April 21, 2020

Zero. . . finally! covid-19: day 40 | US: GA | info | act

Yes, I finally received my Raspberry Pi Zero W starter kit today, along with my first RP4 case from C4 Labs which my webserver is now wearing: Raspberry Inlay Fan Case. I have another one (coming tomorrow?) for my reverse proxy server and one for my Zero (in “Laser Lime”). The case was a bit of a process to put together (and a small piece of it came busted), but I think it looks great. I was so excited to get it booted back up that I forgot to take a photo first.

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  A naked Raspberry Pi Zero in a temporary location.

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  Zebra Case on my RP4.

I installed Homebridge on the Zero, but I have no accessories with which to test it yet. Who knows when Amazon will ship our Wi-Fi plugs. The install was a bit tricker than a normal software install, but it’s up-and-running. I’m psyched to get some accessories.

Man, I love these Raspberry Pis. They really scratch that Linux itch I get every six months or so. My home network (lab?) has never been better, and I’m impressed daily what these little $50 computers can do.

That said, I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t part of me that wanted a powerful server to serve up some Plex goodness. I like the Synology, but I’m more of a command line guy when it comes to servers. God, I’d love to have one of those old Sun machines again. The best server I ever had was that Sparc 20. It was a beast—it took up most of the desk in my office, and I bet it would still be running today. I wonder if it would even be worth trying to get something later from Sun? I’ve also been looking at another cheap Lenovo ThinkPad, like an X250 or a T440s, for Linux.