Raspberry Pi 1 B projects?

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?

yournamehere,

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.

Decipher0771,

I had a pi 1b running my hvac/humidifier/HRV unit at home for years. Only removed it when we moved out.

nicman24,

Since its GPU has composite out, why not a cool arcane cabinate?

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

Funny thing, I bought this one used off eBay to interface with my CRT TV for retro games (NES/SNES) because it had analog out. I didn’t realize at the time that most, if not all pi models can do it too. It’s just combined with the 3.5mm headphone jack. It’s an AV port! Oh well, got this one for a song so I’m not too mad about it.

sgtgig,

Related to OP’s question: is it possible to have the 1B boot from something other than an SD card?

I ran it as a PiHole for awhile, until it chewed through two SD cards. I’d like to use it for the GPIO functionality but I don’t want have it randomly crap out again.

nicman24,

Yes you have the kernel in the SD card and the root on usb

spauldo,

I don’t believe so - the docs mention several ways to boot a pi but most only work for newer models.

An option might be to boot an SD card read-only and run everything over NFS. It’s trivial to do that sort of thing with some UNIX clones (OpenBSD, for instance), but I don’t know about a modern Linux.

mudeth,

You may want to try sd cards designed for security cameras. They are meant to be recorded to 24/7 and have higher write endurance.

ChrisLicht,

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_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

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

ChrisLicht,

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_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

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,

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.

crunchpaste,
@crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I have the exact same model sending me birthday reminders daily. Scraped all my facebook friends’ birthdays years ago and made a very basic telegram bot. Saved me more than one embarrassing moments, including today, as I completely forgot about my brother’s birthday.

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s a fun idea.

grahamsz,

I was thinking about hooking one up to a GPS module to run a local NTP server

https://blog.networkprofile.org/gps-backed-local-ntp-server/

troglodytis,

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

silver_Motoko,

I know you have an adguard, but have you thought about ditching those and using pinhole+unbound?

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

thirdBreakfast,

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.

nicman24,

Does it have the weird rj50 (yes 50) endpoint ?

thirdBreakfast,

rj50

Yes

nicman24,

i have made a stl of that if you need the cable, it is janky but it works

thirdBreakfast,

Aww. Thanks. I’ve got the cable, I just need to invest some time into a couple of suggestions from here.

nicman24,

it should just work with KDE

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

Have you tried using NUT? networkupstools.org

thirdBreakfast,

No. That looks very promising. Thanks, I’ll check it out!

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

pipe01,

Probably cheaper to just use an ESP8266 or the like

thirdBreakfast,

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,

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.

zooterthepenguin,

Mine is still going strong and runs my irrigation system with the gpio interfacing with a relay board.

riesendulli,

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

rentar42,

Realistically the best bang-for-the-buck is maybe to sell it to some collector and get a new one ;-)

Mostly tongue-in-cheek, though. I don't know if anyone is actually willing to pay for it, but I know some people are quite happy when they find their old Pi 1.

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah, I have a pi 3 and 4 in the “fleet” already. Was mostly just looking some something to use it for aside from wall decor.

g_damian,

I use mine as kitchen radio with moodeaudio.org

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

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.

sturmblast,

nice, it wasn’t where you could do that with the PlayStation 2

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

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,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

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

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • selfhosted@lemmy.world
  • slotface
  • kavyap
  • thenastyranch
  • everett
  • tacticalgear
  • rosin
  • Durango
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • khanakhh
  • ethstaker
  • JUstTest
  • ngwrru68w68
  • cisconetworking
  • modclub
  • tester
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • GTA5RPClips
  • normalnudes
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • megavids
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •