Hiya!
I have a Raspberry Pi 4B set up as a print server, so it has to run 24/7. But it irks me that it’s mostly idling.
I’d move my website to it, but I don’t want to deal with it being open to the internet. The same goes for an e-mail server.
I was also thinking of running a Minecraft server on it. (Being able to play on the same world from different devices is kinda cool.) Alas, my RPi only has 4 GiBs of RAM. I worry that such a load would interfere with the print server.
Any ideas what I could run on it?
I run a asterisk PJSIP VOIP server on my raspberry pi 5 8GB. I had to use the git and build and recompile and manually load all PJSIP modules because for some reason I couldn’t even find an asterisk package on apt db for ARM64 for some fucking reason. Also had to containerize it within a docker because the shit couldn’t properly compile without interfering with native system binaries. Shit is so fucking goated and can do PSTN via twilio trunking (call numbers outside of the phone server’s number base so basically anyone as long as you make the phone numbers parsed in extensions.conf for each country you wanna call XD). Currently works within LAN but I am planning on making it accessible over the internet using my domain and a tunnel for UDP if possible or just a VPN since my router is being a removed with SIP packets rn. I am having trouble with that part but once it’s done I can quite literally ditch any phone plan and use it. Twilio hardly even charges shit for voice rates 🤣🤣🤣. You could also self host your domain + email providing service and then connect that to thunderbird for full schizo-level privacy or sum shit. That’s what I do to ditch web-email BS
Pihole, homeassistant, a music server using moodeaudio
Another vote for Pi-hole here. I don’t know how I lived without it before!
I use an adblocker on both my PC and my phone. Does a Pi-hole have many advantages over that?
PiHole is DNS based ad blocking and local DNS for everything on your network. So, even things that can’t run their own adblocker.
So it can block ads in Google Chrome on my moms phone? Then I’ll have to figure out how to set it up!
Do you often run into issues when blocking traffic like this? I can imagine some software (i.e. Samsung’s or Google’s bloatware) kicking up a fuss.
Sometimes it can. Google and Samsung never had an issue though. The more ad lists you setup the more false-positives you get.
But 99% of the time it’s fine. The other 1% you open the dashboard and look at the last few blocks and whitelist whatever it causing issues.
Depends on the level of block lists you add. The defaults are pretty sane and it doesn’t need any configuration, you configure your router to use it
Sometimes I’ve found a site that gets partially blocked and causes a fuss. There’s an option to allowlist domain(s).
Also, some sites try to use ad domains to serve legit traffic, and some use legit domains to serve ads, so it’s not perfect, but it works pretty darn well overall.
Ive been using the OISD list for myself and family members for the past couple of years without issues. It’s specifically made to to be unnoticeable, by whitelisting hosts that would cause issues.
One thing to note is that it’s not a full replacement for adblockers, as DNS blockers can only block full hosts and not all ads and tracking are served from dedicated hostnames. Things like YouTube ads will be unaffected by DNS based blocking. It does really make a difference, though, including for apps with banners.
Not just ad blocker, but tracking blockers too. Also, if you’ve got a simple little device like a WiFi controlled outlet switch, and through PiHole you notice it “phoning home” frequently even though you’re not using it… that’s a clue that you might not want to be keeping such things inside the same network where you check on your 401(k) account…
One major advantage is that on the domestic TV channels here in the UK which have ad breaks (essentially all of them except the BBC) it removes the ads altogether and the programmes run seamlessly from the part before the ad break into the part after. I still smile every time it happens!
That sounds cool as heck! But I am very confused about how television broadcasting works in the UK. This only works with some sort of over-the-internet TV, right?
Yes, that’s right. It would only work with TV over the internet and not with a digital signal transmitted direct to the TV via aerial.
Running those adblockers on your devices is extremely insecure. They register as a VPN and intercept HTTPS traffic. They decrypt the encrypted traffic, filter it, and encrypt again meaning all your communications are signed by this single app’s certificate. Not to mention any vulnerability would wreak havoc.
Does PiHole ever break a family member’s browsing, and then they don’t know to fix the issue because it would involve understanding opening up the PiHole web interface?
Yes, that does sometimes happen but the frequency depends on the blocking list used, or if multiple lists are used. When a family member encounters something like this, I can usually quite quickly identify the relevant blocked item and whitelist it.
And if you aren’t home or available?
Well, it takes a while longer to fix. The only times it’s happened (perhaps twice in 6 months) it’s been when a family member has been trying to buy something from a website. I can also access the Pi-hole remotely and—in the worst case scenario—just turn off blocking altogether for a short period.
Thanks for sharing.
It does look like there’s a way to use PiHole personally for those who share the network with those who don’t want it: leave default DNS server setttings alone except for your own devices.
Another vote for PiHole. It keeps your home network cleaner by ignoring the ads.
On my Rpi4B I run syncthing 24/7. It acts as my sync hub. All other machines are connected to it.
SANE scan server? Paperless ngx also comes to my mind, find it pretty useful.
I was trying to set up a scan server last week. No luck yet. 😅
Paperless ngx looks looks amazing. I was actually thinking of finding a solution for this type of thing as pdfgrep was getting kinda slow.
Paperless ngx
PiHole is a pretty light load, as are Home Assistant and Music Assistant. Frigate starts to make some heat, so don’t expect to get a full blown video classification / recording system.
Maybe Nextcloud? Jellyfin?
I’ll add Jellyfin to the list! Do you need a specific client to receive a stream or can say VLC or mpv do it?
Typically a web browser or dedicated app, but it’s open source so there are options. You might be able to stream directly with VLC, not sure.
You can use VLC if you get the stream url via a web browser, first. MPV can do the same.
The problem is VLC/MPV don’t have a built-in way to browse and pick what you want to play.
I wouldn’t recomend Jellyfin if it will transcode anything on a rpi4b.
Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!
Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:
- Homeassistant
- Fresh RSS
- Paperless NGX
- Syncthing
- PiHole or Adguard home
- Syncthing
BirdNet Pi!
You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.
If you don’t want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.
You could pihole
PiHole, PiVPN, maybe a reverse proxy like nginx proxy manager to make connecting to your various web management portals you have an easy way to map it to a human readable url
Another vote for a music server. Gonic/Navidrome is pretty low power and super useful!
Home assistant is another option, but I’ll say that if you’re serious about home automation you’ll quickly outgrow a Pi. It’ll run if you only have a handful of devices though.
I like the music server idea! Where do you get your music? Many artists don’t even sell CDs nowadays.
Home assistant is probably not for me. The house I live in is still very analogue. I enjoy not having to debug software when investigating why there’s no hot water.
Plenty of artists still do sell CDs though. I often buy them at the merch stand at shows. Many also sell DRM free digital files on sites like Bandcamp. I also buy a lot of music at the thrift stores and rip them. If all else fails, there’s always the high seas.
Almost every time I look on Bandcamp, the artist I am looking for isn’t there. :( Also, last time I tried buying something there they only accepted PayPal which I stopped using a while ago. But it seems they accept normal card payments now. Neat.
I buy CDs – I even bought a CD drive to rip them – but international shipping really kills me. I guess brick-and-mortar music shops are still a thing…
There’s also qobuz for your more mainstream music needs. And you can always use a YouTube downloaded like yt-dlp together with a music tagging tool like MusicBrainz Picard.
Its Qobuz 😅
You are right. I’ve corrected my comment
Weird. It must be that my taste is very indie/alternative. You can always also check if the artist has their own shop.
That’s how Jonathan Coulton does it. They Might Be Giants does it as well (in addition to a Bandcamp), but most of their stuff from 1990-1996 is stuck on their former label, so they can’t sell DRM-free audio, only vinyl and/or cassette.
For CDs, Amazon, ebay, or discogs. Digital music I usually get from the artist’s webstore if possible, otherwise I’ll buy it from Amazon or BandCamp.
One heads up, Buying and downloading digital music from Amazon is a pain in the butt if you have an Amazon Music subscription. Easy and straightforward though without.
Apple music is also possible but you have to burn the tracks to CD using itunes to move it out of Apple’s ecosystem.
I also hear good things about Tidal but I’ve never used them.
I did not know that Amazon sold digital music. But it kills me that Amazon and Apple are the two big choices. Out of the frying pan into the fire…
I thought that Tidal was a streaming service, and that you can rip music from there like you can from Youtube or Spotify.
There’s also a lot of smaller solutions, like smaller record label websites, and legacy music stores in whatever country you are.
Nowadays, Apple is only really big for digital music if you are (or were) already really deep in their ecosystem. Not sure I’ve heard of any devices that play nice with their DRM in a while and last I had looked (admittedly many years ago) they did not have a compatible app for Android.
Apple music was bigger back 15 or 20 years ago for digital downloads due in large part to the iPod, though I occasionally hear of some odd band or another that only releases their stuff on iTunes.
And since this is a linux community, as a heads up, iTunes is only marginally functional, last I heard, in linux. Apparently it can’t detect connected devices. You’ll probably need a Windows or Mac system to run iTunes if you want to go that route.
Seconding Bandcamp & Qobuz, or ripping CDs. I use fre:ac to get accurate FLACs.
Yeah, I’m running home assistant with 43 Zigbee devices, 20 Wifi connected devices including about 150 channels of medium-high (once a minute) data logging (temperature, humidity, signal strength, sensor positions, radar occupancy info, etc.), and a Music Assistant instance, and while it’s streaming net-radio I’ve only got 98% idle on my Pi’s CPU, feeling the squeeze already /s.
Your Zigbee hub will run out of capacity long before the Pi. Solution: run multiple Zigbee hubs when you get to that point.
I have around 100 ZigBee devices, roughly 40 WiFi devices, three dozen integrations, Music Assistant, etc. And yeah I was feeling the squeeze. 🤷 Let alone security cameras…
Security cameras will do it, and the Pi5 doesn’t have hardware decode for h.264 the way the Pi4 does, so that becomes a big drain, particularly if you don’t drop the frame rates. I run a separate Pi (5, unfortunately) with a HAILO 8 hat (fortunately) for 5 video streams on Frigate - it needs some airflow to stay cool, but is only running about 30% CPU utilization for my streams.
