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Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

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Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#101

Post by mattkevan »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #70
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.

All the stuff I used to do on a large and clunky hot power hungry noisy Intel box is now comfortably running on a cluster of Raspberry Pi's tucked away in the basement ceiling where nobody can see them. I wish they were a little faster in some cases (particularly serving the Nextcloud UI) but overall I much prefer this setup, especially since I can add Raspberry Pi's to facilitate specific roles like I would in a pro…

They’re just plain handy to have around. I use mine as an Airplay receiver with shairport-sync, an ebook opds server with Calibre Web and as a development machine so I can continue working on websites when I only have access to iOS. It’s great!

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#102

Post by knodi123 »

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.

I have three. One was going to be a home security and automation server, but in the end, every feature it had was either something my family wound up hating, or something that worked 9 out of 10 times and was therefore useless, or something that proved slightly harder than I expected and was therefore too much trouble. So now, all it does is loudly announce the time of various things, like "Time to pick the kids up from school".

The other two pis are sitting in a project crate, ready to use if I ever find myself with extra free time again.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#103

Post by knodi123 »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #61
somehnguy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What power supply were you using? My Pi 4 running 2 instances of Octoprint kept crashing until I switched to their official power supply. On previous models I always got away with whatever power supply I had around but the 4 doesn't play around when it comes to power consumption.

The one it came with!

I had to replace the one mine came with. It was new-ish, so I was able to get it for free under warranty, but be aware- quality control for their power supplies is not great (at least as of ~2017)

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#104

Post by marcosdumay »

foxfluff wrote: post #43
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.

Do you have any references for MTBF or the Pi's failure modes in general? SD cards going out are pretty much the only thing people talk about, and that problem is easy to solve. Another thing is bad power supplies, again easily solved (and not the Pi's fault).

I have always used a few since the days of the original version. On my experience they last until I drop them, crush them with some tool, or step over them.

The power supply tends to be much shorter lived. I severely oversize those and even then they like to stop working after just a few years. The SD card is the shortest lived component by far, but it lasts longer and has a better failure mode if you disable swap. (Why do pi distros enable swap at all?)

Oh, and of course, since version 3 the power cable is the hardest component to get right. You need a very good cable, and you probably don't even know the specs on most of the ones you have...

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#106

Post by yumraj »

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…

> 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.

If you're using PiHole, you can just use cloudflared to do DoH. https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/cloudflared/

On a different note, biggest reason I've never installed a VPN at home is because I just prefer a deny-everything home network and worry I'll misconfigure something and cause a security issue.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#107

Post by mattmoose21 »

theHIDninja wrote: post #69
smarx007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The third one I tried had a fault where it would spontaneously shut down if I had any USB devices plugged into it for any reason at all (in this case it was a mouse and a flash drive). I have a power supply that is so weak that Pi would reboot when I plug a USB keyboard in it. Solution: never use weak power supplies on Pi's. > I have never seen the micro HDMI port on anything made before 2013 so the adapters requir…

I tried multiple power supplies. I even tried bench power supplies and overvolting them. Nothing worked. It fails for the same reason power strips fail if you plug too much into them. The Pi needs ~110% of what the input can even supply (that's ignoring the spec that says it should be 2.5 amps) and anything plugged in down-stream will need to take pieces out of that. >Pi 4 has 2 HDMI outputs! Two full-sized HDMI port…

>Anecdotal evidence. They are built like absolute trash and it's a miracle anybody says they work for any reason. As is your experience. I have had about 8 pi's (zero,2,3,4) without any issue and I have never heard anybody else with the amount of issues you've had. I think they are ubiquitous because they are inexpensive, well documented, and fairly well made. They would clearly not be as popular if everyone had your experience.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#108

Post by newman314 »

yumraj wrote: post #106
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…

> 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. If you're using PiHole, you can just use cloudflared to do DoH. https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/cloudflared/ On a different note, biggest reason I've never installed a VPN at home is because I just prefer a deny-eve…

YMMV but I’ve noticed that cloudflared has stability issues over time whereas dnscrypt has been rock solid for me (I run both on different systems). Probably going switch everything to dnscrypt esp since it supports odoh now.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#109

Post by newman314 »

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 used trailofbits/algo a long time ago for initial setup. Worked well at the time.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#110

Post by theHIDninja »

mattmoose21 wrote: post #107
theHIDninja wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried multiple power supplies. I even tried bench power supplies and overvolting them. Nothing worked. It fails for the same reason power strips fail if you plug too much into them. The Pi needs ~110% of what the input can even supply (that's ignoring the spec that says it should be 2.5 amps) and anything plugged in down-stream will need to take pieces out of that. >Pi 4 has 2 HDMI outputs! Two full-sized HDMI port…

>Anecdotal evidence. They are built like absolute trash and it's a miracle anybody says they work for any reason. As is your experience. I have had about 8 pi's (zero,2,3,4) without any issue and I have never heard anybody else with the amount of issues you've had. I think they are ubiquitous because they are inexpensive, well documented, and fairly well made. They would clearly not be as popular if everyone had your…

>well made

They are made from the floor sweepings in Sony's factory.

You don't hear about the failures because most people just buy them and throw them away. I would venture to guess that about 60% of their customers are one-time buyers that try to power it on once and throw it away because it doesn't work. The other 40% either won the lottery or put up with its constant stream of shit because they have a near monopoly. The same is true for 3d printers.

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