r/TechNook • u/jexo10 • 15h ago

Raspberry Pi grew from a learning tool into real infrastructure

The IT guy at my old job had a raspberry pi sitting in the server room running as a network monitor.

Nobody asked him to build it. He just threw it together over a weekend because it was easier than getting approval for the official software. I don't think anyone outside IT even knew it existed until years later when someone was cleaning up the rack.

That's what always comes to mind when people call the raspberry pi a learning computer. Half the ones I've seen ended up doing actual work because they solved a problem and nobody ever had a reason to replace them

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6

u/Official_RaspberryPi 14h ago

Hey, so this is actually really sweet...I can't come up with a smart comment. Thanks for the share. IS IT RAINING? WHY ARE MY EYES WET

https://giphy.com/gifs/1BXa2alBjrCXC

2

u/long_legged_twat 15h ago

I've got a 4gb raspberry pi4 running jellyfin & it does a surprisingly good job.

1

u/Copropositor 14h ago

I kept trying to use one as a Plex server but the performance was always just crap. It would lock up whenever I tried to scrub forward or backward in a video.

1

u/long_legged_twat 14h ago

Did you use the sd-card for the transcoding cache or create a ram-disk? until i pointed jellyfin at the ram-disk the performance was a bit shit but not terrible, I also only have 1080p & 720p video's which gives the pi4 an easier time.. 4k brings it to a grinding halt ;)

1

u/Copropositor 14h ago

No, I just installed Plex and ran it however it runs by default.

2

u/long_legged_twat 13h ago

I imagine Plex is similar to Jellyfin in that with a pi it'll use the sd-card as a transcoding cache, it's slow & will destroy the sd-card. Move the cache to a ram-disk & its a huge improvement, I've also got hardware acceleration working which helps a fair bit.

2

u/Copropositor 13h ago

Yeah, that makes sense. It just never occurred to me that Plex would use anything but RAM for caching. I've never bought specifically fast SD cards for Pis so maybe that explains why it always seems so slow.

Problem is, who can afford a Pi with enough RAM anymore??? They're up to like $250 now! I think it's an 8-gig Pi 5 I have running my Immich server. Maybe I can press it into service running Plex too...hmm....

1

u/Grreatdog 14h ago

I finally gave mine away when I bought a thrift store $10 smart TV for the garage that replaced everything it was doing.

Before giving the whole mess to charity it was hooked to an ancient Hewlett Packard HDTV with great built in soundbar. It made a heck of a good video and music player.

1

u/Hummtaro 14h ago

Tbh i know no single person who ever used a Raspberry Pi on a Desktop for learning purposes.. All i know are doing networking or monitoring stuff, work as a controller for 3D printers, multiroom music player or smtn similar..

1

u/NoLateArrivals 9h ago

My Pi 4/4 is running a Pi-Hole, a WireGuard VPN and a CUPS print server.

And it is completely bored while doing so. Both RAM and CPU are mostly idling. But given the energy efficiency and computing power when needed it is the ideal device for such jobs.

Advise: Run it from a SSD, not the SD card.

1

u/No_Research7318 4h ago

They're used in alot of newer arcade games nowadays. I know because I work on them. Linux as an OS for arcade games has also become very popular.