What to do with a Raspberry Pi?

[prcguy]

I have a couple laying around here doing nothing then happened across this.

Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking

pi-hole.net

This is probably the best thing I've ever done for my home computers. I won't mention what it does here but it was a super easy setup except my main router doesn't allow changes to the DNS, so I simply point my various computers to the Raspberry Pi address as the DNS and life is really good now.

It really works and works well and I set it up on an old Raspberry Pi3 but its supposed to work on all versions. If you have to buy a new Pi its well worth the $$ to get control of your computers and life again. What a relief.

 

[vagrant]

I believe I have been using pihole for a year or so now, also with iPad’s and phones. The same pi3 also handles APRS as a RX only igate. I didn’t point my router to it and blanket every device as some devices need to be wide open for routing stuff. Of course when I use a VPN, it tunnels through and bypasses the pi-hole presenting what I wanted to avoid. Ha! Good times. I had to add some sites to the whitelist, which is very easy. Don’t forget to run the update every couple of months, or whatever works for you.

I have other pi’s and I’m going to see if I can RX ADS-B better with it than another device I use. If so, I’ll use it to feed adsbexchange.com and significantly improve mlat for a wide area. I may also use that same one to push an audio feed to broadcastify. I may be able to run it all on one pi, but I am not sure of the load for ADS-B and streaming yet.

I have pi zeros as well, but they’re used for specific experimental things.

I also used pi’s to link and control Yaesu and Icom repeaters a couple years back. I had to make custom cables and used a URIx device to interface. It plugged right into the back of the Yaesu. No odd rewiring inside the repeater. While control was via DTMF, not having Internet access at the site sucked. This meant the pi‘s had a realtime clock hat added as well.

 

[bharvey2]

I've never used a RPi for DNS control but I have used services and can say that they make a world of difference. I've been doing it at work for years and it put a huge dent in the nonsense factor. I've used several generations of RPis for various projects including my home Allstar node. I've yet to use an RPi4 but am looking forward to it.

 

[prcguy]

I've used Pi's for general internet use and with an RSPpro2 SDR (not that impressive) but as an ad blocker its fantastic. Who knew a little box the size of a pack of cigarettes could bring so much joy?

I've never used a RPi for DNS control but I have used services and can say that they make a world of difference. I've been doing it at work for years and it put a huge dent in the nonsense factor. I've used several generations of RPis for various projects including my home Allstar node. I've yet to use an RPi4 but am looking forward to it.

 

[bharvey2]

They are handy devices. I've got a number of RPi2/3s that I use for various temp projects. I've even got an old Gen1 but unfortunately it isn't supported anymore.

 

[JDrisc3480]

I have two right now. One will be used to set up an ADS-B receiver and the other will be used to run SDR.

 

[Stupidfatkid]

RPi's are great. I have several running 24/7 around the house. I host a webserver on one, an instance of NextCloud on another, my VPN server is running on an old RPi 2, and of course several MMDVM boards running Pi-Star. Also running an ADS-B receiver on a RPi 3. Another interesting single board computer (SBC) is the Atomic Pi -- it's not related to the RPi other than having Pi in the name. It's a x86 based SBC. I have two. I'm running Linux on both. One runs Pi-Hole in a Docker container and the other runs Virtual Radar Server using Mono. The Atomic Pis are a little quirky. I can't say I'd recommend one to someone not familiar with Linux, but they're a great value.