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tuyop
Sep 15, 2006

Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted

Fun Shoe

Acer Pilot posted:

I’m looking to play around with a Pi and setup a pihole on my home network. I live in Canada and see that there’s a few kits available on Amazon.ca but some of them seem overkill. What’s the goon recommended build that will run on wifi and be protected from a cat that likes to smell/touch everything? Also, should I use Amazon.ca (I have a $25 gift card here still and Prime) or are there any decent shops in Canada that I can buy from?

So far it looks like I need a Pi 3 or 4 with wifi, a power adapter, and some sort of case? My wifi network is 2 mesh deco m9 pucks so I could potentially plug into Ethernet directly if I buy a switch? I also have a tp link USB wifi dongle available if that makes things cheaper but I’m concerned about drivers.

My main goal is to use this to block ads on an Nvidia shield tv and a fire stick 4K.

Thanks in advance.

The kits are usually a bit of an upsell but the margins are small, maybe $5-$10. The two big vendors in Canada beyond local hobby places are buyapi.ca and canakit.com. The Canakit stuff is extremely nice and what we used when I worked in a library, I don’t remember how much it was. The school I worked with a couple years ago went with buyapi stuff and we kept it pretty close to as low as it could be.

If you really wanna diy, go grab just the pi4 with the RAM you want from buyapi, and the power supply is cheapest ime from Amazon, same with the SD card. Camera and screen if you want were cheapest from buyapi or eBay if you can wait. This should cost you about $100 for a pi4 4gb and only the necessary bits.

Case is a bit of a challenge but the cheapest option is to get one 3D-printed from a design on thingiverse. I think mine cost $1.20 from the library and my 3b has been running in it for basically forever. Friend of mine got one for $12 on Amazon I think.

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Trapick
Apr 17, 2006

For case you can also buy from somewhere like AliExpress if you're not in a rush. Also if it's just for a pihole the 4 is a bit overkill, could easily get by with a 3 (or lower).

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?

Quantum of Phallus posted:

I think if you have the option, there's no downside plugging it in via ethernet.
In fact quite the opposite. If it reasonably can be wired, it should be wired. Wireless is for things that need to move and things that get installed in weird places that aren't worth wiring. A Pi-Hole that's presumably sitting right next to your router should definitely always be wired.

McGurk
Oct 20, 2004

Cuz life sucks, kids. Get it while you can.

FWIW I've been using a Pi Zero W (plugged into my router for power, no ethernet obviously) for a few months and it has not reduced my speeds at all.

Quantum of Phallus
Dec 27, 2010

wolrah posted:

In fact quite the opposite. If it reasonably can be wired, it should be wired. Wireless is for things that need to move and things that get installed in weird places that aren't worth wiring. A Pi-Hole that's presumably sitting right next to your router should definitely always be wired.

That’s what I said. Go back to school!!!!

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

TheManWithNoName posted:

FWIW I've been using a Pi Zero W (plugged into my router for power, no ethernet obviously) for a few months and it has not reduced my speeds at all.

I haven’t had to ever think of my Pi 0w unless the power blinks. I know nothing about networking but did steps exactly as the setup and videos said and it just works! I never noticed any speed drops (avg 32 down/8up) but the latency is only in the 30ms range and after three years of satellite and a couple on my tethered phone’s unlimited plan I am extremely happy with what I have.

Super Nintendo 64
Feb 18, 2012

drat I just found out that SATA hats exist for the Pi 4, but they're out of stock everywhere.

tuyop
Sep 15, 2006

Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted

Fun Shoe
I’m interested in whether those USB/ethernet hats would let you use the 4 as a pfsense box

Malloc Voidstar
May 7, 2007

Fuck the cowboys. Unf. Fuck em hard.

tuyop posted:

I’m interested in whether those USB/ethernet hats would let you use the 4 as a pfsense box
I would not recommend running pfsense https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-license-violations-and-bad-code-freebsd-13s-close-call/

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?

Quantum of Phallus posted:

That’s what I said. Go back to school!!!!
I meant that as agreeing with you, not only are there no downsides the plugging it in but there are only upsides. I can see how that wording is awkward though.


TheManWithNoName posted:

FWIW I've been using a Pi Zero W (plugged into my router for power, no ethernet obviously) for a few months and it has not reduced my speeds at all.
It won't reduce your actual speeds no matter what because traffic isn't actually routing through it (unless you're using its VPN features). DHCP and DNS traffic is generally small enough that while there would probably be a measurable difference in performance it wouldn't be noticeable to humans unless the WiFi network was saturated.

The point is that using WiFi where you have a reasonable option not to introduces points of failure that don't need to exist. Especially for critical services like DHCP and DNS.

Put it another way, you're not home and your non-technical {significant other, parent, child} calls you saying the power went out and when it came back the internet doesn't work and they can't even print their {whatever} on the networked printer. Which one would you rather troubleshoot remotely?

I mean if you already have a Pi 0 W sitting around and nothing better to do with it, you're not going to ruin your network by using it as long as you understand the limitations, but in the context of someone looking to buy hardware for the purpose of running Pi-Hole it's hard to argue that it's not worth the extra few bucks to get a big one and run it wired.


tuyop posted:

I’m interested in whether those USB/ethernet hats would let you use the 4 as a pfsense box
As noted pfSense probably isn't a great choice at this point thanks to the corporate sponsor squandering most of the project's trust and goodwill, which is disappointing as someone who was a fan and user long before the current ownership, but either way their ARM builds only support their own hardware. One of the models (SG-1100) is very similar to a Marvel EspressoBin so that could plausibly be made to work, but it's not likely to be easy to run on a Pi.

You could definitely use OpenWRT though.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Mar 28, 2021

xtal
Jan 9, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
Nvm

xtal fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 28, 2021

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



tuyop posted:

I’m interested in whether those USB/ethernet hats would let you use the 4 as a pfsense box

wolrah posted:

You could definitely use OpenWRT though.

Yep, OpenWRT is the way to go for this use case. The Pi 4 can also work well as a router on a stick with a managed switch that does VLANs for a connection with a combined upstream+downstream of less than 500mbps.

tuyop
Sep 15, 2006

Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted

Fun Shoe

SamDabbers posted:

Yep, OpenWRT is the way to go for this use case. The Pi 4 can also work well as a router on a stick with a managed switch that does VLANs for a connection with a combined upstream+downstream of less than 500mbps.

Aw drat, I have gigabit.

I think maybe some of these things are just more suited for a Linux server made out of an old workstation or something.

Do love my pi doing pihole+vpn+transmission duty though. And the talk of audio stuff has me planning how I could use some of these old RPi 2s as airplay clients when we move to a bigger place next year.

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



tuyop posted:

Aw drat, I have gigabit.

I think maybe some of these things are just more suited for a Linux server made out of an old workstation or something.

Do love my pi doing pihole+vpn+transmission duty though. And the talk of audio stuff has me planning how I could use some of these old RPi 2s as airplay clients when we move to a bigger place next year.

Oh the Pi 4 can route a full gigabit no problem, as long as you use a USB 3.0 GigE adapter for one of the interfaces. It's only in the router on a stick configuration (LAN & WAN both using the built in port plugged into a managed switch breaking out a separate VLAN for each) that you won't be able to do more than 500Mbps combined. The limitation in that case is the shared single ethernet port, not the Pi CPU.

Also, grats on the gigabit internet connection

SamDabbers fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Mar 29, 2021

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



Fart, double post

Ffycchi
Jun 4, 2014

Sigh...challenge accepted...shitty photoshop incoming.

SamDabbers posted:

Oh the Pi 4 can route a full gigabit no problem, as long as you use a USB 3.0 GigE adapter for one of the interfaces. It's only in the router on a stick configuration (LAN & WAN both using the built in port plugged into a managed switch breaking out a separate VLAN for each) that you won't be able to do more than 500Mbps combined. The limitation in that case is the shared single ethernet port, not the Pi CPU.

Also, grats on the gigabit internet connection

I have Xfinity gigabit(ATT symmetrical isn't available in my area :( )

Arris SURFboard SB8200(self-owned and installed)
Unifi dream machine base using their built in IPS
Unifi 8port Poe switch
Unifi flex ap hd(wired)
Unifi beacon hd mesh ap

Dual pihole/unbound in HA configuration.

Have a starlink on order as a HA/load balance.

Gigabit internet Works flawlessly throughout my ~300sqm home.

Only thing I need is to slowly upgrade my ap's to WiFi 6 as it gets rolled out more commonly, and hope att fiber gets moved in this direction soon.

I recommend all of what I have extensively.

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?
If you have gigabit it's probably worth spending a couple of bucks to get something actually designed to have multiple network interfaces rather than half-assing something together with USB adapters. Just because it can be done with a Pi doesn't necessarily mean it should be done with a Pi.

If you want some cheap but solid hardware look in to Qotom or Protectli boxes, or if you really want to DIY something from spare parts find an old compact PC with intel networking onboard and slap an additional NIC in it for $20.

Ffycchi
Jun 4, 2014

Sigh...challenge accepted...shitty photoshop incoming.

wolrah posted:

If you have gigabit it's probably worth spending a couple of bucks to get something actually designed to have multiple network interfaces rather than half-assing something together with USB adapters. Just because it can be done with a Pi doesn't necessarily mean it should be done with a Pi.

If you want some cheap but solid hardware look in to Qotom or Protectli boxes, or if you really want to DIY something from spare parts find an old compact PC with intel networking onboard and slap an additional NIC in it for $20.

100% agreed. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"

namlosh
Feb 11, 2014

I name this haircut "The Sad Rhino".

Ffycchi posted:


Dual pihole/unbound in HA configuration.


How’d you do this? Is it one set of statistics or two? How do you keep the gravity updates in sync? Also local host lists...

Mines running on an old laptop as a container and it’s stable, But it burns me up that a single point of failure could bring everything down

Ffycchi
Jun 4, 2014

Sigh...challenge accepted...shitty photoshop incoming.

namlosh posted:

How’d you do this? Is it one set of statistics or two? How do you keep the gravity updates in sync? Also local host lists...

Mines running on an old laptop as a container and it’s stable, But it burns me up that a single point of failure could bring everything down

There are a TON of guides on Reddit...I'd tell you which one I followed but I honestly can't remember.

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

wolrah posted:

If you have gigabit it's probably worth spending a couple of bucks to get something actually designed to have multiple network interfaces rather than half-assing something together with USB adapters. Just because it can be done with a Pi doesn't necessarily mean it should be done with a Pi.

If you want some cheap but solid hardware look in to Qotom or Protectli boxes, or if you really want to DIY something from spare parts find an old compact PC with intel networking onboard and slap an additional NIC in it for $20.

Yeah, isn’t something like this more suited to a Microtik device?

ryanrs
Jul 12, 2011

Klyith posted:

My favorite thing about psychoacoustics and all this stuff is when you realize just how amazingly crap and easy to fool our sense of hearing is. Early human evolution definitely put a priority on sight & touch, and I get the feeling any time evolution asked "how do we get more brain space for all this visual cortex?" the answer was "gently caress ears". And then we cannibalized like half of the auditory area for speech.

If cats & dogs were the ones buying hifi sets they'd be amazing snobs about it, and probably wouldn't be fooled by raising the volume a click.

That's not true! Humans have much, much better directional hearing perception than almost any other animals. Top scores go to humans, elephants, and barn owls. Humans are incredibly amazing at localizing sounds.

You know how someone could throw their keys, and you'd immediately know where they landed from the sound? Most animals can't do that. In a carefully controlled lab setting, humans can locate the source of a sound within 1 degree. Cats and dogs can only locate sounds to like 30 degrees. They can swivel their ears around, and they can hear quiet (and ultrasonic) sounds, but they aren't actually that good at perceiving sound direction.

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.

ryanrs posted:

That's not true! Humans have much, much better directional hearing perception than almost any other animals. Top scores go to humans, elephants, and barn owls. Humans are incredibly amazing at localizing sounds.

Seems to me that bats and dolphins ought to rank higher than any of those.

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

VideoTapir posted:

Seems to me that bats and dolphins ought to rank higher than any of those.

Elephants (especially African elephants) have huge ears. It’s funny to me that they can hear a fly fart but can’t figure out where the fly is.

dupersaurus
Aug 1, 2012

Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

VideoTapir posted:

Seems to me that bats and dolphins ought to rank higher than any of those.

ianae but it's not exactly the same since echolocation is processing the echo of a known sound, rather than some arbitrary noise floating in the ether

Lazyhound
Mar 1, 2004

A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous—got me?

VideoTapir posted:

Seems to me that bats and dolphins ought to rank higher than any of those.

Humans can echolocate.

Chadzok
Apr 25, 2002


I clicked this honestly expecting something about sensing nearby cadburys

Super Nintendo 64
Feb 18, 2012

Chadzok posted:

I clicked this honestly expecting something about sensing nearby cadburys

You just blew my mind

Super Nintendo 64
Feb 18, 2012

I went to buy a soldering kit to attach something to the Pi Zero's pins.
Apparently there's resin-based and non-resin solders? Is this anything I need to pay attention to regarding the Pi?

Also, i3 Manjaro on the Pi 4 is pretty cool. The download for it wasn't available on OSDN, and as I type this I realise I downloaded an image from a random site without verifying its checksum :cheers:

Super Nintendo 64 fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Mar 31, 2021

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Super Nintendo 64 posted:

I went to buy a soldering kit to attach something to the Pi Zero's pins.
Apparently there's resin-based and non-resin solders? Is this anything I need to pay attention to regarding the Pi?

Rosin is flux for soldering, and rosin core solder has its own flux. It's convenient if you only do occasional soldering, versus getting a separate thing of flux. OTOH it's less controllable, people who do soldering on the tiny circuit board components IIRC tend to use flux pens for precise application.


OTOH if I wanted to attach something directly to a Pi's GPIO pins, I'd consider getting some little crimping terminal connectors. Which I've just now learned are called "dupont connectors" -- I've never had reason to seek them out, because I have scavenged bits in my bin of leftover PC parts junk.

You don't really need the crimping tool if you're just doing a few of them, some needle nose pliers get the job done.

poeticoddity
Jan 14, 2007
"How nice - to feel nothing and still get full credit for being alive." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five

Klyith posted:

Rosin is flux for soldering, and rosin core solder has its own flux. It's convenient if you only do occasional soldering, versus getting a separate thing of flux. OTOH it's less controllable, people who do soldering on the tiny circuit board components IIRC tend to use flux pens for precise application.


OTOH if I wanted to attach something directly to a Pi's GPIO pins, I'd consider getting some little crimping terminal connectors. Which I've just now learned are called "dupont connectors" -- I've never had reason to seek them out, because I have scavenged bits in my bin of leftover PC parts junk.

You don't really need the crimping tool if you're just doing a few of them, some needle nose pliers get the job done.

My dumb rear end thought flux pens seemed too expensive for how little volume they had.
Naturally, the solution was to buy a quart of liquid flux, then buy some syringes and needles (which, of course, turned out not to be blunt needles, so I had to constantly worry about stabbing myself with poisonous stuff), then fill a small mason jar with some flux and use approximately the volume in a flux pen over the span of 5+ years.
:saddowns:

Super Nintendo 64
Feb 18, 2012

Klyith posted:

Rosin is flux for soldering, and rosin core solder has its own flux. It's convenient if you only do occasional soldering, versus getting a separate thing of flux. OTOH it's less controllable, people who do soldering on the tiny circuit board components IIRC tend to use flux pens for precise application.


OTOH if I wanted to attach something directly to a Pi's GPIO pins, I'd consider getting some little crimping terminal connectors. Which I've just now learned are called "dupont connectors" -- I've never had reason to seek them out, because I have scavenged bits in my bin of leftover PC parts junk.

You don't really need the crimping tool if you're just doing a few of them, some needle nose pliers get the job done.

Thanks for the info! I'm completely new to soldering so I'd never heard of any of this.

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.

yeah, figured that out on my own once. i don't rate myself anywhere near a bat

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

VideoTapir posted:

yeah, figured that out on my own once. i don't rate myself anywhere near a bat

Believe in yourself! Bats can’t even post and poo poo at the same time, and even dumbass people (me) will download apps and build electrical grids so that even Australian goons can read our shot posts in real time!

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.
LITERALLY FARTING AS I POST THIS.

I bought a box of switches, LED, and sensors which were supposed to be labeled, but weren't. Got the RGB LED working. Haven't figured out how to get both directions of the joystick working yet. Got a push button switch that I can't figure out, and which doesn't match any tutorials because, and I think this is going to be a thing with these, it is on its own little circuit board with a resistor already in place.

I really have to figure this poo poo out as I am almost certainly going to be teaching a unit on this stuff (elementary school) by this time next year.

Anyway, this is kinda fun, and so long as I don't have to use Teams, the idea of using this machine (I am posting from a Pi-400 right now) as one of my primary devices is growing on me. Though I may in fact have use for 8 gb. I'm not 100 percent sure about that. I'll probably be getting another one and setting it up similarly to mine for shared coding projects with my daughter (from whom I will be remote much of the time) and for her cartoons (power consumption is much lower on this than the already-low-power SFF PC she's currently using)

Anyway, this is the first time I've had to really sit down with this thing for more than 30 minutes at a stretch since I got it. It's growing on me as I use it.

Got an extra SD card, looking for retropie images for it.

tuyop
Sep 15, 2006

Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted

Fun Shoe

VideoTapir posted:

LITERALLY FARTING AS I POST THIS.

I bought a box of switches, LED, and sensors which were supposed to be labeled, but weren't. Got the RGB LED working. Haven't figured out how to get both directions of the joystick working yet. Got a push button switch that I can't figure out, and which doesn't match any tutorials because, and I think this is going to be a thing with these, it is on its own little circuit board with a resistor already in place.

I really have to figure this poo poo out as I am almost certainly going to be teaching a unit on this stuff (elementary school) by this time next year.

Anyway, this is kinda fun, and so long as I don't have to use Teams, the idea of using this machine (I am posting from a Pi-400 right now) as one of my primary devices is growing on me. Though I may in fact have use for 8 gb. I'm not 100 percent sure about that. I'll probably be getting another one and setting it up similarly to mine for shared coding projects with my daughter (from whom I will be remote much of the time) and for her cartoons (power consumption is much lower on this than the already-low-power SFF PC she's currently using)

Anyway, this is the first time I've had to really sit down with this thing for more than 30 minutes at a stretch since I got it. It's growing on me as I use it.

Got an extra SD card, looking for retropie images for it.

I’ve taught quite a bit of hobbiest electronics and tried to use RPis with middle schoolers, but we ended up splitting off the software and hardware stuff much more granularly than the Pi’s can support. Just a lot going on for people who don’t know that there’s a control key on the keyboard, imo.

Anyway, I could probably share some stuff if you’re interested.

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.
That might be helpful, thanks

dupersaurus
Aug 1, 2012

Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'
I've got a new beta version of my feeder cam up, which adds machine learning to do species identification.

It's pretty good...


...but also makes some uh... interesting choices


that's not a great blue heron

accipter
Sep 12, 2003

dupersaurus posted:

I've got a new beta version of my feeder cam up, which adds machine learning to do species identification.

It's pretty good...


...but also makes some uh... interesting choices


that's not a great blue heron

Very cool! I have been meaning to play around with this, but haven't found the time.

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Fragrag
Aug 3, 2007
The Worst Admin Ever bashes You in the head with his banhammer. It is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass! You have been struck down.
Interesting, if you squint it can look like a Blue Heron. I’m guessing size isn’t a factor for the AI?

I’ll be moving into a new house with a garden soon, this seems like a nice spring project!

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