Raspberry Pi at Home 🥧 (2024-07-22)

Let's Take a Trip To Pie Country

What is an SBC?

A SBC or single board computer is a computer...on a single board. All the components, CPU, RAM, flash, i/o, on a single PCB or printed circuit board. They're usually really small and relatively inexpensive. They're commonly used for small hobbyist projects because they often have buses one can just shove raw wires into, they're small enough to cram into whatever you want, and have relatively low power usages. They are commonly associated with edge computing and IoT or internet of things. These are two interrelated concepts involving smart fridges and toasters. Thermostats, air quality sensors, and home security systems. Washers and dryers. Even soldering irons and your girlfriend's hair iron. Devices containing tiny computers connected to the internet, sometimes storing information and doing computations on a user's local infrastructure.

Buying Options

There are many brands to choose from:

However, the market is dominated by the Raspberry Pi. It is the de facto option and is synonymous with the term SBC. There are a number of models to choose from:

Why Raspberry Pi?

It being the de facto option it has the most support. The Pi project has: a Linux distribution, hardware /software support, devices such as sensors and monitors, and forums. And the massive slice of the market Pi has means third party support is substantial as well. There are countless add on boards or HATs and enclosures that can be had. No matter the fact that competing SBCs may have comparable or even surpassing performance capabilities, many will choose Raspberry Pi due the overwhelming support. The greatest con is the availability. Raspberry Pis have historically been extremely difficult to come by. Especially considering memory shortages, and global pandemic, and a chip shortage over the last few years, the 4th model was essentially impossible to get, especially at retail. There are entire databases dedicated to tracking retailer stocks. However, the release of the 5th model placated most and made obtaining at a reasonable price possible.

What I Use Them For

Again there are a plethora of way to utilize a Pi due to the sheer amount of openness and attachable boards and devices. I personally use them in my homelab. I use them to host a variety of services, usually through containerization such as Docker. My Raspberry Pi 4s and 5s serve:

• DNS through PiHole
• Dynamic DNS through ddclient and DuckDNS
• VPNs through PiVPN
• IP KVM using the PiKVM board
• File sharing through Samba
• Media through Plex
• Password management through Passbolt
• Site hosting through Apache and Nginx

A freshly arrived piKVM

That piKVM running booted off of a USB

I've used containers to run things like this as often as possible. Many utilities are available as container images on Dockerhub, however mileage may vary as ARM image are less common. I prefer containers due to the contained nature of the binaries and configurations. Everything can be contained in a single docker-compose file, which is very convenient. In the past I've even had my Pis clustered using Kubernetes, but that was more for educational purposes. I've also experimented with different Linux distributions on Pis. There is of course Pi OS, the officially supported one. However,the major distributions have ARM versions that run on Pis and there are others specifically designed for Pis:

For instance installing and running Gentoo on one was... an experience.

All in all, Pis are a great way to learn and an even better way to run services at home at a low monetary cost and low power cost.