A Raspberry Pi 4 costs around $55 and draws 5W at idle. These are the projects worth running on one.
Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that blocks ads and trackers at the network level — every device on your LAN benefits without installing anything on them. Setup takes 20 minutes. Run it in a Docker container so it's easy to update.
Block lists I use: Steven Black's hosts file, OISD, and HaGeZi's multi-pro list from firebog.net.
A Pi 4 runs wg-easy comfortably for a household. See the WireGuard setup guide for the full config.
Deploy Netdata on a Pi and point it at your router and switches via SNMP. Get bandwidth graphs, packet loss alerts and latency tracking from a single dashboard.
Turn a USB printer into a network printer using CUPS on a Pi. Every device on your network prints to it wirelessly, including phones. Took less time to set up than I expected.
A Pi 5 with 8GB RAM runs 3B and 7B quantized models in CPU mode. Slow compared to a GPU, but fully offline. Good for a private assistant that never touches the internet.
A Pi 4 handles smaller models (1B–3B) at acceptable speed for text tasks.
Run Uptime Kuma on a Pi to monitor all your services — websites, Docker containers, SMTP servers. It sends Telegram or Discord notifications when something goes down. Keep it on a UPS so it stays up when your main server reboots.
Set up a Pi as a Tailscale exit node at a location you trust — office, parent's house, cloud VM. Route your traffic through it when you're on public Wi-Fi. Easier than WireGuard to set up for multiple users.
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