Pi-Hole always tops my list as a cool project that has definite benefits and will still be in service after the new wears off. It’s been quite a while ago, but I built an Alexa with an RPI. That was kind of cool. Home Assistant on an RPI is pretty cool. In fact, there is a whole list of cool stuff to do with an RPI: https://pimylifeup.com/category/projects/ . There’s also an Awesome list for the RPI: https://github.com/thibmaek/awesome-raspberry-pi.
PiHole is becoming a bit heavy for my Zero W (uses the same chip as the original Pi series), and it’s the only thing the Pi runs. It’s a bit worrying.
Sweeeeeet. Thanks for sharing!
Tons of typical self-hosted services, like vault warden, actual budget, etc.
But for something that old, I’m thinking more along the lines of RC cars and other projects involving the GPIO. I’ll reserve my newer ones for self-hosting stuff, older stuff for things that don’t benefit much from extra processing power.
Tor bridge/Snowflake , i2pd to help circumvent censorship on some countries
It’s got enough power for a retro game emulator.
Take a look at the Linuxserver Docker images. They curate a huge list of self hosted apps that is great to browse and look for ideas. You don’t need to run Docker and use their images - I’m just suggesting review their list of apps they support to get some ideas of what’s out there.
That Pi is too old to handle any media tasks (like running a Jellyfin server), but for any low intensity duties it’s still perfectly usable.
Hey! That was my taco! It’s been just like a taco to me!
I’m just suggesting review their list of apps they support to get some ideas of what’s out there.
Ahh my people. Another list searcher. LOL
Web based torrent box with a VPN configured.
Octoprint if you own a 3d printer
If you have a 3D printer that can’t connect to the internet, you could try Octoprint.
Might be worth a shot but unfortunately Octoprint recommends at least a Pi 3. I tried it myself on a 2B and had nonstop issues with print quality from stutters while the Pi was sending gcode to the printer. As soon as I swapped to a 4B the problems disappeared.
I was poking around the Raspberry imager utility and they had RISC OS, which is and old operating system that was apparently fairly popular in the UK, but I’d never heard of it in the US. I loaded it up on my Pi 1 and had fun exploring it. Not exactly useful, but cool to mess with: RISC OS
Simple html web server. Host your own website.





