Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Raspberry Pi

Anyone play?

I have a Zero W and two Pi 4s running.

Initially bought the Zero W for a xmas light project but ran out of time and had to cheat with an easier system. It is set up as an apache lan server purely to use PHP remotely - I guess it could be done via SSH instead of using a server but one familiar step at a time.

Got the two Pi 4s recently, one as a desktop which I've been using for a few days and the other as an apache internet server which has been on soak test for a week or so.

Both the Pi 4s are running off external hard drives with SD initial boot.

Found loads of niggles and no doubt will find many more as both Raspbian and Debian seem to be in transition.

Hi D.D.
I’ve read your above post several times, and each time I’m more and more confused and it made less and less sense to me, initially I thought it might be code or some version of Esperanto, but then I realised I’m just thick. Anyway, I hope you enjoy whatever it is you’re talking about .

Lol, it’s in the anorak section for a reason.

I used the raspi 2 With a cheap SDR to make a shortwave listening/scanner radio set up for a while in a similar vein to this websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901 although nowhere near as advanced.

The pi2 lacked the processing oomph to run it standalone-the data had to be streamed to PC or tablet for audio decoding. I believe you could make a stand-alone system using a pi3 or later.

It was a good project for learning more about Linux as I am pretty unfamiliar with it.

I've thought about getting into radio stuff again but I'm busy enough with too many other projects, got a cheapo Baofeng not long ago for business use as I hold a business licence. Not played with a proper SDR, although RF electronics was my initial trade.

I used to be a certified Unix System Administrator many moons ago but haven't really followed the Linux progression, its certainly moved on a lot from my Unix days. Debian appears pretty untidy at the moment with config files held all over the place, some over-ride others so you wonder why an edit doesn't affect anything etc etc. Its an interesting challenge.

The Pi4 is pretty nifty, for the size of it and power draw of around 10W its remarkable, needs cooling, I'm managing to keep my CPU under 60 degrees when its flat out with careful passive cooling, normally sits between 40 and 50C even under reasonably heavy usage.

I've got to find a faster way of programming the SD cards, that is tediously annoying, there must be a better way than using a disk image. The prototype 64-bit Raspbian is available which improves speed

I've also loaded up Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10 with the cut down Debian on that, that runs a lot differently from what I expected and is worth a little play.

I just use my 3b for PiHole, as basic samba file server and as a music server to play my own music on for my Echos.

I am looking at a Pi4 for a big screen emulation option. The nVidia Shield is not the diamond in the rough for emulation that people claimed it was.

My head's hurting

Fine on Pihole its a popular use.

I'm trying to get my head round the various firewall options before risking any local file servery type things. I know the router takes care of most firewall stuff but I like a second line of defence for personal material.

I have a NAT drive but don't use it as such because it got a bit confused with large files and corrupted some things so currently it is just a USB drive used for backups - switching it off when not in use is the ultimate firewall.

H264 work really well on my Pi4s but I'm only using them on monitors at 1440 X 900, I haven't tried them at 4K yet,

It is amazing how versatile these little things are.



So is mine ..... that's part of the fun of trying to sort these things out.

What a great topic!!! I have several pi’s although I’ve used Pihole which I thought was great, I’ve tried emulation amongst other things but I can’t seem to find a niche that only a pi can do!

One thing I have been getting in to lately though is Unraid and docker containers. Well worth a look if you have any spare pc hardware!

I'd not even come across Unraid so that's a new one on me.

Docker I keep seeing but I haven't quite got a grasp of what it actually achieves, that is probably more down to not matching what I need, I just see it as a program-server/sandboxy type setup of which I'd have little use? Plus I'm way past my sell-by date of leaning anything hugely different from what I already grasp.

While I'm highly tempted to experiment more, at the moment I'm just trying to get stable systems together to do the basics I need.

The thing I love most about docker is this:

On my server I will run Windows os I install a torrret client, sonar, radar, cctv software, unzipping, video compression etc. If I get a windows bsod then I lose everything.

With unraid and docker you have unraid os running on a usb stick. You then run the sandbox micro Linux is with torrent, another with ole, another for cctv etc. If one container breaks then you reinstall it. Have parity drive so less chance of data loss from your large storage drives.

All in all. I love it!