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Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

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Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#91

Post by beezischillin »

The Pi4 is an amazing piece of hardware. While relying on sd cards is a sure way to get a disappointing surprise, they now support booting off a USB drive, which is amazing. Couple it with even a sata ssd and a USB adapter and you’ll be amazed how fired up it becomes. A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. My biggest complaint really is the availability, especially now. I had to buy one of those mini Intel Atom PCs because I just couldn’t find a Pi4 anymore at a reasonable price.

I run an invoicing tool off mine, PiHole, NextCloud, UPS monitoring and HomeAssistant to control lights and heating in my home.

I have one serving as a controller and monitoring server for my 3D printer that I turned into a chunky little tablet with a 7” touchscreen and OctoPrint.

And another one for backups at the office.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#92

Post by noodlesUK »

beezischillin wrote: post #91

The Pi4 is an amazing piece of hardware. While relying on sd cards is a sure way to get a disappointing surprise, they now support booting off a USB drive, which is amazing. Couple it with even a sata ssd and a USB adapter and you’ll be amazed how fired up it becomes. A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. My biggest complaint really is the availability, especially now. I had to buy one of those mini Intel Atom…

What’s the invoicing tool you are using?

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#93

Post by handrous »

beezischillin wrote: post #91

The Pi4 is an amazing piece of hardware. While relying on sd cards is a sure way to get a disappointing surprise, they now support booting off a USB drive, which is amazing. Couple it with even a sata ssd and a USB adapter and you’ll be amazed how fired up it becomes. A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. My biggest complaint really is the availability, especially now. I had to buy one of those mini Intel Atom…

> A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds.

IIRC Lakka (a Linux that boots straight into Retroarch, based on the same micro-distro Kodi uses, I think) is booted and interactive, with a GUI, in like 2-3 seconds. I think it's using direct rendering to achieve that, though, not X or Wayland.

[EDIT] And that's off an SDCard.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#94

Post by beezischillin »

noodlesUK wrote: post #92
beezischillin wrote: post #91

The Pi4 is an amazing piece of hardware. While relying on sd cards is a sure way to get a disappointing surprise, they now support booting off a USB drive, which is amazing. Couple it with even a sata ssd and a USB adapter and you’ll be amazed how fired up it becomes. A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. My biggest complaint really is the availability, especially now. I had to buy one of those mini Intel Atom…

What’s the invoicing tool you are using?

It’s a small Laravel app my friend wrote for himself and shared with me.

Tom Lawrence (YouTuber who makes networking related videos) uses the open source one called InvoiceNinja. Apparently it’s pretty good!

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#95

Post by beezischillin »

handrous wrote: post #93
beezischillin wrote: post #91

The Pi4 is an amazing piece of hardware. While relying on sd cards is a sure way to get a disappointing surprise, they now support booting off a USB drive, which is amazing. Couple it with even a sata ssd and a USB adapter and you’ll be amazed how fired up it becomes. A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. My biggest complaint really is the availability, especially now. I had to buy one of those mini Intel Atom…

> A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. IIRC Lakka (a Linux that boots straight into Retroarch, based on the same micro-distro Kodi uses, I think) is booted and interactive, with a GUI, in like 2-3 seconds. I think it's using direct rendering to achieve that, though, not X or Wayland. [EDIT] And that's off an SDCard.

I should’ve been more specific! I meant Raspbian Lite :) That one certainly doesn’t boot in seconds off an SD card.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#96

Post by squarefoot »

theHIDninja wrote: post #36

That is surprising. I guess it's still economical for them to use these horrible computers despite the fact the mean time between failures is at best three weeks.

There are better solutions other than the Raspberries, often even cheaper, less power hungry and more open, but they struggle to gain visibility because they don't spend in advertising as much as the Raspberry Pi Foundation (Broadcom?) does.

Here's a list of over 400 boards. There's also a .csv file to downlaod for offline quick comparison. https://hackerboards.com/

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#97

Post by thedougd »

aweiland wrote: post #30
kd913 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're a Linux person, just skip all the other non-sense and create a systemd-networkd file. It's by far the simplest solution I've used, and doesn't require goofy unit files to start/stop/restart via wg tool.

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.net...

Then choose your firewall of choice to setup NAT and forwarding. I used firewalld, but not sure I'd recommend it. It's just the first solution I got working.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#98

Post by phamilton »

aweiland wrote: post #30
kd913 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd recommend just using Tailscale. It's wonderful.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#99

Post by barkingcat »

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.

to be honest they don't need your help by buying them, but they do need help with advocacy if you are in the uk and are part of nonprofit fund and foundations looking to give money to organizations

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/raspberry-pi-gets-45m-to-m...

they are primarily funded by government, ngo's, and other foundations.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#100

Post by handrous »

beezischillin wrote: post #95
handrous wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Linux without a GUI boots in mere seconds. IIRC Lakka (a Linux that boots straight into Retroarch, based on the same micro-distro Kodi uses, I think) is booted and interactive, with a GUI, in like 2-3 seconds. I think it's using direct rendering to achieve that, though, not X or Wayland. [EDIT] And that's off an SDCard.

I should’ve been more specific! I meant Raspbian Lite :) That one certainly doesn’t boot in seconds off an SD card.

Right, I wasn't trying to one-up you, and a "full" Linux distro of any kind will take longer than that, just pointing out that the bottleneck is not the hardware. The thing can boot really fast.
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