Must fight temptation to buy an overpriced raspberry pi

[hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz]

Or any compact pc like gigabyte brix, nucs, lenovos , etc. you can get those for 70-200 on ebay and they are amazing for running any homelab projects, including stream services like jellyfin with hardware decoding.

[minibyte@sh.itjust.works]

I bought a dell latitude on eBay for a few bucks and run Debian on it. This one speaks to me.

[letak@feddit.org]

I have an old pentium laptop N3520 with 4GB DDR3. I removed everything and put it in a receiver box 1U size. It consumes so little energy that it can run 5-7 hours from its battery (I call it build in USV). Last time I measured 3-7w. Also passiv cooled , no noise.
Another machine I use , is with a i7 4770 with 16GB for Proxmox, 7-20w , peak is much higher but rarely used , only on boot and vm startup.

[letak@feddit.org]

Oh and the i2c etc stuff, I connected ESP32 and other microcontrollers over USB.

[mooglemaestro@lemmy.zip]

If you have the lid closed, you’re looking at 3 to 15 watts to have a laptop running in the background doing some basic server shit.

Not all laptops make effective use of power with the lid closed, sadly. Not saying this as a correction, but for others to know that they need to make sure these settings are available in the bios of the system they are buying.

[star@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

I wish there was a convenient place to get these

[alligatorblizzard@sh.itjust.works]

I've thought about asking the folks at the local Free Geek about getting a laptop or two like this that I can mess around with. I had an old HP Stream 11 and I'm still disappointed that it died.

[cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de]

There are also a lot of mini PCs that are comparable in price to a Raspberry Pi 5 once you factor in the cost of a case, SD card, and power supply for the Pi.

[jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works]

What is i2c?

[j4yt33@feddit.org]

Get them from where? I always read about these basically-free computers but have yet to see one

[glitching@lemmy.ml]

raspberries were viable while those were cheap. I think I got a 3b (plus?) in pre-deficit years for like $25 second-hand AND I got some shitty case AND a microSD card AND it could run off of a somewhat normal USB phone charger. so using those instead of a 10 year old decommissioned desktop was an awesome value proposition.

nowadays, those devices are encroaching on trip-digits territory and the power adapter is like $30. the computing power you can buy for a third of that designates raspberries exclusively for niche use cases where footprint and power consumption are primary considerations.

not to mention fake Jason Statham just rubs me the wrong way, like all them "visionaries". he makes this sound like he's the head of Feed Africa or something, on a noble mission to save humanity and whatnot.

[ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml]

A communication protocol used in microchips, small modules & embedded devices that uses 2 wires. Think something like USB, but dead simple.

[macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world]

I know its not the most ideal place, but FB marketplace where I live has lots of old PCs/Laptops for under 50 eur. I would probably start there personally.

[undead@lemmy.ca]

Facebook marketplace, kjiji, etc

[i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk]

The Zero 2W is cheaper and pretty much the same spec as the Pi 3.

[polle@feddit.org]

Where are these cheap e waste laptops with gpio and actually low power?

[ramenshaman@lemmy.world]

I wouldn't touch Facebook with a 10' ethernet cable. Haven't heard of kjiji, I'll have to check it out.

[apotheotic@beehaw.org]

Yeah, my pi sips energy very sparingly. Even an old laptop is going to be drawing more just to power itself, never mind what I run on it.

That said, pis are a poor value proposition nowadays and there are better options for the same use case

[n0x0n@lemmy.ml]

Notable mention, amd64 chipsets are more widely supported than ARM.

[sabrew4k3@lazysoci.al]

ARM life!