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Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

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Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#21

Post by andrewzah »

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Indeed. One actually useful case I found was using an rpi with shairport-sync + owntone to allow airplay streaming. I got a quality DAC from hifiberry [0].

Another use was running HomeAssistant, but I migrated that to my real server.

Another use is having an external InfluxDB + Grafana monitoring setup so I can view stats even if the server goes down.

Lastly, you can take X amount of raspberry pis and run a kubernetes cluster with k3s. [1]

Since I don't play with my cluster much, most of my pis just sit around gathering dust...

0: https://www.hifiberry.com/

1: https://k3s.io/

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#22

Post by gambiting »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #17
albertzeyer wrote: post #9

We use a small drink kiosk touch pad powered by Rasperry Pi, using this simple software project: https://github.com/rwth-i6/drink-kiosk Works great. Except the SD card seems to be dying now after 3 years of constant usage (well, less usage during the enforced home-office times).

Check out the high endurance SD cards they typically support 10 to 100 times the writes other SD cards do and aren't that much more expensive. They are most often used in dashcams and the like.

Or for a kiosk you could probably run exclusively from RAM and never touch the SD card after the initial boot.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#23

Post by amelius »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #18

Could someone explain it to me what burger memes are about? I'm not sure if displaying meat on screen is a good idea unless you run a fast food shop.

Is showing anything on a billboard screen a good idea, given the power consumption when nobody is looking?

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#24

Post by bombcar »

andrewzah wrote: post #21
Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Indeed. One actually useful case I found was using an rpi with shairport-sync + owntone to allow airplay streaming. I got a quality DAC from hifiberry [0]. Another use was running HomeAssistant, but I migrated that to my real server. Another use is having an external InfluxDB + Grafana monitoring setup so I can view stats even if the server goes down. Lastly, you can take X amount of raspberry pis and run a kubernete…

That's a big one, unless you're doing actual IO on the Pi itself, if you have a server you can likely virtualize or docker whatever you were going to do with the Pi.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#25

Post by amelius »

agumonkey wrote: post #3

What about powering the information system ?

Indeed, before I clicked the link I thought this was about replacing the entire IT infrastructure (servers, laptops and PCs) by RPis.

Disappointed to see that this was about controlling some LEDs and billboard screens instead.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#26

Post by kd913 »

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Can I heavily recommend the use of them as a pihole + Wireguard VPN + DNSCryptProxy Server.

Pihole -> Great use for a network wide adblocker/DHCP server.

Wireguard VPN -> In combination with a DDNS setup and some port forwarding enables the use of a global private VPN. I think it's a prerequisite for a decent home-automation setup.

DNSCryptProxy -> Great for ensuring all DNS requests on the network via DNS over HTTPS. Kind of useful because frankly ISPs are sniffing DNS traffic. Also useful for bypassing DNS based ISP filters.

The above basically enabled me to create a 5 country wide private VPN by giving VPNs to family members. It enables me to print/scan things from abroad, access CPU resources/servers/GPUs/Webcams/automation and obviously browse as if I am in another place.

My family when they are abroad, can now work as if they aren't.

It also saves power (reducing analytics traffic), improves privacy and takes about a weekend to setup.

They also make great personal gifts too.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#27

Post by 404mm »

agumonkey wrote: post #3

What about powering the information system ?

I mean, let’s be real, what could it actually power? I can think of a few applications but it certainly won’t be much.

- dhcp / dns / radius for the office - maybe internet router, if they don’t have a too fast connection (>500 mbps) - egress MTA - intranet wiki or ticketing - resource monitoring

But yah, I agree with others, the title is a bit click-bait.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#28

Post by [deleted] »

kd913 wrote: post #26
Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Can I heavily recommend the use of them as a pihole + Wireguard VPN + DNSCryptProxy Server. Pihole -> Great use for a network wide adblocker/DHCP server. Wireguard VPN -> In combination with a DDNS setup and some port forwarding enables the use of a global private VPN. I think it's a prerequisite for a decent home-automation setup. DNSCryptProxy -> Great for ensuring all DNS requests on the network via DNS over HTTPS…

[deleted]

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#29

Post by byteface »

nice. i've done simliar projects with unipis in hotels as its cheaper than crestron. Seeing that din rail brought back some memories. you can attach an infrared reciever to the pins and use lirc to then basically do whatever from a universal remote aswell which is a cool upgrade. put infra on a pizero on the network so it can go in ceiling or discretely somewhere. you might also find the AC has an http interface . they often modbus but samsung have http ones too. so u may be able to control that. one thing you can do is read the serial signals coming out of an AC controller and record the bytes. then just store them as instrucitons and send the same bytes over the same wire to hack it. takes a lot of fiddling.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#30

Post by aweiland »

kd913 wrote: post #26
Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Can I heavily recommend the use of them as a pihole + Wireguard VPN + DNSCryptProxy Server. Pihole -> Great use for a network wide adblocker/DHCP server. Wireguard VPN -> In combination with a DDNS setup and some port forwarding enables the use of a global private VPN. I think it's a prerequisite for a decent home-automation setup. DNSCryptProxy -> Great for ensuring all DNS requests on the network via DNS over HTTPS…

Any good tutorials on setting up Wireguard? This (and Pihole) have been on my todo list for a while.
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