I’ve been looking at one of them! I might take another gander.
Talking nerdy tech, I cannot rave about the Oculus Quest enough, VR, stand-alone, no cables and amazing visuals.
Quite a few of into techy-nerdy stuff.
I will start us off - anyone else using pi-hole? Been very happy with it and a breeze to set up.
I’ve been looking at one of them! I might take another gander.
Talking nerdy tech, I cannot rave about the Oculus Quest enough, VR, stand-alone, no cables and amazing visuals.
Are you running pi-hole on a Pi, or a dedicated machine?
I bought my son a Quest for Christmas. Fantastic bit of kit, isn't it? Did yo know you can link it to your computer with an appropriate USB cable, and play Rift games as well?
I’m using a Pi-hole as well - on a Pi that has a few other bits running. Makes browsing a bit easier on some sites.
Also have been trying to justify a Quest - heard they are great.
Not sure if it qualifies but I just repurposed an old desktop computer (with the help of a salvaged LSI RAID card) into a server. Four old 1TB drives in a RAID10 array. Not huge storage but holds what I need it to.
Also recently picked up an aqua blue G4 iMac from a local charity shop which I plan to clean up and refurbish.
Do not want to distract from the pi-hole but...
On the topic of Quest what would you guy recommend for my first dive into Oculus? I am debating whether to go all in on the quest, or dip my toe in on the GO.
I went all in for the Rift S simply to have a go on Boneworks. Very pleased.
I'd be wary of the 'lesser' headsets as they are likely to fall down in critical areas such as resolution, screen door effect and refresh rate? It may give a misleading impression of just how bad VR can be!
Replying to make sure I'm subb'd to this one! Self confessed tech nerd here.
Anyone tried PiAware? I have a feeder running 24/7 and a mast on the gable of the house. I feed FlightAware but when I get a chance, I'm going to also push flight data up to FlightRadar24.
Here's the web front end that the Pi serves up...
... and my stats: https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/JohnEgerton
It certainly can be used independently, but you'll be more limited in terms of future gaming titles without tethering it, I'd suggest.
I went for the Rift S as portability isn't of interest (though it's definitely a plus!) and I wanted to play as many titles as possible. I do have a gaming rig though.
The Quest appears to be gaining more and more features, such as hand tracking, but it's at present unclear how many titles will actually take advantage of this given I believe only the far more expensive Valve Index has this feature (but implemented differently).
It sounds like the Quest may be better suited to your needs, but I've not had a go on one so can't comment on how it compares to the Rift S.
Reading the previous Pi-hole related posts with interest...
Makes me want to tinker with a Raspberry Pi again, after some years of abstinence.
Problem is that having children, work, other commitments how do I find the time to really dabble with those.
Can you recommend an ‘out of the box’ bundle that would allow me to ‘just start up’ a Rasperry Pi without having to worry about digging up spare keyboards out of the basement, cables, memory sticks, the like?
(Apologies if this is against the puristic nerdy spirit of this thread)
Thank you
Last edited by WolfiesPapa; 1st February 2020 at 01:07.
I use pi hole, w/ openvpn set up on google cloud compute free tier - there is a few good online guides available
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
https://thepihut.com/collections/ras...pi-starter-kit
Just add keyboard and mouse : https://thepihut.com/collections/ras...keyboard-mouse
Do you find you have to pay for egress bandwidth sometimes? The current Always Free tier outgoing bandwidth allowance is "1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations per month (excluding China and Australia)" which seems to me to be a bit concerning. It implies (if I read correctly) that any outgoing bandwidth usage to China or Australia will be charged immediately. And 1 GB/month outgoing is not that much if one is using a VPN on it.
Unless I'm reading it wrong/misunderstanding.
I’ve been using a Rift CV1 then a Rift S for the last 3 years for racing sims on my PC. If you have a good enough PC, VR really is great. The 3D lets me race a lot closer and more precisely than when I raced on a monitor. It’s also a lot cheaper than buying a good quality triple display setup.
If it’s for a full VPN, then it’s probably not the most cost effective method, as you are right you get 1GB egress per month only. however if you want to use pihole for ad blocking and dns request then it will hardly use any bandwidth at all.
This guide explains it best
https://github.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Ho...penVPN-Configs
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
I have been using pi-hole for about a year.
I did have dnscrypt on it as well but unfortunately a samsung micro sdcard went read only so i had to build another os/pihole.
Nice setup and i check in daily over VNC on my tablet to see whats in the query log and if any new sites end up in the top 10 block list table.
I'm having great fun geting to grips with my new Synology DS918+ NAS server at home.
Planning on adding a fourth 6TB HDD tomorrow (I'm using Synology's Hybrid Raid system).
Mainly bought to use as a Plex server, but I'm enjoying discovering its other capablities.
I decided to have a go at a Pi cluster. I bought 10 RPIs, 16 port switch, cable, power supplies etc. Then I had someone make up the perspex for the frame for me, bought 3mm threaded rod and fittings. At that point I promptly lost interest in it and sent all but two of the RPIs to my son as he wanted to add to the home automation.
You haven't moved the project over to a home brew quantum computer, have you?
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/30/36c3...puter-at-home/
i have two piholes one main and one back up,
also have a full ubiquiti unifi set up, including USG, 16 port poe switch, 48 port switch (overkill), cloudkey gen 2, 3 cctv cameras running unifi protect and a few other bits and bobs,
also all av is centralised to a server cabinet in my utility.
Good kit, Ubiquiti. We used to use Meru before they got swallowed up by Fortinet but moved to Unifi systems.
Thought this might be the best place to stick this. What Rasbperry Pi build could I put together to serve the same function as a Sonos Connect. Requirements are
1. Stream audio to a HiFi amplifier over WiFi
2. Driven by an IOS app but the stream would go direct to the Pi (I currently use an Apple Airport Express and stream from an Iphone/Ipad but it's a bit clumsy if you happen to be viewing video/audio on the device with the radio app in the background)
3. App should have access to a usable internet radio database.
4. I have another two Sonos devices but I do NOT need any syncing/grouping for this room (bedroom).
This is primarily for playing radio in bed on Sunday mornings (and perhaps a bit of NAS music) to a not-terribly-expensive Denon amp - I'm not trying to create the perfect system and some of the HiFi articles seem to be leading me down the garden path of gold-plating the spec in search of aural unicorns (but I think I'd need something a step up from the on-board Pi 3.5mm jack). I had an idea I could try to re-deploy an old Apple TV but internet radio support seems to be basically nil.
Have I missed anything?
Last edited by Carlton-Browne; 9th February 2020 at 20:23.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
I manage with a £100 VHF Roberts radio, but then I have no need of music streaming.
We only have the World Service on FM here - everything else would need to be streamed and apart from the BBC we would need RTE Radio and a Cuban station.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Does this give you what you need?.. . https://www.balena.io/blog/turn-your-old-speakers-or-hi-fi-into-bluetooth-receivers-using-only-a-raspberry-pi/
[edit: not sure if that comes close at all.. it likely keeps all the actual streaming at the phone, being just a bluetooth/airplay remote speaker in the end]
Last edited by JohnnyE; 9th February 2020 at 22:16.
Thanks for the suggestion but I won't have Google hardware in the house. I'm currently investigating Volumio - it has the benefit of supporting a number of hardware platforms so I can play with it on an old laptop first. If I'm happy with it then I'll buy a Pi with an augmented soundcard and case etc.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Bring this back to life - because I'm doing a lot of video stuff with students - I decided to replace my aging desktop (i5-4570) and build from scratch - pretty amazing what sort of processors you can get for less than £100 these days - I built the system around the Ryzen 5 1600AF (the AF is important as you can see from following the link) and it was only £98 - that combined with a NVME M2 SSD and a RX570 (£120) and the system files.
I had a slightly dodgy moment where I could not get it to boot but I'd accidently (how I do not know) bent a processor pin and I just straighten it out and we were good to go...
I've been trying to get my NTP server to run better. Mixed results. the problems are mostly temperature related, I think.
Best wishes,
Bob
I received the latest iPad Magic Keyboard for my 11” iPad Pro and have been really enjoying it. The built quality is superb, the keys are great and the way the iPad floats is a wonderful piece of design. The trackpad implementation is really well done too. I was already using my iPad as a laptop replacement. This takes is a step further.
Last edited by Phil Lee; 23rd April 2020 at 14:32.
A little bit of an update on my dilemma.
I got Volumio working on an old laptop as a test and it was largely satisfactory. There were a couple of niggles with IOS connecting as the remote control and I eventually found the best approach was to assign a fixed IP address rather than using DHCP. What I hadn't realised was that one of the fundamental requirements had changed with the spring weather - we eat on the bedroom balcony from about now until September and I do need to synchronise the music stream with the Play 3 in the kitchen after all. A kind member offered to sell me their Connect so I now have a common platform of Sonos that will retrograde to the older standard together - this delays the point at which I can decide if I want to continue paying into the Sonos eco-system or go another route.
Last edited by Carlton-Browne; 30th April 2020 at 11:58.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.