6 ms·

It's not clear exactly how this helps him work compared to just using hosted versions of the services. It looks like there could potentially be a lot of mainte

It's not clear exactly how this helps him work compared to just using hosted versions of the services. It looks like there could potentially be a lot of maintenance to keep multiple individual servers up and running, and this is probably multiple side project in and of itself.

helthanatos 8y ago
My thoughts exactly. I was hoping to find something more useful than the same benefits t I'd get from a free azure subscription.
- hnuser1234 8y ago
  Something about the RPi seems to motivate new hobbyists in ways that hosted VMs just don't.
  - jachee 8y ago
    It's quite difficult to put a sticker on a VM.
    - ahje 8y ago
      Closer to the truth than one might think. The Pi can be tinkered with in the same way one could tinker with an Amiga or an Atari back in the days. You can, of course, tinker around in a Docker container or a VM as well, but they're not physical products and therefore not "real" in the same sense.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    current gen skilled hobbyists grew up with fancying "physical" objects. a RPi is a physical object manipulating your data. a hosted VM(even if hosted on your own personal machine) doesn't have the same "tactility"
MrKristopher 8y ago
Same. Hosting websites at your house? Slower load times for your users. Hosting git at your house? If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. Hosting a manual WordPress installation? That's making work for yourself IMO.
- pjc50 8y ago
  The downside of decentralisation is that it's often just centralisation in your hands.
  - number6 8y ago
    Could also be a upside :)
- dspillett 8y ago
  > If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. This is what off-site backups are for. You have them, for your hosted services as well as your home ones, right?! OK so with a hosted service you have the advantage of them managing uptime and recovery matters to an extent, but I still prefer to have my own backups on another host, so I have the data in my hands if the whole service goes offline for a time. I'd agree with your other points but I don't think the "what about a site-down situation?" matter differs between self and remote hosted options (unless, perhaps, you are paying a pile for nice renumeration-backed SLA promises).
  - MrKristopher 8y ago
    Backups would be great and solve the issue I mentioned. I assumed that of all the people tinkering on the Pi, only a minority would set up automated backups
- 8fingerlouie 8y ago
  Hosting websites at your house? Slower load times for your users. Hosting git at your house? If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. I'm guilty of both, although my home connection is a 300/300 mbit fiber connection with a static IP. I make versioned backups locally and remote daily, just as i would from any VPS host. The only reason i'm considering moving all the internet facing stuff to a VPS is to allow me to "relax" a bit, by minimizing the amount of public services/ports that can have potential exploits on my home network. I've tried to minimize the damage an attacker can make by using FreeBSD jails. I already segregate the network traffic in LAN, DMZ, SERVERS, KIDS, IOT and GUESTS, with the only route being through the firewall for access to other VLANS, as well as not allowing traffic from certain VLANS onto others. I monitor logs religiously. I'm guessing a VPS would probably allow me to sleep a bit easier at night, though i'd still have the same amount of maintenance work.
shams93 8y ago
Yeah my story of using one to write my startup's MVP after my thinkpad finally bought the ghost is maybe more compelling because I actually used it for everything until we got our first customer and I scored a mac for a more standard professional desktop environment. In a pinch it has enough functionality to build and launch a web application. Obviously not ideal but it actually worked in emergency for me.
- matthewwiese 8y ago
  Now that's something I'd love to read about! My only comparable experience was during my most recent co-op where I used an Asus C300 Chromebook running Gallium OS 2.1, and it served me quite well for the work I was doing. Although using modern websites when you only have 2 GB of RAM and a mobile Celeron chip is absolutely painful...
anonytrary 8y ago
I was confused about it, too. It made more sense when I thought of his blog as a series of tutorials for people who want to learn how to use RPI.
clanrebornyes 8y ago
I've Rasp Pi + alpha card + 50K mah powerbank as my router, which creates 3 APs, one with Tor other with work VPN and last with my home connection. All use cloudflare dns+ pi hole to block ads. I use another PI as a media server and for remote torrent downloading.
- sgt 8y ago
  Is a powerbank an efficient and safe UPS for a RPi? I was at some point told powerbanks are not a good solution for Pi's, but I cannot remember the reasoning.
  - clanrebornyes 8y ago
    It's not - it's a hack. Powerbanks aren't design for random surge in power output which is what Raspberry Pi requires. Usually used for charging other batteries.
    - u02sgb 8y ago
      Can you clarify why? Surely they are just normal batteries with a charging circuit? I'd have thought it was more a problem with "pass through charging" where the battery needs to discharge (RPi) and charge at the same time.
      - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
        Powerbanks are designed for continous load for a trickle charge. An RPi can suck down a continously changing power input.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      That depends on the powerbank. Many powerbanks with Quick Charge 3.0 support will supply over 4A at 5V without power delivery negotiation. It's a hack, but so is the Raspberry Pi - I wouldn't trust a powerbank for anything critical, but I wouldn't trust a Raspberry Pi either.
    - 8y ago
8fingerlouie 8y ago
I was well on my way to having a forest of RPis. The boxes are cheap, and "they only use 5W"... until you have 10 of them. I replaced each and every one of them with an Intel NUC (6. gen Celeron) running FreeBSD, and created a jail for each of the services the individual RPIs maintained. It uses 5-9W (Idle), which is like 80% of the time. It has real Gigabit Ethernet, as well as a SATA SSD, and that alone is enough to provide much higher performance (for me) The only RPis i have left running are the individual nodes in my video/climate surveillance.
- Nashooo 8y ago
  Could you maybe post some more specs / setup ?
- mlrtime 8y ago
  Proxmox runs beautifully on a Gen 8 Intel Nuc. A lot more than 5-6 raspberry pis but much more powerful.
- tootie 8y ago
  Chick-Fil-A use a small cabinet of NUCs and deploy an arbitrary number of services via Kubernetes to all there restaurants. It's a pretty neat setup. https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541 https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at...
  - Already__Taken 8y ago
    I'm sure i've seen this as a talk too, it was pretty humble iirc they seemed surprised how practical it turned out to be.
collyw 8y ago
It does seem to be "for the sake of it". Why would you want a web based IDE when you could have a desktop app for way less effort?
- brootstrap 8y ago
  hehe , yeah. i mean it's cool but this was basically, "Pi is a server and you can run software on servers". I was hoping for something that used some extra electrical components and circuitry to accomplish something more then just running software. I'd actually argue it's easy to get set up on the cloud hosted versions of this stuff! sure it helps to roll your own everything (git, jira, IDE...) and i appreciate the work and write up. Plus those rpi's do look pretty fuckin sweet, it makes my nerd senses tingle
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Having exposed GPIO pins is nice. I'm running a log display on a RPi 1, but there's also a 7-segment status display for the team, showing build+prod data. Not sure how I'd do that on a PC...serial port, probably.
    - cherrypepsi 8y ago
      On a PC, Arduino flashed with Firmata. It lets you write behavior in whatever language you want. It also keeps the serial connection open at all times so you can send commands as you go (e.g. with a Python REPL) USB-to-serial still exists but the support for it is kind of crimped now due to security concerns (in Windows at least) and you can also damage the PC if the external circuit is not thought out correctly. Not really sure if the USB adapter manages to isolate enough of the risk though, I have only used Firmata...
      - Piskvorrr 8y ago
        USB-to-serial has, first and foremost, horrible jitter issues.

helthanatos 8y ago

My thoughts exactly. I was hoping to find something more useful than the same benefits t I'd get from a free azure subscription.

hnuser1234 8y ago
Something about the RPi seems to motivate new hobbyists in ways that hosted VMs just don't.
- jachee 8y ago
  It's quite difficult to put a sticker on a VM.
  - ahje 8y ago
    Closer to the truth than one might think. The Pi can be tinkered with in the same way one could tinker with an Amiga or an Atari back in the days. You can, of course, tinker around in a Docker container or a VM as well, but they're not physical products and therefore not "real" in the same sense.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  current gen skilled hobbyists grew up with fancying "physical" objects. a RPi is a physical object manipulating your data. a hosted VM(even if hosted on your own personal machine) doesn't have the same "tactility"

MrKristopher 8y ago

Same. Hosting websites at your house? Slower load times for your users. Hosting git at your house? If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. Hosting a manual WordPress installation? That's making work for yourself IMO.

pjc50 8y ago
The downside of decentralisation is that it's often just centralisation in your hands.
- number6 8y ago
  Could also be a upside :)
dspillett 8y ago
> If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. This is what off-site backups are for. You have them, for your hosted services as well as your home ones, right?! OK so with a hosted service you have the advantage of them managing uptime and recovery matters to an extent, but I still prefer to have my own backups on another host, so I have the data in my hands if the whole service goes offline for a time. I'd agree with your other points but I don't think the "what about a site-down situation?" matter differs between self and remote hosted options (unless, perhaps, you are paying a pile for nice renumeration-backed SLA promises).
- MrKristopher 8y ago
  Backups would be great and solve the issue I mentioned. I assumed that of all the people tinkering on the Pi, only a minority would set up automated backups
8fingerlouie 8y ago
Hosting websites at your house? Slower load times for your users. Hosting git at your house? If your house burns, you might lose all copies of the code. I'm guilty of both, although my home connection is a 300/300 mbit fiber connection with a static IP. I make versioned backups locally and remote daily, just as i would from any VPS host. The only reason i'm considering moving all the internet facing stuff to a VPS is to allow me to "relax" a bit, by minimizing the amount of public services/ports that can have potential exploits on my home network. I've tried to minimize the damage an attacker can make by using FreeBSD jails. I already segregate the network traffic in LAN, DMZ, SERVERS, KIDS, IOT and GUESTS, with the only route being through the firewall for access to other VLANS, as well as not allowing traffic from certain VLANS onto others. I monitor logs religiously. I'm guessing a VPS would probably allow me to sleep a bit easier at night, though i'd still have the same amount of maintenance work.

shams93 8y ago

Yeah my story of using one to write my startup's MVP after my thinkpad finally bought the ghost is maybe more compelling because I actually used it for everything until we got our first customer and I scored a mac for a more standard professional desktop environment. In a pinch it has enough functionality to build and launch a web application. Obviously not ideal but it actually worked in emergency for me.

matthewwiese 8y ago
Now that's something I'd love to read about! My only comparable experience was during my most recent co-op where I used an Asus C300 Chromebook running Gallium OS 2.1, and it served me quite well for the work I was doing. Although using modern websites when you only have 2 GB of RAM and a mobile Celeron chip is absolutely painful...

anonytrary 8y ago

I was confused about it, too. It made more sense when I thought of his blog as a series of tutorials for people who want to learn how to use RPI.

clanrebornyes 8y ago

I've Rasp Pi + alpha card + 50K mah powerbank as my router, which creates 3 APs, one with Tor other with work VPN and last with my home connection. All use cloudflare dns+ pi hole to block ads. I use another PI as a media server and for remote torrent downloading.

sgt 8y ago
Is a powerbank an efficient and safe UPS for a RPi? I was at some point told powerbanks are not a good solution for Pi's, but I cannot remember the reasoning.
- clanrebornyes 8y ago
  It's not - it's a hack. Powerbanks aren't design for random surge in power output which is what Raspberry Pi requires. Usually used for charging other batteries.
  - u02sgb 8y ago
    Can you clarify why? Surely they are just normal batteries with a charging circuit? I'd have thought it was more a problem with "pass through charging" where the battery needs to discharge (RPi) and charge at the same time.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
      Powerbanks are designed for continous load for a trickle charge. An RPi can suck down a continously changing power input.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    That depends on the powerbank. Many powerbanks with Quick Charge 3.0 support will supply over 4A at 5V without power delivery negotiation. It's a hack, but so is the Raspberry Pi - I wouldn't trust a powerbank for anything critical, but I wouldn't trust a Raspberry Pi either.
  - 8y ago

8fingerlouie 8y ago

I was well on my way to having a forest of RPis. The boxes are cheap, and "they only use 5W"... until you have 10 of them. I replaced each and every one of them with an Intel NUC (6. gen Celeron) running FreeBSD, and created a jail for each of the services the individual RPIs maintained. It uses 5-9W (Idle), which is like 80% of the time. It has real Gigabit Ethernet, as well as a SATA SSD, and that alone is enough to provide much higher performance (for me) The only RPis i have left running are the individual nodes in my video/climate surveillance.

Nashooo 8y ago
Could you maybe post some more specs / setup ?
mlrtime 8y ago
Proxmox runs beautifully on a Gen 8 Intel Nuc. A lot more than 5-6 raspberry pis but much more powerful.
tootie 8y ago
Chick-Fil-A use a small cabinet of NUCs and deploy an arbitrary number of services via Kubernetes to all there restaurants. It's a pretty neat setup. https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541 https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at...
- Already__Taken 8y ago
  I'm sure i've seen this as a talk too, it was pretty humble iirc they seemed surprised how practical it turned out to be.

collyw 8y ago

It does seem to be "for the sake of it". Why would you want a web based IDE when you could have a desktop app for way less effort?

brootstrap 8y ago
hehe , yeah. i mean it's cool but this was basically, "Pi is a server and you can run software on servers". I was hoping for something that used some extra electrical components and circuitry to accomplish something more then just running software. I'd actually argue it's easy to get set up on the cloud hosted versions of this stuff! sure it helps to roll your own everything (git, jira, IDE...) and i appreciate the work and write up. Plus those rpi's do look pretty fuckin sweet, it makes my nerd senses tingle
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Having exposed GPIO pins is nice. I'm running a log display on a RPi 1, but there's also a 7-segment status display for the team, showing build+prod data. Not sure how I'd do that on a PC...serial port, probably.
  - cherrypepsi 8y ago
    On a PC, Arduino flashed with Firmata. It lets you write behavior in whatever language you want. It also keeps the serial connection open at all times so you can send commands as you go (e.g. with a Python REPL) USB-to-serial still exists but the support for it is kind of crimped now due to security concerns (in Windows at least) and you can also damage the PC if the external circuit is not thought out correctly. Not really sure if the USB adapter manages to isolate enough of the risk though, I have only used Firmata...
    - Piskvorrr 8y ago
      USB-to-serial has, first and foremost, horrible jitter issues.