Raspberry π

Thanks both, they contacted me last week which gave me the shove I needed to get onto github. I wasn't sure it'd be novel enough to make the editors cut so hadn't said owt upfront.

love the forum reference.

Credit where it is due, people here have been very patient & helpful.

Interesting project... How do you actually run the script? Would be good to add detail on this.

How do you actually run the script?

Juice ssh let's you connect quickly and run commands or scripts. It is pretty straightforward but I'll write it up later for clarity.

If I want to build another pi hole, should I bother getting the latest Raspberry Pi? Or just look for an older, cheaper one. Where's the best place to buy them these days?

There seem to be a bunch of different versions. I just want the fastest/cheapest that can be stuck in a box and forgotten about.

My current one is: Raspberry Pi 3 Official Desktop Starter Kit (16Gb, Black)

Mine is running on an older board happily. Issue at the moment (for latest) seems to be stock availability, Pimoroni and Pi-hut both o/o/s of all variants.

old picture, running PADD

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The one you have will be fine.

Raspberry Pi 3 A+ inbound.

The zerocam is the one I was looking at. Can you tell me the rough dimensions of it, nowhere seems to include that for some reason. Cheers

As pictured

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Cheers. It's a little wider than I hoped but hopefully a Dremel will solve that.

Now I have the SD card I needed to start pihole2

I have a spare pi tv hat if any interest.

Free but would like the postage cost.

https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat

not too sure I still have the standoffs

Hello pi people, I’m looking for some advice. I have a CO2 monitor set up on one of the university buildings (Edinburgh) hooked up to a raspberry pi that lives in the ventilation plant room the floor below. The eventual plan is to have the ppm value displayed on a screen somewhere else, as well as logging the values eg every 5-10 minutes (it’s a decent sensor so the data are valuable from a science perspective as well as the outreach-y display thing). My issue is there is no wired network access in the plant room, so I’m only able to connect the rpi via wifi, and the IT department say it’s impossible to set up a static IP so I can’t do any kind of easy remote access. The next best thing is to get the data sent off the rpi somehow. I did have a solution with python uploading to a google doc but maintaining the google credentials seemed quite unreliable, and I really want this to be rock solid as it’s a pain to get access to the plant room if something borks. Can anyone suggest a good solution for uploading data every few minutes and ideally maintaining a remotely accessible log? I guess it really needs to be cloud based as I don’t have another machine I can run 24/7 to dedicate to receiving the data.

I made a 3D printed case for it with a screen in case anyone’s interested :p

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Cloud hosted database like InfluxDB? https://cloud2.influxdata.com/signup

Should have a python client you can use to send and retrieve the data.

For managing the thing and assuming you are the same side of any firewall or NAT boundary then get it to register it's IP in a dynamic DNS service when it boots. That way you can SSH to the hostname to tweak things when needed.

Thanks, both very helpful suggestions! I’ll let you know how I get on.

If you're looking for a low cost solution, you could just tweet the readings. You could also DM the IP address every time it changes.

Also low-cost, but more professional would be to use AWS Dynamo DB. It costs a dollar or two per million writes, and storage of the first 25GB is free.

Seconding @𝔒𝕨𝖑𝘡 recommendation of InfluxDB too.

Would this shopping list be all I'll require for a working pihole setup?

I have a laptop and spare ethernet cables

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Just the kit would be enough if you've got a USB keyboard and mouse you can plug in temporarily. Once a PiHole is setup it doesn't need them attached.

The heatsinks aren't necessary, PiHole doesn't use much CPU.

Indeed a Pi 4 is overkill for PiHole.

You don't actually need a keyboard and mouse to set it up.

You might also have a power supply (have a look at the power rating on some of your more modern phone chargers).

You main challenge will be finishing something in stock.

If you just want the functionality without the fiddling you might want to look at nextdns

I'd get a 2nd hand pi zero off ebay. Lower energy use and sufficient. Make sure it's got WiFi.

These cases are good: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SB-Components-Protective-Case-for-Raspberry-Pi-Zero-W-Wireless-Black-/263202422205?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Personally I found a keyboard easier for set up, and really like the pi one. But if you get a zero you'll need a little adapter to convert the USB to micro.

Make sure it's got WiFi

I would have thought best to attach it to modem/router via Ethernet. Otherwise a WiFi connectivity issue will probably take your wired devices down too?

Edit: I guess that should read 'block your all your devices including wired ones from accessing Internet'. I was thinking of DHCP server becoming unreachable, but that is an optional feature.

Another reason not to use WiFi is it will add a little bit of latency to all your DNS queries and since any webpage you load triggers a gazillion DNS queries these days that will make everything a bit sluggish.

It also seems a waste of shared RF spectrum to use WiFi for something that isn't going to move around and doesn't need to be anywhere tricky to get a cable to.

Idk you're probably right.

I moved over to nextdns as it was so much easier and I don't go over the free allowance. Or if I do I don't notice.

In any event it's still worth flagging that there are pi zeros with WiFi and pi zeros without.

I'd get a 2nd hand pi zero off ebay

A guy asked for pi's on local fb freecycle group, was swamped with offers.

Might be worth a shout in your area @user69121?