Like most people, I entered COVID as a normal hobby geek with a Linux server I played around with and a healthy hardware habit with a side of home automation and DD-WRT. I emerged from COVID enrolled in college, now with two servers (one new build, one rebuilt from my first one), two Pi, multiple instances of Home Assistant (one dedicated) and putting sensors on everything a sensor could go on and rewiring switches for wifi control of overhead fans, flashing every compatible router I could find on Amazon Warehouse with DDWRT in my home for an ad hoc mesh network (no, it didn’t work, but I didn’t care) while cabling everything to switches and creating a really hilarious network deathtrap tripping hazard, a massive media library (discovered Handbrake and making multiple resolutions) and a Sonos home theatre system. And yes, played an unhealthy amount of Animal Crossing and got an NVIDIA Shield Pro for streaming and Plex, as you do. I’m sure everyone can relate.
SBC’s were the natural escalation; I had credit card bills to pay off and that’s going to take a while.
I gatewayed with Pi like ten years ago but it took off during Later COVID when I noticed my credit score and started testing it as a NAS, Media Server (later: Cassiope Media Server, my second end to end Linux build), then got into learning about the kernel itself. I already had an Odroid (Home Assistant Blue) so why not go on, so project-based SBCs seemed healthy; I had a reason for buying one. This led to more Pi’s–as I couldn’t use Kernel Pi (Eurydice) for it and Andromeda Pi was masking my personal network, then I needed one for a Pihole (Iphigenia, Hecuba), which is how I ended up with a BeagleBone Black (Medusa) for an Open Thread Border Router. Still pretending I wasn’t just collecting them like cats, I networked them together and just enjoyed looking at them and making them matching banners with figlet with the excuse I was learning how to do network-wide deployments over SSH (true) and learn Debian OS (technically, I am doing that) and started PoEing things (my credit card bills may not be getting lower, no).
The count stands at a total of 9: one (1) Pi Zero W, one (1) Pi Zero 2 W, one (1) Raspberry Pi 4B 4G, two (2) Raspberry PI 4B 8G, one (1) Odroid N2+, one (1) Beaglebone Black, one (1) PocketBeagle, and one (1) BeaglePlay. (Other: two Linux machines, Watson and Cassiope). Yes, they all have names and technically, each is associated with a project. The BeaglePlay’s (Circe) associated project is ‘create my own documentation on what it does because Beagles don’t document’.
So which ones do you use, why, origin story, feelings: go.
(I’m moving in a week and half my hardware is being packed. I’m about to have to take down my network and Home Assistant and may be freaking out. I’m not sure I know where any light switches are here, either.)
I consider SBCs drastically overhyped these days. RaspberryPi was nice enough when it was released a decade ago, but these days you can just get a Beelink or similar miniPC, which is much more capable and often even cheaper. It doesn’t have the GPIO, but even if you need that, you are generally better served with a cheap MCU connected to USB.
My old RaspberryPi’s all just work as webcam these days.
I started with an RPi 1b to read out my weatherstation (WH1080 clone) and post it online with weewx. Then a Bananapi R1 entered to replace my intel system as firewall/core router (savings on power usage, a lot). The RP 1 got replaced by a RPi 2, and tne 1 moved to the smartmeeter for readout. The main server (huge AMD tower) got replaced by a RPi 3 (again, power savings), Bpi R2 replaced the R1 when bananian development stopped. RPi 3 died on me (sd slot failed) and I got a replacement. As the 1st RPi3 was dead anyway, I tried to repair it (only use of the solderings at the side proved to be to keep the slot in place) and used it to replace the Bpi R2 as support got problematic.
The main server got upgraded to a RPi 4 8GB, with the RPi3 replacing the RPi2 that was handeling my weatherstation. I got an rflink, so I added domoticz and that now powers my kaku (dutch power switching system) in a mixed old/new setup. The RPi3 that was my main router (internet router via fiber) got replaced hh an RPi4 witn 4 GB mem, as the 2 GB mem version wasn’t available. (Not a bad move, with the on-board non-usb 1GB interface and a tad over 2 GB mem use)
The freed RPi3 is now for the smartmeter, so all RPi are 64 bit. (All running aarm64 Debian) Both Bpi’s and RPi 1 and 2 are collecting dust, as I haven’t found a use for them… yet. Looking for projects to use them. As media server they’re to light. (Although, Bpi R2 could be useful for that)
