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Run your home on a Raspberry Pi
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoThe only issue now is, where the fuck can you buy a raspberrypi now?!
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoA sizable percentage of all of the Pi devices made likely are sitting unused in boxes in closets around the world. The resale value isn't high enough to motivate many people to go find them and sell them to those who would put them into productive use.
- qgin 4y agoGood alternative is getting used Chromeboxes or Intel NUCs on eBay for $30-ish each.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoYeah and even an outdated atom box with a decent SSD way outperforms a pi when running something like Home Assistant. While using about the same power (5W or so). It's a much better option if you don't need the GPIOs that the pi offers (I do so I do use one, but with an SSD over USB)
- chevman 4y agoWhat are good models to search for? I think my rpi or SD card just bit the dust, so looking for a new mini home server.
- squarefoot 4y agoTake a look at https://mrchromebox.tech https://mrchromebox.tech, particularly the "Supported Devices" page for models that can be upgraded to a firmware allowing the install of other OSes. Chromeboxes and Chromebooks by default prevent the user from installing and running anything except ChromeOS, which is a lot less powerful than Linux and others, but thankfully that limitation can be worked around. I've repurposed a good number of them, mainly Asus and HP ones, by following the instructions at that site, and never encountered any problems. I also have all my Raspberries collecting dust after I swapped the last working one running Kodi with a Asus CN62 Chromebox: the performance difference is huge.
- cosmic_quanta 4y agoI bought a raspberry pi 4 in Canada from pishop.ca a few weeks ago
- agilob 4y agoebay?
- jwm20 4y agohttps://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/ (there are twitter and telegram bots to provide alerts) I managed to get one from Adafruit last week. They restock ~weekly, typically Wednesdays, and sell out within a few minutes of the notification going out.
- GaylordTuring 4y agoI don't get how they can sell out so quickly. Why won't stores simply raise the price in order to reach parity between supply and demand?
- isoprophlex 4y ago... because they're not douchebags?
- jhgb 4y agoSupply and demand balancing doesn't make you a douchebag.
- javawizard 4y agoBecause the Raspberry Pi Foundation typically negotiates agreements with its resellers stating that they won't sell above MSRP.
- jjeaff 4y agoThe official suppliers are required to sell at MSRP. People buy and then resell at higher prices so you can usually find them on amazon and eBay for double or more the MSRP.
- daverol 4y agoAt the https://www.raspberrypi.com/raspberry-pi-store/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/raspberry-pi-store/ in Cambridge UK :)
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoIt depends also on whether you need a real name brand Raspberry Pi or whether you can use any equivalent computer. For instance, pine64 makes significantly nicer hardware in the same price range and is actually in stock.
- e3bc54b2 4y agoI'd pay Pine64 50% markup if they'd just deliver to my damn country. Every now and them, I check their store, just itching to buys stuff and build on top, but no delivery for me. Any other similarly supported/open alternatives you'd recommend?
- m463 4y agoI was surprised to find pi's are going for > $100 on amazon. I think the nuc-like boxes might be competitive, but I wonder if they aren't inflated too.
- wiradikusuma 4y agoI'm planning to buy a house and making it "smart". Does anyone know any resource that can guide me? Something like garage door that opens with a tap on my phone, music that follows me room to room, door camera that can be viewed from TV ("alt-tab" while watching Netflix), lights controlled by voice, smart mirrors. Can be a blog, a forum, or a book, but it should be holistic—I don't want it to end up like a Goldberg machine.
- agilob 4y agohttps://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/
- catalyst5a 4y agoFor those already in Apple’s walled garden, I’d also recommend: https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homebridge/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homebridge/
- lilyball 4y agoI've been using Homebridge and I'm currently in the process of switching over to Home Assistant. Homebridge has been very useful for what it does, but it's also very limited. I haven't fully committed to it yet but it's already looking like Home Assistant can replace 100% of what I'm using Homebridge for while offering a lot more options. At this point I would recommend starting with Home Assistant instead of Homebridge even if you just care about HomeKit support.
- Digit-Al 4y agoTroy Hunt did a short series on using Home Assistant https://www.troyhunt.com/iot-unravelled-part-1-its-a-mess-but-then-theres-home-assistant/ https://www.troyhunt.com/iot-unravelled-part-1-its-a-mess-bu...
- M0r13n 4y agoI was one of those guys that hosted nearly everything on a bunch of Pis. While it was fun initially, I eventually got frustrated. Yeah, self-hosting stuff is fun'n games. But sadly things do break, SD cards fail, hardware dies and backups do not work. Personally, I am only hosting a few important services locally. These services are one hundred percent automated and can be deployed in minutes. For everything else I pay someone else to host it or I got rid of it entirely. That does not mean that it isn't a great hobby. I just found myself investing may too much time for a small benefit. Also, I think that I did not learn anything new by preparing the sixth Pi or running some Playbook/Dockerfile/Installer that someone else has written
- BrianHenryIE 4y ago> SD cards fail I came here to say the same thing. I'm in the process of migrating to an SSD because I've had two SD failures. I picked up a Samsung 850 250GB for $25 on eBay and need to buy a USB cable for ~$25. So it's a little more expensive than just buying an SD card, but comparable to buying a few SD cards!
- traceroute66 4y ago> need to buy a USB cable Hmm... Replacing the perils of an SD card with the perils of relying on a USB cable connection ? Anybody who's been in IT long enough will know inadvertent USB disconnects happen.
- creativenolo 4y ago
- pkulak 4y agoEven better: buy an old office desktop from about 10 years ago, upgrade the ram and storage (if you feel like it) and install Proxmox. Now you can run as many servers as you want, faster, probably cheaper, and with much less hardware.
- m463 4y agoI did this too and it's nice. I have a vm for macos. I have containers for git, dav, nextcloud, etc. only thing I would love is something like docker to build containers from one dockerfile.
- pkulak 4y agoI went halfway to creating a VM for MacOS, but apparently if you sign in to anything in that state, you can get your account closed. :/ Could be great as a test/dev box though. EDIT: Just run Portainer in an unprivileged LXC container. That's what I do. Isolation, native performance, plus a point-and click web manager for Docker containers. It's absolutely delightful!
- edf13 4y agoQuieter and better power efficiency too?
- pkulak 4y agoProbably better power use than a bunch of PIs, but no, not than one or two, and not quieter. The one I bought is basically silent, though, with the stock cooler. Just hard to compete with fanless.
- thaway2839 4y agoI thought RPis were extremely power efficient. Is that wrong?
- jjeaff 4y ago
- jerodsanto 4y agoThanks for sharing the show! We’re working on a transcript, which should be posted in a day or two. You can get notified of when it posts here: https://changelog.com/podcast/489#transcript https://changelog.com/podcast/489#transcript
- fimdomeio 4y agoThe one thing I don't really get is why, pi's everywhere? Most of the times an esp32 will be more than enough for a few sensors. No need to be running a full OS and the added benefit they are actually available right now to buy.
- e3bc54b2 4y agoPi is standard, extremely well supported, has GPIO and most people are familiar with running a container and gluing python compared to writing C (I know about micropython, but Joe PythonLearner doesn't).
- chrismatheson 4y agoIve encountered this sentiment a lot from my hardware engineering friends, I dont know if its a side effect of the job or something, but they tend to value the sort of "efficiency of exactly the right chip / protocol / whatever" over the "versatility / community / perceived technical quality " around the same. Sort of like a callback to Betamax VS VHS. - Hydrogen fuel cells are a better technology than batteries - Zigbee is a better wireless protocol than wifi - you dont need a RPi, an ATTiny and some transistors would work fine sure, but wifi is being improved for tons of use cases and Zigbee only really has the one use case just now, getting started writing code for x86 with a full OS is much simpler than for a microcontroller etc etc ultimately the network effect / whatever kick in and the popular stuff usually ends up winning IMHO
- swayvil 4y agoMy home is made out of drywall. Hasn't crashed yet.
- pojzon 4y agoTbh the only thing Im waiting for to make a move on smart-home thingy is.. a good voice assistant. Alexa, Siri etc just dont cut it and are not private assistants. I want Jarvis for personal use.
- behnamoh 4y agoIt's possible to make one for yourself using Python.
- kn100 4y agoIt's probably been mentioned before, but if you want something that is: * A fair bit more grunty than a Pi * Fairly power efficient * x86 * More of a standard computer You should consider picking up what Servethehome has coined the TinyMiniMicro nodes. They're the kind of computers you typically find strapped to the back of a monitor in a doctors office and usually are fairly power efficient machines. I, for example, have a Lenovo m710q - which has an Intel 6500t (a quad core CPU), 16gb of ram, and a 512GB SSD, which I paid around 200USD for, that is significantly easier to manage than a Pi (since it's 'just' a computer) and sucks back around 10w of power at idle (which is roughly triple a Single Pi 4) - but still in the realm of negligible. It actually replaced a Pi 4 for my self hosted home stuff, and it was a fantastic choice that I do not regret. Lots of this type of computer are available in all sorts of configurations, and the more 'standard' nature of the machine opens up a lot of possibilities the Pi either makes more difficult, or impossible. For example, my node hosts a bunch of services for me, but it also acts as a Steam In Home Streaming machine that I have connected to my living room television, which allows me to stream games from my desktop to the TV fairly effortlessly.
- alexchantavy 4y agoHow about things like old Macbooks?
- kn100 4y agoWhy not! I'm not particularly familiar with Macbooks personally, but If it can run what you need it to run, then it's an absolutely fine use for one! I'd consider removing the battery and running without it for safety reasons, but I'm not certain if you can do that with Macbooks - and besides, a laptop with a battery installed could be considered a home server with a UPS :P The only more specific advice I have is to stick to stuff 7th Generation or newer on the Intel side if you plan on a media center use case, since 7th Gen intel stuff is when they introduced x265 hardware accelerated decoding/encoding into the GPU found on those CPUs, which is a great help. I love repurposing EOL hardware for this kind of use case, since it's imo a better solution than buying yet more electronics, and it also saves something from the e-waste trash heap.
- bluesquared 4y agoDoes anyone have any experience with https://www.indigodomo.com/ https://www.indigodomo.com/ ? I've always had it bookmarked, but never had the time to think about it or to do anything more than a random Pi for homebridge for a few Z-wave switches I have.