this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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33
Uses for a SBC (When You Already Have an x86 Mini-PC?) (leminal.space)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've got a Lenovo M720q running as my main server in my home and it's more than powerful enough for anything I could be doing right now. However, I also have a Le Potato lying around that I'd like to do something with. Any suggestions?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
  1. DNS resolver, like pi-hole, unbound with adguard, diversion, etc.
  2. RMS server: a lot of Remote Desktop software has the option to install a listener on a low power device elsewhere on the network that can use wake-on-lan to access computers within the network without keeping everything on 24-7.
  3. Log aggregator: would be useful for anyone who troubleshoots stuff regularly, but historical info of any kind can come in handy.
    Simplest form might be a scribe server. Network gear often has an option to send logs to a particular URL, so if you added the scribe server IP/port to the field you’d have historical network logs.
  4. Additional loggers: could also be run on-device, such as a wifi connectivity checker, smart home or energy monitoring state data, decibel meter with USB microphone
  5. RADIUS server for managing enterprise WPA keys
  6. Mobile home: due to the size and power draw, when paired with a hotspot and battery the potato could be useful as a mobile service repeater, a VPN client that deploys your home services on the go (e.g. in a vehicle, hotel room, family/friends’ houses, etc) to arbitrary client devices. If you use the same SSID/PW and encryption type, personal devices would use it automatically during travel.
  7. Home theater box like kodi or jellyfin client

At the level of individual apps, the list explodes. Many progressive web apps can be hosted essentially for free on the potato, so you could shunt your always-on services to this machine to allow low power states on a beefier machine. For example:

  1. Network management or security software like Fing
  2. Low throughput NAS or incremental backup management server like rdiff, TimeMachine, etc
  3. inventory management like partkeeper, storaji, etc
  4. Smart home bridges like homeassistant or homebridge
  5. Bookmark aggregator or landing page like heimdall, raindrop, pinalist, etc
  6. Retro game emulators or ROM libraries like retropie
  7. Photo libraries like photoprism
  8. Book libraries like calibre-web

Edit: list subitem formatting messed up
Edit: add common micro services, mobile deployment
Edit: add home theater suggestion
Edit: add always-on and PWA examples

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Add to the list running a Kodi home theater box.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Done and done

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Since we’re open sourcing your comment (🇨🇳 our comment, comrade), may I suggest you split the list? A lot of the services are things that can run on an SBC but OP already has extra computing power on a mini PC, so are likely better hosted there. A subset of them offer clear benefits being hosted in a small appliance.

Edit: to be clear, I’m thinking OP wouldn’t consider items 7-13 a strong enough case to spin a separate machine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Good point, comrade. App services split to separate list.