I have an old Pi hanging around doing nothing. When I originally got it it had the latest Pi OS with desktop loaded and ran like garbage, not surprisingly. So I messed with it headless for a bit, then found RISCOS as an option in Pi imager utility and that is just a neat OS. Fun to play around with for sure. But now I’m wondering what else I could use the old thing for. I see folks run Pihole on it, but I’ve already got 2 instances of Adguard Home running.

Could this handle Syncthing? Or would the data transfer be so bad it’s not worth it? Wouldn’t mind having an off-site backup device at my parents house if it would work.

Anyone else got one in their homelab?

  • spauldo
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    1 year ago

    It might be too outdated to do major services, but it’s still fine for its original use - interfacing with electronic components.

    You could build a weather station, monitor temperature and humidity in your attic and crawlspace, automatically water plants, etc. You don’t need much electronics knowledge for that sort of thing.

  • kuneho@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I had a really important role of my Pi 1 B+ for a long time; it was a network storage for my PlayStation 2 to play ISOs from the network with Free McBoot and Open PS2 Loader.

    grabbed a big HDD, and old CD drive case and put everything inside. The Pi could be powered from the PS2s USB, hooked up a short network cable and it was ready to go.

    Tho I still have that PS2, it’s not in use anymore, so neither the Pi.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      That’s great. I wonder if the same could be done on the original Xbox. I believe it had the ability to play over network connection from ISOs on a PC if modded. I have one kicking around that I have yet to put a bigger HDD in.

      • kuneho@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        the PS2 needed only just a Windows Network share (SMB). I guess the XBOX too should have an option for that, so I don’t see any problem with it

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      Hmmm unbound does work with AGH too… Might have to look at trying this

      • onimoger@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Using it for Pihole + Unbound also, but running on DietPI OS. I recommend trying DietPI, since it is is basically Pi OS on a diet, which is very important on such an old device. It has a lot of software preconfigured to make them lighter, using less resources etc. You should really try it.

        • Father_RedbeardOP
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          1 year ago

          I will check it out. I thought it was the same thing as the desktop-less options in the Pi Imager.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      Interesting. I guess this is one of those technologies I knew about but didn’t have a name for it! I will look into this .

  • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    The original Pi B had a single core 700mhz ARMv6 processor and 512mb of memory. It’s fine for embedded projects using GPIO or a mini LCD screen, but that’s about it. You’d be lucky to even decode 720p video on it as a streaming box.

    It might work neat as a monitoring device to keep tabs on the rest of your homelab machines and display a status output or something.

    • agitated_judge@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      No, the original Pi B can play 1080p video just fine. The video is not decoded by the CPU. H264 and older codecs play just fine. It cannot handle h265 videos as it doesn’t have a hardware decoder for those. Kodi works just fine in fact. The interface is a little bit slow, but actual video playback is fine.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      I did overclock it a bit. I think it’s at 900mhz now, reliably. Probably not enough in the grand scheme of things. But hey, it’s something!

  • troglodytis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    ADS-B receiver that uploads to ADSBExchange, Flightaware, and FlightRadar24. Start tracking the skys

  • thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was wishing I had one just recently. I’m not smart enough to get my ancient APC UPS to interface to Debian with the USB cable, so I need a device I can ping that’s plugged into the mains (ie not through the UPC) so I can run a script that shuts the server down when the Pi stops responding to the pings.

    So that’s all it’d need to do - respond to pings when it’s powered on. I’ve ordered a B+ for exactly this job.

      • thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        ESP8266

        Thanks - I sort of had that Idea and looked at the ESP32 with an Ethernet port, but it was looking complex to flash because of no UART etc. Looks like the ESP8266 would need an add on for Ethernet? Plus I might still be out of my depth figuring out how to flash it?

        I also considered an Ethernet hat for the Uno since I have a couple of them floating around somewhere, but in the end the B+ was cheaper. Those little boards would probably be better for power consumption as well though

        • pipe01@lemmy.pipe01.net
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          1 year ago

          All you’d need to program that ESP32 is an USB to UART adapter, you can get those for pennies on the dollar. I’ve never used Ethernet on the ESP32 so I can’t attest to how easy it would be, however I do know that doing it over WiFi is super simple.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      That’s a clever idea. My UPS does already have the smart pants features like that, but I love the simplicity of that as a concept.

  • riesendulli@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I was using it for Pi-hole all the way up until I got a 4b and then put Pi-hole in a docker. Solid dude, will be hanging on my wall like those disassembled iPhones

  • PeachMan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t see why it wouldn’t handle SyncThing, as long as you’re not syncing a lot of clients.

    You could also get a cheap screen and use it for a news/weather/social feed.

    • Scrath@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I think the Pi 4 was the first Pi with gigabit ethernet. All the Pi’s before that were limited to 100Mbit. For that reason, syncthing is probably a bad idea since it will be very slow in terms of syncing speed

      • PeachMan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Eh, maybe. Depends on how much they’re backup up and how often. They said the backups are off-site, so unless BOTH locations have a very fast connection, I’d bet that 100Mbit networking wouldn’t be the huge bottleneck that you’re thinking.

  • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Make a Pi-hole for friends/family, unless you want to build discrete hardware projects that don’t need a fast CPU. My 17-year-old niece is doing breadboard projects on this gen of Pi.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      That’s an idea. Might have to do it for my parents. Using their internet is darn near impossible without ad blocking :)

      • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s a mitzvah indeed!

        Have also heard of adult children installing Pi-holes in their parents’ houses to stop them from visiting Qanon hotbeds.

        • Father_RedbeardOP
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          1 year ago

          That’s great. Thankfully my parents have steered well clear of that mess. But would help to not click on the more “convincing” ads.

          • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            We can’t be far from the first wave of uniquely targeted scam ads with faked photos/audio/video of the user’s friends, family, boss, etc.

            My mother-in-law sent thousands of dollars for years to a fake UN official.

    • Father_RedbeardOP
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      1 year ago

      I used Pihole for years, but have found AGH an overall better UI from a management perspective. And a quick searchs shows that unbound can work with AGH as well so I may give that a try.

  • ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    i use an old pi1b to run rtl433 with some even older dvb-t stick to grab weather data from my neighbors (who can afford a brand new bresser weather station with wind speeds and everything etc…) and send that to mosquitto for use with home assistant. but can track even more…i figured out car tire air pressure sensors and other stuff give me a good insight on wether the neighbors are home or not.