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Ideas for making use of raspberry pi 3 that is going to waste?
lowendguy7
Member
It annoys me that every day I see it and have not made use of it.
I originally wanted to buy it to run android but it doesn't really work that well for that purpose and needs alot of fiddling- something which I am not averse to but have not made the time for.
I can't think of anything useful to use it for and I hate things going to waste.
I mainly make web automation scripts in python if that will help guide suggestions.
Comments
Well it would make a nice headless server to run your scripts on i guess? Could also double as print server and If you don't care much for speed file server. Software router is could work too but i think the specs aren't that good for such a use. I've seen Pis run Kodi so if your into watching movies that should work also.
Currently i'm using mine with Rasplex to watch Stuff from my Plex Server. Def. cheaper than these heroku(?) boxes and works great
Plex Server.
Co-locate that PI as your monitoring unit for servers, sites or others.
The simplest and easiest idea is "ship that to someone lucky here at your/their cost"
storage box!
I too didn't know what to do with my Raspberry Pi's (have 4 currently). Not sure what led me to it, but I found some tutorials for how to set up a Sonos-like system with only Raspberry Pi's. If you don't know what Sonos is, it is essentially a wireless audio system that can play your music in any/all rooms of your house.
Using this guide here:
http://www.gerrelt.nl/RaspberryPi/wordpress/tutorial-installing-squeezelite-player-on-raspbian/
I set up the four Pi's as squeezelite players with random speakers I already had and placed them around the house (bedroom, living room, kitchen, & den). Installed the logitech squeezebox server on a box in the basement. And now I'm able to play music throughout the whole house without needing to run any wires.
The sound quality when using the 3.5mm jack on the Pi board is pretty crap. But if you pick up a cheap USB audio card, then the quality increases exponentially. I picked up a few of this one here.
Besides that I know a lot of people here run Pi-hole as a local DNS server / ad blocker.
Pi-hole DNS adblocker for your network.
Well, iirc Pis only have USB 2.0 and that being the only way to connect a HD you'd max out at like 33MB/s which may or may not be sufficient.
Hmm I had read about pi-hole recently and that seems like the most interesting so far idea but I already don't see ads really with just adblock plus so how is that better?
I am not interested in listening to music or such things but rather practical applications to boost prodictivity etc.
I thought about using it for running scripts but I didn't see the point since it is barely going to give much more crunching power- ie i have plenty of hardware power with my 8 core- my internet connection is my main bottleneck
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Yeah CPU power wise it's likely to be a downgrade. I just don't like having to many background tasks on my desktop but if you scripts hammer the CPU running them on a Pi is not going to be much fun.
I have one set up as my network audio player. Using Volumio and a HiFiBerry Dac+ Pro to my receiver. I have a few Odroid C2's that I use for other projects.
It is better cause you don't have to install adblock on your devices, wether PC, smartphone or whatever. You can also add domains manually for example to block telemetry data from windows 10.
No device in your network will receive ads.
It can reduce the number of ads on streams if you watch on Roku. Or if you connect your phone/tablet to your wireless it can cut down on ads there too.
I am curious as to how that works. I guess it'll have to MITM https?
Your router is using DNS servers from your provider, mostly. But if you change the DNS Server to your Raspberry's IP, it will use Pi-hole as DNS. Pi-hole blocks all ad domain requests.
You can read tutorials about it. Very ez to install.
I have a Pi 2 running PiHole, which is awesome. Plan on making a retro pi, or two, with a Pi 3 pretty soon.
I'm working on making some self-hosted apps I have running in my home exposed thru a VPS via a VPN back to my home network.
I also use an old spare laptop as an SSH tunnel to manage my VPS's. A Pi would work just fine for this.
I see. That is sure better than messing with https. Downside would be lots of empty spaces on websites as it can only disrupt the connection to the adservers but not remove the html code.
Pi-hole acts as the DNS server for your network. Change the DNS of your router to use the Pi then all your devices will use Pi-hole for DNS requests. You also set what DNS servers you want Pi-hole to use to fulfill actual DNS requests, but it blocks known ad servers.
What is the advantage of that vs using ssh from your main computer?
For sure it just disrupt the connection but as mentioned before, you dont have to install adblocker on your devices.
It blocks even more than ads like malware, spammer, telemetry and tracker.
You can install custom blocklists. My Pi blocks over 2.7 million domains atm.
Yeah, sorry didn't want to make it seem as there weren't any upsides.
I use mine as a VPN server, I installed PiVPN, Shadowsocks and Softether. Very useful when I visit China.
I have several computers that I use and own quite a few VPS's (went a little wild when I discovered LES, LEB, LET and then this past Black Friday sale....). It was getting a bit out of hand to remember what username/password went with what server and then I had keys installed on some servers to increase security, and if I needed to remote from my phone it was a hassle.
I decided to use one box as the connecting point, so no matter what computer I'm using, I just connect back to this one laptop, and then from there access the other servers - setup SSH aliases with connection details for each server, restrict each server to only use key files, etc.
Now this could be something useful to me. Do you use it without it interfering with your main connection?
I recently have made a setup on my desktop where I use lxc containers to make discreet vpn connections so I can run particular programs over vpn without it interfering with things I don't want vpned.
Maybe the pi could be useful in a similar manner?
Could it be used to run as device for running suspect programs/visiting suspect sites like a virtualbox? I was thinking of maybe using something like tails linux so then watch streaming sites which may have trash malware/spyware on them and when you shut it down anything would be cleaned. Same with suspect files you would like to open.
Hmm come to think of it you could also use it to store passwords and other sensitive stuff couldnt you. It would be great for that coupled with the small 3.5" screens since it is as small as a notebook then already have one of these screens but didn't get it going yet since I was using android images rather than 'normal' linux distros when I tried so the drivers would not work.
I have been starting to delete sensitive info from my main computer now and keeping passwords on paper but I wondered how I could keep them digitally, and keeping it disconnected from the internet the pi would suit the job eh. Also offline btc wallet.
I turned my last one into an Alexa using a bluetooth speaker and usb microphone. Asked it stupid questions for a while then found it pointless so packed it away again.
Once upon a time I used a raspi as a hombrew IPMI for a colo'ed server without IPMI. Connected a USB-Serial adapter to the pi and connected the other end to COM1 on the server, then enabled console redirection over serial in the BIOS. Worked reasonably well and saved me a trip to the datacenter a couple of times.
This:
Or https://github.com/Fmstrat/diy-ipmi
Or VPNserver + Guacamole
This thread reminds me of all the idle servers I have...
I traded my Pi 3 (used never) for a lower end laptop. Hope it's getting some use!
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Oooo very interesting! Hadn't run across this before.