Of Tablets and Phones and Raspberry Pis

Reading Time: 4 minutes
This morning when driving back from the shops I heard someone in a podcast say that his fourteen year old niece was disgusted at the thought of using a laptop rather than a mobile phone and it made me think of something. In the age of iOS and Android devices replacing computers it makes sense to setup Raspberry Pi as Nextcloud servers, photoprism servers, Pi Holes and more. It makes sense becaue if we move away from the laptop and the desktop then we come across a serious limitation. Storage.

## Apple Cost of Storage

There is a 160 CHF difference between a 64GB iPhone SE and a 256GB iPhone SE for example. With the Mac Book Air 13″ you pay a minimum of 1100 CHF for 256GB of storage and 1900 CHF for 2TB of storage. With the iPad Mini you range from 64 GB for 571 CHF to 256GB for 741.70CHF.

## A Cheaper shared Option

A Raspberry Pi 4 8GB will cost 110 CHF at the time of writing and a one TB SDXC card will cost 106 CHF. For 200 CHF and Nextcloud you have a low wattage storage solution that is always on and always available when you are on the home network.

## Cloud backup

With such a solution you can take one hundreds of pictures during a hike or night out, and back them up to your home nextcloud instance. You can then either link two nextcloud intances in different buildings, or find the cheapest cloud storage solution. iCloud is 120 CHF per year, Google One is 100 CHF per year and Kdrive is just 67 CHF per year.

By having a full backup in your home you can slide between cloud storage solutions more easily because you don’t need to wait for days while all the files download.

## NextCloud and Mobile Devices

With Nextcloud you have time tracking options so you can keep track of the projects you’re working on as well as how much you’re owed, if the time tracked has monetary value. With the Passwords plugin for nextcloud you can replace onepass, lastpass and other password solutions.

With the memories add on you can view photos and videos as moments in time, by people, and more. It also logs locations and more, but rather than Google or Apple knowing about this, your own server does.

It has word processors, project management tools, task tools, Kanban boards and more. It’s versatile.

## Pi Hole

When you’re surfing the web adverts can become really annoying, either by auto-playing, or by just taking a lot of space on a screen. By routing DNS requests from your server to Pi Hole you can reduce the amount of bandwidth used by ads on mobile devices.

## CUPS Server

Although quite boring you can setup a Pi to work as a CUPS print server. Plug a Pi running CUPS into a printer and you can set it up. With this move you don’t need to plug in a laptop every time you want to print. Since Apple went to USB C this has become especially annoying because you need to find the USB dongle each time.

## PhotoPrism

PhotoPrism is an interesting photo management tool that allows you to import photos that have been exported from Google Takout. It also has two apps, PhotoPrismUpload and Photosync. It automatically organises photos according to EXIF data and machine learning models.

Immich is similar and offers more control of users but feels less complete, for now.

## HomeAssistant

Home Assistant, like Google Home and Apple Home is a home automation tool where you can add aranet devices, netatmo devices, your Apple TV and mobile phones. With this device you can keep track of your steps via the iphone and other devices.

It can detect when you leave home, and when you return, as well as whether you’ve been walking, stationary and more.

It also provides you with monitoring of Nextcloud instances, to see if they are under heavy loads, or light loads, but also, via the history feature, to see how things are changing over time.

## Tailscale

With the free tier of Tailscale you can have up to three people and 100 devices connected to a single VPN. With Tailscale VPN active on your Pi devices and mobile devices you can access your instances of Nextcloud, Pi Hole, Home Assistant, Photoprism and more, whether you’re at home, or using the 4g network. Image backup and sharing doesn’t have to wait until you’re home to happen. This gives you the flexibility and freedom of iCloud and Google Drive, without going through their servers. Everything stays within your own reality, if you so desire.

## And Finally

In a Pi home you can almost do away with laptops, to replace them with Raspberry Pi. These devices can serve as video servers via apps like Plex, or photo sharing tools via Photoprism. They can also keep your other files safe, and accessible, as long as you’re on the Tailscale VPN. You can even print from your mobile device to a CUPS accessible printer, at least in theory.

For future generations that prefer mobile phones, and tablets, to computers, the age of Pi makes sense. When discussions took place, that talked about the shift away from laptops and desktops, they didn’t mention that self-hosting would thrive as a result. Self-hosting is about setting up thin clients as servers to enable people to do things via web interfaces and apps. I got a few instances to work, over a period of weeks, so now I see how the thin client age requires static machines like Pi to provide services.

I think the age of Bare Bone PCs will be interesting.