Raspberry Pi ... my home webserver project

two00lbwaster · 2 Mar 2012 at 21:06

I'm going to be using a Raspberry Pi as a Linux Webserver to host a home website.

Probably going to stick nginx and django on there as I know that you can get away with that configuration, including the OS, in less than 100MB of RAM.

Does anyone else have any interesting projects lined up for this device?

MikeHiow · 3 Mar 2012 at 21:24

Yeah, I'm currently in the process of prototyping a clock in/access system with Arduinos. I'll also be giving it a crack with a Rasberry Pi when RS have some, as it'll work out a bit cheaper.

I have a feeling the Rasberry Pi has the potential to be more stable/reliable, too.

Semple · 3 Mar 2012 at 21:28

Plan to buy a few for media receivers to connect to TV's.

andrewdodd13 · 3 Mar 2012 at 22:06

I think media receivers is the most popular one. I've been playing with the ARM-EL version of Debian under qemu emulating basically the RPI hardware (except GPU) seeing what I can build.

So far, I have the following compiled (no idea how fast they'll run, but in general if it runs on an iPhone 3GS it'll run on RPI):
- Video player + SMBFS (Streaming)
- GBA/NES/SNES/PS1 emulation

Not sure what I'm gonna go for next. I was quite impressed with the variety of software in Debian ARM-EL, there's all sorts of stuff like precompiled Apache2 etc. One thing I did notice though was that quite a lot of stuff is probably going to have to be cross-compiled; I ran out of memory building the SNES emulator and once I added some swap space it took an hour.

aldo1234 · 3 Mar 2012 at 22:28

I have a microserver running ubuntu server zoneminder apache etc that I plan to replace with the pi.

I have a mobile connected that I can use to txt me alerts or txt in commands. Adding a arduino I could possibly turn lights on or heating. It's more about getting it working than actually using it.

two00lbwaster · 4 Mar 2012 at 10:10

MikeHiow said:
Yeah, I'm currently in the process of prototyping a clock in/access system with Arduinos. I'll also be giving it a crack with a Rasberry Pi when RS have some, as it'll work out a bit cheaper.

I have a feeling the Rasberry Pi has the potential to be more stable/reliable, too.

I've only really come across the Arduino system since Raspberry Pi has been sold. Although, when I looked at the image I did seem to think I remembered some news release about an open source hardware platform last year.

Raspberry Pi is pretty much a barebones smartphone from the cheaper part of the spectrum of smartphones, without the wireless SoC stuff. It has more desktop connectivity options instead.

I did tweet the foundation to say that PoE would be a nice addition in the future

kg648 · 4 Mar 2012 at 12:13

What are you doing about a case?

two00lbwaster · 4 Mar 2012 at 16:46

kg648 said:
What are you doing about a case?

I'll see what it fits in, however, it is about the size of a credit card, so it may fit into the box that houses a pack of cards.

MikeHiow · 4 Mar 2012 at 23:19

two00lbwaster said:
I've only really come across the Arduino system since Raspberry Pi has been sold. Although, when I looked at the image I did seem to think I remembered some news release about an open source hardware platform last year.

Raspberry Pi is pretty much a barebones smartphone from the cheaper part of the spectrum of smartphones, without the wireless SoC stuff. It has more desktop connectivity options instead.

I did tweet the foundation to say that PoE would be a nice addition in the future

Adding POE yourself wouldn't be too difficult to be honest, in fact you can probably even buy POE extractors with 12v outputs if you're not keen on using a soldering iron.

But I do agree, I think it's a feature that'd make the rasberry Pi for homebrew projects and the like.

two00lbwaster · 5 Mar 2012 at 22:19

MikeHiow said:
Adding POE yourself wouldn't be too difficult to be honest, in fact you can probably even buy POE extractors with 12v outputs if you're not keen on using a soldering iron.

But I do agree, I think it's a feature that'd make the rasberry Pi for homebrew projects and the like.

Hmmm, would you be able to provide any links?

I don't mind a little soldering. I had to solder back on a component the had been partially knocked off the back of an 8800GT. I borrowed the soldering iron off of a work colleague, which had an end like a shovel. It made the job a little difficult you might say.

WILD9 · 5 Mar 2012 at 22:26

two00lbwaster said:
Hmmm, would you be able to provide any links?

I don't mind a little soldering. I had to solder back on a component the had been partially knocked off the back of an 8800GT. I borrowed the soldering iron off of a work colleague, which had an end like a shovel. It made the job a little difficult you might say.

http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-POE10R#spec

That would do it, i cant see any reason a normal POE injector wouldnt work in reverse but youd probably need to research it.

Addicted · 5 Mar 2012 at 22:31

MikeHiow said:
Adding POE yourself wouldn't be too difficult to be honest, in fact you can probably even buy POE extractors with 12v outputs if you're not keen on using a soldering iron.

But I do agree, I think it's a feature that'd make the rasberry Pi for homebrew projects and the like.

It's apparently being looked into for the next release which IMO sounds awesome!

MikeHiow · 8 Mar 2012 at 19:17

If it was me, I'd be looking at the Poe module for the arduino Ethernet.

It's not specific for the arduino and can be bought in 3.3, 5 and 12v flavours.

Data sheet: http://arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/PoE-datasheet.pdf