I love having a home server that is something I can ssh into from anywhere and takes only 5W of power. I use it for tmux+weechat (IRC), HomeAssistant, a few web pages served by nginx, and a USB Disk is connected to send backup data from my laptop.

I made a weird jukebox with one. Here are a few short videos (sound on).

https://vimeo.com/385735731/29030155d7

https://vimeo.com/385735795/ccd3638a6f

https://vimeo.com/385735829/26657c5a20

A retro console for the kids

Pi-Hole - ad-blocking DNS server

TNC-Pi - add-on board that provides an AX.25 packet radio modem

I have 2 set up so far, but I have 2 more I’m considering.

For the two I have, one is a Pi 4 4GB running Kodi (by way of LibreELEC), connected to my TV. The other one is a Pi 3 running Home Assistant. Both run cool/fine, and are single purpose for each.

I’m also considering running a music server (some combination of MPD and snapcast) for one of the remaining pi’s. I had purchased a 314GB HDD from WD when they sold them stupid cheap, and it’s been sitting idle since then. That’s plenty of storage for a music collection.

I use it for PiHole and to host some websites. Otherwise, there’s plenty of fun stuff to do with GPIO. I’ve messed with LCDs and such.

Much more!

We used the Raspberry Pi as the onboard computer for the FarmBot project (open source gardening robot).

I use one as my television/radio. I have a 3b+ with LibreELEC (ie: Kodi aka XBMC) on it. It can play from my NAS, Youtube and internet radio stations. Combined with a cheap remote control off Amazon it works great and my family use it all the time.

I also tried using it as a Steam Link but that didn’t work so well - there’s quite a bit of lag as I use Powerline adapters in my homenetwork.

One with octopi and a camera as a 3D-printer print server. I have my “lab” in the attic so I can monitor print jobs from anywhere.

I’ve got a couple running CoreDNS to run as the internal DNS servers for the home network (deliberately separate from the EdgeRouter and Microserver so I can do maintenance), and a third with a temperature sensor attached so I can monitor the temperature in my office.

I’ve got a Pi 3 running Arch Linux with OpenVPN so I can VPN home from out and about. Same machine also runs Pi-Hole and acts as the internal DNS server for my local network.

Then I’ve got a Pi 4 hooked up to my family room TV running Lakka nightlies with a variety of wired USB game controllers that I use to play retro games.

I’ve got two older Pi 2s sitting in a closet somewhere. One was my OpenVPN server before it got replaced by the 3b+, the other was from a Kano system that I was hoping would get my kids interested in programming, but they lost interest in it pretty quickly since it was so slow and clunky to use.

I’m using three as a Kubernetes cluster so I can learn how to set it up on cheap hardware. Learned a lot along the way, and I’d highly encourage anyone else interested in learning Kubernetes to do the same!

At $work we use them to monitor everything from datacentre AC units and live streams to medical refridgerators over SNMP.

I used mine to flash Libreboot on my Thinkpad X200, and now I’m looking into using it as an emulation console in an arcade cabinet. Before Libreboot, I used it to host my website for a year or so.

• a Git server
  • since I use pass for password management across all my devices, my password store is just another Git repository that lives on this Git server.
• a Gopher server
• a Syncthing server
  • since it’s my main/always-on Syncthing server, it’s also got two identical usb drives that I use for storage of everything (books, code, documents, backups), and a nightly cron job mirrors one usb to the other with rsync. So it’s kind of like a hacky RAID setup, in case one of the USB sticks stops working.

That’s about all it does. The only other thing I did to make it all work nicely was to add a daily cron job for a DDNS script, which checks its IP, and if it’s changed (since ISPs do that from time to time), it updates its DNS records at my domain registrar. That way I get nice domains for things.

I have two, one is a remote logging/programming device attached to some work hardware via a JLink, and the other is my new personal home XMPP/Jabber server running Prosody (with free DNS via Cloudflare and port forwarding on my home NAT/router).

I am planning to use mine as a network management system (DHCP, DNS, firewall, NAT, TFTP) to be able to netinstall and bootstrap ad-hoc networks more complex than a simple router.

We have three at work for building the ARM flavor of the Azure Pipelines agent. I don’t recommend this: that leg takes 45 minutes to build and test. Our next longest leg is Windows which takes under 10.

It’s a good development environment for things with weird interfaces. This is next up for me… you can run full fledged editors and have ready access to GPIO pins for bit-banging and (in the case of what I linked) SPI, onewire, etc. and save yourself the headaches that often accompany inexpensive knock-off USB adapters for those protocols on a more standard PC.

If an orange pi zero counts: NAS, youtube-dl, aria2 torrents, fossill and rclone. RP zero attached to 2.3” eink panel for fast reading experiments. RP 3 and waveshare’s game hat + retro pi.

Openvpn and ad-blocking dns at home (using unbound, not pi-hole)

I have several, all Model Bs:

• One Pi 2 is my backup server, it is connected to an external drive via USB. It backs up the contents of my NAS/web server, my VPS, and gets backups pushed to it from various laptops and phones.

• I have two Pi 3s in my living room, one for emulated videos games for my kids and one to run Kodi. I could probably figure out a way to combine them into one but haven’t bothered because these things are so dang cheap.

• One Pi 4 runs a Minecraft server for my kids (and wife… and me)

• Some time soon, I’m going to buy another Pi 4 soon to replace an HP Chromebox that I’ve had running as my NAS for a few years. It has better performance and lower power.

• I can see my self replacing my firewall with a Pi 4 eventually, if (and only if) OPNSense (which is FreeBSD with PHP web GUI) runs okay on it.

• I keep telling myself I’m going to buy a gaggle of these to run a Kubernetes cluster on but I’m having a hard time coming up with an application that would actually justify it.

I’ve hooked my Pi 4 to a 4TB usb drive and I’m using it as a borg-backup repository!

Pi Hole (network level ad-blocking for all devices in our home network) and Spotify server controlling the speakers in our living room, using raspotify.

Having one with headless installation, used for:

1. Samba server for my Android TV
2. Transmission
3. Music MPD + PMS client
4. Borg backups for my laptop

I set up my church with image and video digital signage siding Dropbox and mpv: https://gitlab.com/randall.mason/dropbox-signage They have about nine TVs that display individual slideshows for welcome signage and other information.

I have a pi 4 that I use as a full Linux host when using macos or chrome os: https://gitlab.com/randall.mason/pi4-ethernet-gadget Helpful for the few things that don’t work well in vms.

I also stick a couple plugged into outlets I care about like sump pumps and freezers that call me when they go down using uptime robot and ifttt.

I have a few of them, they run my HomeAssistant server, a Plex server, an Octopi server (which goes mostly unused) and another that drives whatever weird project I’m working on. They’re nice for just testing out things. I’d like to see at some point about trying to integrate a touch-enabled screen and making one that I can use at my little baking area to store recipes and stuff on, right now I use an iPad which works okay but turns off at inopportune times and also gets appropriated by my wife when she wants to play games on it. Something dedicated would be nice.

My 3 is currently sitting on my desk, I wanted to use it to have an easy always-on Linux box at hand, but working on it interactively is just too slow (might be the sd card or the usb stick, whatever).

We have a ton at work where they are the typical prototype thing. Need something small with an ethernet port where you can write code/reuse code without doing embedded development? -> RasPi

I might be repurposing it to run pihole soon.

I have a torrent box connected via HDMI to my TV.

I download stuff, then watch it on my tv.

The same can be achieved by connecting my laptop, but this is more convenient.

It has a raspbian + retropie + kodi

pihole

I use mine to flash my FPGA

I hope to use a 4 soon as a NAS for backups but with extra features of: music streaming (hopefully switching a hifi tower on/off through an IR diode), photos sharing, ipfs and/or scuttlebutt server.

I have a pi3b running Kodi attached to the TV in my livingroom - low power and silent. Files are hosted on my NAS, elsewhere.

I have a pi2b stuck to the back of an old monitor in my office that shows a “dashboard” with Nagios status, weather and reminders and stuff.

I have a pi1b on my back patio running sprinklers_pi, that is a replacement for one of those Rainbird sprinkler timers. It has a nice mobile web interface, and adjusts watering times based on the weather.

I have a pi0 that will jump in as a replacement desktop in emergencies.

I don’t have Ethernet at garage, so I build a poor man’s WiFi bridge using RPI 1B with parprouted and dhcp-helper (dhcp relay). To bring network to noisy servers.

I had two USB and LAN controllable powerstrips which died due to bad capacitors on the MCU board. I gutted these, and put Raspberry Pi Zero Ws plus new relays plus diodes in them. these run alpine linux now.

If someone has a hint on how to measure energy consumption per socket, please share! :)

My first Raspberry1 with piface board is still controlling and logging a fermentation box made from an older refrigerator, a heating mat and two 12V OC fans. Could be done with a 20€ thermostat, or an arduino, too, but the logging part was easier in linux.

Its first job was to control a chicken coop door and light (cron + sunwait)

I gave up on timelapse videos due to lack of time.

For network-heavy stuff there are better boards, I heard that the RP4 is better, but I do not own one.

If someone is better in electronics than me: a USB3 “changer” would be nice!

You plug it into a PC or server, you tell it which of the seven attached USB3 external HDDs you want, than you do you backup. Each external drive would only once be powered on per week, and one could have ransomware-proof backups.

I have my 3 duct-taped to a powered USB hub and a pair of USB hard drives on software RAID; it runs a cron job to synchronise anything I put on it to AWS Glacier for backup.