Yesterday, I decided to throw aesthetics out the window and finally just plug everything in for my pi-box project. So far, I haven’t regretted the decision, but I know myself well enough to know that in a month or two, I’m going to want to tear everything apart and make it look nicer. For now, though, it works, and it’s kind of cool.
For those of you who aren’t aware, one of the projects I’ve been working on is my pi-box. The gear list includes two Raspberry Pi 4B, a form function Raspberry Pi box to hold them, a Netgear gigabit 5 port unmanaged switch, and two Noctua 80mm fans with a fan controller. There is a rough picture of the setup on the projects page if you want to take a look at it, and at some point, I’ll grab a final picture of it in its home.
On one Pi, I have Raspbian Lite running headless. This is just a lab space to mess around with, and I haven’t come up with something for it to do yet, but I’ll eventually come up with something, I’m sure. The other Pi, though, I have set up as Pi-Hole. I used some video tutorials to figure out the setup and get it installed, but the web GUI for it is pretty awesome.
For now, I only have my computer routing my traffic through it to test it out. Eventually, I’ll move everything over to it, but my wife is pretty particular about changes I make to our home network that could potentially impact her streaming. Not a big issue for me, as it was more of just doing a fun project.
I posted some links for a picture of the box and also a YouTube channel that I watched for some instructions. I had to troubleshoot some network items on my end as Xfinity is particular about specifying your DNS, but surprisingly it didn’t take me that long. I’ll keep an eye on it and see what else it can do, but if anyone is looking for a fun little project, I’d definitely recommend this.
For those of you wondering, yes, a Pi 4B is definitely overkill for just running Pi-Hole, and there is no real reason I need two Noctua fans for the box, but it was fun to just do things. I’m sure I’ll continue to mess with it and make changes with time, but give it a try if you want. There are lots of great tutorials out there, or let me know if you want some help with it.
Okay, I’m going to go make some cookies because I’m getting a craving, but I’ll sign off for now and keep an eye out for another post in the future.
Thanks,
sgtdiddlywink
