Voice of the Masses: How many Raspberry Pis do you have?
Most of us started off our Pi adventures with a single device, but in the meantime we’ve built up a collection of them, scattered around the house doing various tasks. It’s even easier to end up with several of them thanks to the insanely cheap Pi Zero. So for our next podcast, we want to hear from you: how many Pis do you have? Are they all being used, or are some of them sitting dormant, waiting for a new project to bring them to life?
Or do you simply have no Pis at all and don’t get what all the fuss is about? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and we’ll read out the best…
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
I was given a Pi last year for my birthday. I am still umming and aahring about getting peripherals, cables etc. It sits unused in a box.
Three Raspberry Pis.
MythTV frontend x 3.
Boring, I know. (Sometimes computing should be boring.)
One Pi 2 B, I’ve been meaning to set up an Icecast+MPD music server, but I’ve never gotten around to it.
I might set up Pi-hole as well.
I have quite a few Pi’s. An original Pi B is connected to a small LCD display and sits on my desk serving as a digital photo frame. I have several zeros. I was buying them whenever I saw them for a while because they were hard to come by. Some are just waiting for me to use them. One is a low-end retro-pie. I’ve had some ideas for home automation, and vehicle info systems that I haven’t built yet. By far the coolest thing I’ve done with Pi’s are the two “Hack My Derby” hats that I’ve built for two DerbyCon’s. You can read more about those here: http://www.undrground.org/hmd2015 and http://www.undrground.org/hmd2016
DerbyCon, nice! I’m stationed in KY my self. Sadly I actually haven’t been to DerbyCon yet, I’ve been going to Defcon though and people keep mentioning DerbyCon. Going to have to check it out seeing as it’s in my backyard.
I should also note, that I ordered a pi zero w the moment I heard they were released. Looking forward to that.
Currently, four.
One has a pretty solid job it’s been at for a while. I believe it’s a pi2. It is running a nextCloud instance which I use in conjunction with QOwnNotes to sync and serve as a backup for small notes across a couple different desktops.
I have a second one which is running the EmonPI web stack (https://openenergymonitor.org/). The plan is to build a network of temperature sensors around my house that report back to it. My girlfriend is an architect who has created some novel systems for heating and cooling which need monitoring. That’s been a long running project. Right now it just serves up the app, but I don’t have any active sensors connected.
I recently installed retro-i on a pi3 and that seems to be working great. I’ve got it hooked up to my TV; so, I can play Galaga and Super Mario Brothers on demand. What more could you want?!
There is a fourth one which is connected to a 7” touch screen. I used it once as a kiosk component in an interactive art piece I did, called the Fong Tron (https://youtu.be/LXOyiwt92iI). That one is currently collecting dust, but will probably be repurposed soon. I’m planning to create a wearable art piece to take to defcon with me and might salvage it for that.
Ah that’s to rub to repurpose one that’s not frequently being used; or, just buy another and preserve the state of the old one.
I’ll probably just buy another 🙂
One of mine (B+) is running PiHole blocking ads for my whole network. I’m currently playing with Guitarix on my Pi3. One of my zeros is plumbed into a CamJam edukit 3 robot that I worry the cat with.
None. I acknowledge their utility but I personally would have no use for one at all.
It means I can skip a lot of pages in your average Linux magazine…
Agree with Huw. They have great utility and are wonderful for learning, but I don’t have a use for one myself.
The excessive coverage in a certain Linux magazine – not yours – drove me to cancel my subscription.
dito
Well it must be at least 20. To be fair eight RPi3’s were shipped in a monitoring product I manufacture. Equipped with touch screens and running Python/Kivy with USB/SSD boot disks they have replaced 80X6 Mini-ITX boards I used previously.
One early RPI B talks to my Growatt PV system via a serial interface and Modbus. It serves a webpage or two on my PV energy stats. I plan to change to Node-Red with another RPi running the MQTT server.
One RPi B+ is hooked up to a home made seismometer, One RPi talks to my Davis-Pro weather station. Currently I’m working on a RPI3 security camera with number plate recognition.
Oh, I have one coupled to an SDRplay device for listening to airband and also tracking planes using ADSB.
The last one is coupled to my 3D printer via Octoprint (OctoPi).
The rest of the RPi’s sit in a box with a selection of Arduino’s waiting for my next “idea”.
The one thing I never got around to is building a Kodi media; I’m sure there is spare one somewhere…..
Several times I have considered buying one but every time I am put off by not knowing what I would use it for. I keep feeling that there must be something but I haven’t found it yet.
Still looking though.
three:
One RPi B+ connected to my printer/scanner, running phpSANE, because HP are too busy to support their hardware.
Another RPi B+ acting as a syncing server between my devices (using syncthing).
And an RPi Zero, still sitting on my desk collecting dust. Currently, I have no plans for it (it was on sale for $1).
1 v1b running as file server / kodi but would love to get another running as vpn. Have tried but failed.
Too many probably, and I got a Zero w today (having said that, I do love them, and even just looking at them makes me smile). Several of them are idle, or part way through a project that got derailed through a lack of time or energy.
The Pi that has been used the most is the one I use to download podcasts. At some point I will sort out a way to get them to my phone automatically, but probably not today, and tomorrow looks busy too…
7 in total 2 running OSMC KODI media players, 2 with pi cameras as web cam 1 is mail server, fetchmail – postfix – dovecot – roundcube, own cloud server and backup NAS, 2 more running MPD for playing music and 1 doing nothing waiting for a project.
For those of you who can count that’s actually 8 not 7 🙂
Pis are just so useful – I have one Pi2 running pi-hole and protecting me from (most) ads, one Pi2 running nagios to monitor and report on problems on my network, one PiZero with Plex to play films (not open source but a I prefer it to those that are) and one Pi2 with Volumio for playing audio. Plus several others for just playing with – what’s not to like about a superfluity of cheap computing power!!!
Original model B running BIND (keep meaning to move the DNS zones off, but it keeps not being urgent). Raspberry Pi 2 as a WiFi access point. Two Raspberry Pi 3 acting as Kodi boxes (frontend for MythTV plus playing movies and the like). Was running a Raspberry Pi 3 as the MythTV backend but just gave up and put that on an old laptop instead (a few more watts but the extra CPU power and built-in hard disk made it worth it). Looking at doing home automation sometime later this year… will re-purpose the old MythTV Pi then.
5 total, 3 in use. One RPI 2B for Kodi, one original pi 1B for znc/IRC/etc, one RPI 1B for motionEyeOs, and two more without duties yet, a 3 and another 1B.
Let me see… 10 with PIR sensors to cover the house for automatic control of lighting (one of which is also taking a time-lapse of an indoor planter); one connected to a remote control to simulate button pushes; one acting as a home controller which drives an Alexa speaker with voice messages; one in a beehive; one in another country to handle remote support connections; one in a camera; an A+ and a zero that I haven’t used yet. Also a B with bad USB (but ether socket works OK) and another B that is totally dead from rain damage when it was outdoors handling a radio but insufficiently waterproofed.
My old Pi model B was sitting doing nothing in a cupboard but the comments here prompted me to check out Pi-Hole. Now it’s back in business and making browsing from my phone and other devices much more enjoyable. Thanks for the recommendation.
Currently 6, not including a couple I have managed to destroy. One acts like a test platform as a headless webserver to test programs before deployment. A couple for robotic experiments, including a 3D biomatrix printer, a web controllable pan and tilt camera, and a submarine (current project). Most of my experiments fail, but those that do work keep me coming back to carry on playing.
3. 2 Pi Zeros one is set up for retropie but I have switched to my WII instead and one for kodi but the wifi was no good for IPlayer so it is sitting unused at the moment.
Also an original release raspberry pi b which has a camera module and pimorini leds. Not used much either except occasionally when my 5 year old want to use minecraft pi edition
Zero because I already have a media server and I’m too unimaginative to think of any other use for it.
Three – lots of utility in these – all in a rack.
– ADS-B to monitor aircraft
– RaspberryShake with Geophone to monitor earthquakes
– General backup server for local LAN (Owncloud) plus imapsync to maintain a copy of my email locally (I use a BananaPi for this as it has a SATA interface)
(2 in total)
1 Pi2 – Back in it’s box with it’s 1A power plug. Replaced it with…
1 Pi3 – use it as a backup to my desktop for email and light web browsing. Purchased out of curiosity to see how much better it was than the Pi2. Not really interested in using it for any real purpose.
I have 3
2x Pi Model B – One used as a Media Server, One for playing with Camera Modules (I have 1 x IR Camera, 1 x Normal Camera)
1 x Pi3 Model B – Just got last week. Currently playing with it as a desktop. It’s that much of an improvement I’m thinking of suggesting it to a friend to replace his pentium PC from 12 years ago. He only surfs the net and plays solitaire!
I still can’t quite imagine using it for a Desktop, even the pi3, and even if it was just for browsing, but perhaps you are a more patient person than I am. From what I’ve seen streaming video through a browser on the pi3 is still pretty bad, even under chromium with all the awesomeness Martin has done to enhance video playback. I’ve also had lots of stability issues using peripherals like microphones in the browser. It sure does make a great server or NES emulator though. Good luck, and let me know if you have any hot tips for making the browser experience more stable and snappy.