Raspberry Pis have been widespread for small self-hosting jobs and tinkerers for years, and it’s fairly frequent to have a couple of previous ones forgotten in a drawer someplace. Listed below are a couple of nice methods to place these previous Raspberry Pis to make use of.
A note-taking app server
Everybody makes use of a note-taking app of some type, be that Google Preserve or Apple Notes for private notes, or one thing extra refined like Obsidian or Evernote for maintaining observe of concepts or tasks at work.
Sadly, you possibly can’t actually assure most of these choices are non-public or safe out of the field.
Each as a privateness measure and a little bit of curiosity, I began internet hosting my very own Joplin server—which is my most well-liked note-taking app—on a Raspberry Pi Zero W simply to see how it could carry out.
Because it seems, the server requires nearly no computational energy in any respect. It runs simply high-quality, even on previous, low-power {hardware}.
Loads of nice note-taking apps will be self-hosted in order for you, and so long as you are cautious, you possibly can make sure that your notes—whether or not they’re private, a to-do listing, or for work—stay non-public.
A PiHole
A lot of the adblockers you encounter run as an extension in your browser. Nevertheless, if you wish to management advertisements throughout your total community, whether or not they’re capable of run adblock individually or not, a PiHole is a good possibility.
All that you must do is set up the PiHole in your Raspberry Pi, level your router’s DNS server on the PiHole, and also you’re set—network-wide adblocking.
PiHoles use a collection of lists to dam advertisements, and infrequently, one that could be a bit too overzealous could cause web sites to malfunction.
As a result of PiHoles can be utilized to filter your total community’s visitors, you can even use them to forestall issues like Good TVs or Good Fridges from phoning house if you don’t need them to.
Residence Assistant
Home Assistant is a bit like a self-hosted central mind for your entire sensible gadgets. It will not run properly on a Pi Zero or a Pi Zero 2, however a Raspberry Pi 3B or Raspberry Pi 4 can each do an admirable job with it.
Residence Assistant enables you to monitor what sensible gadgets in your house are doing, create routines and automations that flip issues on and off once you need them to, and even program your own home to reply routinely to enter from sensors.
These are the Home Assistant integrations and add-ons I can’t live without
With out these, I am only a man with costly lightbulbs.
You may management your complete factor from one handy app. In some ways, Residence Assistant is what sensible gadgets ought to have been from the start.
Better of all, as a result of all of it runs in your native community, you possibly can enhance your privateness whilst you’re at it.
A retro gaming system
One of the widespread makes use of for Raspberry Pis is retro gaming consoles. As a result of they’re small, low-power, and have tons of GPIO pins, they’re nice all-in-one gadgets.
You purchase specialised controllers so as to play your retro video games with game-appropriate joysticks and buttons, relatively than utilizing a mouse and keyboard or an Xbox controller.
Whether or not you simply need a small dedicated computer sitting in your desktop to play legacy video games, otherwise you’re going all out and constructing a full-sized arcade cupboard, a Raspberry Pi is a superb alternative.
There may be even a mission, RetroPie, devoted to changing your Raspberry Pi right into a retro gaming console with out manually needing to set every thing up.
A WireGuard VPN server
VPNs are extraordinarily widespread for bypassing regionally locked content material or making an attempt to up your privateness by encrypting your entire visitors.
A VPN you run at house is often used a bit otherwise. Sometimes, a self-hosted VPN is used so as to connect with your own home community and entry any companies on your own home community as should you had been bodily there, even should you’re on the opposite facet of the planet.
Since I’ve a static IP deal with, I now use a WireGuard server as my major option to entry my house community once I’m out and about, relatively than messing with reverse proxies and the safety implications of opening my companies as much as the web.
Accessing my self-host companies straight through IP by way of WireGuard meant I used to be completely unaffected by the latest CloudFlare outage too.
Cloudflare’s outage took down half the internet, but this open-source app saved my homelab
Do not let a third-party outage preserve you from accessing your self-hosted companies.
With the value of RAM spiraling uncontrolled and no finish in sight, it is smart to get probably the most out of the {hardware} you have already got available. These previous Raspberry Pis are a good way to host some light-weight companies as a substitute of paying for a subscription service.
- Model
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Raspberry Pi
- CPU
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Cortex-A72 (ARM v8)
- Reminiscence
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2 GB
With the Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B, you possibly can create all types of enjoyable tasks, and improve devices round your own home. Alternatively, set up a full desktop OS and use it like an everyday laptop.
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