffle through all my surveillance cams. One runs a Magic Mirror. Pretty neat little project with useful applications.
I use mine to run RetroPi, it has a bunch of old console emulators. Get a big torrent of old ROMs and you are set for retro gaming.
