Uses for Rasperry Pi - Hardware talk

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RoastPotatoes
Long time nixers
So I have two and I don't really know what I can use them for. Does anyone have one with a specified use they would like to share? I am interested to see what people might be using them for. There are many projects using them but they all seem to be proof of concepts and just demonstrations.
Webtm
Members
I've been thinking about getting one to use as a Tor node.
https://learn.adafruit.com/onion-pi/overview
Something like that.

There are tons of cool things you can do with them. I think I saw a guy use one to make his own tablet, but I'm not positive.
Yupp, this guy here.
http://makezine.com/2014/01/07/how-I-bui...pi-tablet/
I also thought I heard you could use the new version as a low power desktop. But I can't source that.
z3bra
Grey Hair Nixers
We use raspis at work as monitoring machines. running a browser opened on our centreon webpages, with a speaker for sound alerts.

They're really slow and lack power though...
venam
Administrators
You can use it as a DNS that will act as an adblock for all your subnet machine.
Checkout the adsuck project: http://freecode.com/projects/adsuck.

You could also use it a honeypot, or capture the flag box, or as a pentest test box.
Checkout the mutillidae project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mutillidae/files/.

What about using it as a little retrogaming box that you connect to your TV.

Just be a little bit creative.
RoastPotatoes
Long time nixers
(24-05-2015, 01:51 AM)venam Wrote: You could also use it a honeypot, or capture the flag box, or as a pentest test box.
Checkout the mutillidae project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mutillidae/files/.
This seems quite interesting.
sulami
Members
I currently have a model B (the old one with 256MB) at home with an uptime of almost 500 days. It is used to share an external drive to the network, serves some static pages to the web and is a gameserver (nethack, moria, etc) for me and a couple of friends. It is also my ssh-entrypoint from the outside, and running a mumble-server (umurmur) which can handle a couple of people without problems.

I've been meaning to do something cool with it, but the limited power is, well, limitng. But it excels everywhere where you just need any computer.
RoastPotatoes
Long time nixers
(31-05-2015, 03:27 PM)sulami Wrote: I currently have a model B (the old one with 256MB) at home with an uptime of almost 500 days. It is used to share an external drive to the network, serves some static pages to the web and is a gameserver (nethack, moria, etc) for me and a couple of friends. It is also my ssh-entrypoint from the outside, and running a mumble-server (umurmur) which can handle a couple of people without problems.

I've been meaning to do something cool with it, but the limited power is, well, limitng. But it excels everywhere where you just need any computer.
Already that seems quite impressive. I have the old one with 256MB as well as the new one, which I think has around 500. Does it really run that well? I installed Arch on the newer model and still with more ram the cpu really held it back and I couldn't really do anything.
sulami
Members
(31-05-2015, 05:00 PM)RoastPotatoes Wrote: Already that seems quite impressive. I have the old one with 256MB as well as the new one, which I think has around 500. Does it really run that well? I installed Arch on the newer model and still with more ram the cpu really held it back and I couldn't really do anything.

It does everything I have listed up there. Most of the load is coming from umurmur, some Django dev-server I forgot was even on there (including a running MySQL instance), and, when in use, NFS and SMB servers. It is currently running with ~10% CPU usage, a loadavg around 0.1 and 54M of used memory, with the rest used for cache. Uptime of 472 days as of today. And I can continue playing my current run of nethack anytime I want without problems whatsoever. It seems, computer power gets vastly underestimated. I should also mention, it is running a preemptive kernel, mainly because it came with the distro and I don't want to sacrifice the glorious uptime.
I plan to buy 3 soon. One for a web server using nginx or lighttpd. Second one for a git server. Third one for a vpn server.
Laserswald
Members
You can make one a steam streaming box.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/stream-pc-games-to-your-tv/
I plan on making one a personal carry anywhere server with a cell phone external battery.
vompatti
Long time nixers
I used one for mopidy (mpd with spotify support) server for longtime on my room. Worked like a charm. Easily managed music from my desktop and/or phone. Also used the same instance as IRC bouncer.
josuah
Long time nixers
I use mine as a server. A desktop needs to compute a lot of graphics, a server does typically not, so it can handle quite a large load !

Moreover, it teach one to manage limited resources: if something is slow for my low-traffic RPi, it will not scale well.

- Web server: *httpd with a static website generator. Or even better: /gopher/ server!

- Streaming service: mpd, web-based

- Media box: plugged to a TV accessing content from all computers in the house.

- NAS: ditch $CORP-Drive free offer and get gour data $HOME. ;) You can buy a couple of USB-to-SATA cables and plug multiple hard drives, possibly with ZFS. Slow? Not a big deal, yournetwork may be slower anyway (for me it is).

- SSH access for a remote shell, you can even give friends access to your shell, as it will teach you user, groups and privileges management. You can also do Linux containers and BSD jails.

- Download station: run long (legal ofc :P) downloads queues without fearing the need of turning your laptop off. This plays nicely with media box / NAS storage.

- Filter spam and sort the mail. Either with a full mail server (run your own mails), with a client (retrieving the mail, sorting them and then syncing them back (isync...)), or both (a client retrieve the mail, you sort them, then a server serve it to you, but still using smpt.your-mail-provider.com to send mail to avoid being considered as spam).

- Hate to miss what's going on on a channel? IRC logs or bouncer.

- Using git ? A git repo stored on a server already acts as a git server, even if you do not have git installed on a server!

- Pfew! Many things to start and monitor... You may want to learn how to use your service manager (service ssh start....).

- You start to have a lot of services running (yes, run them ALL). Let's monitor their performances: *top is fine for interactive use, but you will need statistics for servers (how many times a week a service is used). collectd can help: plugin for anything in, and multiple output formats, such as Round Robin Databases (err, this is binary and not plain text), or good ol' csv.

- Ok we got a problem: one service is used everyday and all of the other are inactive, but still listenning for incoming connection on their own, wasting resources ( >:| my precious resources !). Let's use inetd to which is one program that listen on all specified ports, shut down all underused services, and let inetd call appropriate service while a client ask for it. You now have only one daemon listenning on all ports.

I'm sure a Raspberry or similar board can handle it all. It wilk only have to run most of these services once in a while, and not all at once.

If you start to feel it to be slow, you can get another one. IIRC servers do not need high frequency CPU but many-cores CPU. You can buy more boards and spread services across them all. You will then have your own private network! Now you can have fun with routing, and manage certificates to secure traffic across them.
xero
Long time nixers
run a telnet bbs
kerunaru
Members
Right now I have Lakka.tv installed on my Rapsberry Pi 3.

I'm thinking about using it as a main computer for a week or two just for fun! If I feel comfortable with that I won't mind to change my main setup to that cute computer... :3
kyberkhrime
Members
My Raspberry Pi 2 has been purposed as SNES-emulator (with RetroPie). Super Mario Kart destroys friendships!
jkl
Long time nixers
If I had the time, I'd love to build my planned device to slap people over the internet. Idea: you can target people via IP. If they have a slap machine connected, a robot arm on the RPi will slap them. In order to be able to slap, you'll have to be connected to a slapping device yourself so only people who can be slapped themselves can slap other people.
Ha, fantasies.

--
<mort> choosing a terrible license just to be spiteful towards others is possibly the most tux0r thing I've ever seen
pyratebeard
Long time nixers
I am using my Pi3 for a mail server using Postfix, Dovecot, EncFS, and some other bits. I was also using it as a VPN server, but my new ISP router is a pain in the ass.

I could do with a shot of rum right now.
hades
Long time nixers
I'm gonna use mine to set up a simple NAS (Network-Attached Storage). Just got my 500Gb drive in the mail to set it up with.

Gonna check out Alpine Linux while I'm at it.