I’ve been wanting to pick up a Raspberry Pi for some time, but with no good reason. Well, no specific good reason. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought “Surely I could find some use for it once I have it” but somewhere at the front of my mind I kept putting it off because such a nebulous certainty was…well…uncertain, and I knew it. But that didn’t stop my from picking up a CannaKit quad-core Pi 5 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. Now that I have it, though, I’m on the hook to answer the question of what do I do with it?

Right now, I’m writing this post on the Chromium browser available through the default desktop OS that came with the package. I guess this is pretty cool.

The device is currently sitting on my desk underneath another monitor, and I am accessing it remotely through a browser. My issue is that while I have enough monitors, I don’t have enough room for YAKAM — yet another keyboard and mouse — because I have my main K&M as well as a setup for the flight sim part of the desk. The original solution was to connect to the flight sim monitor and route that K&M through a small KVM switch, and while that works, I have to shove the mounted flight controllers aside to get room to use the 10-keyless keyboard with the Pi. So I’m accessing the desktop of the Pi on my main monitor via remote browser connection. I guess that’s OK, but why, when I can use my native OS with my main K&M? I also tried using a BT fold up keyboard with integrated track-pad to connect to the device remotely though an Android tablet, and that has promise, but the resolution needs to be adjusted for my tired, old eyes.

The first thing I tried was to set up an Owncast server. Owncast is hard, dude. I have seen a lot of people saying that all you need to start is a semi-decent system and fat pipe connection. I’m on fiber so I’ve got the connection set, but the results of running Owncast on the quad-core, 8GB system were abysmal. I mean, it worked, but the quality was crap. I tried looking for info on how to get better quality out of the setup, but it was nothing but dead-ends and incomplete or vague data. So, if you or someone you love is running an Owncast server on similar hardware, drop me a line.

With that out of the way, I’m kind of out of ideas. Now, this is when the home lab fans come out of the woodwork to throw all kinds of suggestions at me: Backup server. Home media server. VPN. Retro game console. Home automation server. I have heard tell of all of the “popular” uses, and all of the pop-sci “projects” that listicle sites have offered, and none of them resonate with me. I am already backing things up, I don’t have home media, I use a personal VPN, not interested in retro gaming, and my home automation needs are taken care of as well. Among all of the suggested uses I have seen — and I have seen a good many — I can’t find a way to fit them into my routine. Plus, I’d like to actually use the device, not shove it into a closet somewhere to plug away at tasks on my behalf.

I suppose my general lean is towards picking up slack left when I decommissioned my home server last year. Then, I was hosting this site (or version thereof) from a closet nearby. I was also using it as a Docker hub, running software that I was developing against, like databases and such. Unfortunately, I’ve taken to using WSL on my desktop for Docker needs, and developing right where I sit, which would mean I’d be shifting responsibilities to this tiny device for the sake of shifting responsibilities to this tiny device.

I am considering connecting this to my TV, though, and then maybe using it for development “from the couch” in addition to whatever else I can think of doing with it. Again, I don’t have personal media and already have a friend who shares his Plex server with a bunch of folks, but maybe I could use something like browser-based remote gaming, a la Xbox Streaming or go back to GeForce Now. Problem is, I have a nice TV which already has those services built in so, I’m starting to feel like anything I might use this for, where I’d use it, is already covered by something or someone else.

Of course, there’s always the device itself. The CannaKit is an all-in-one experience, built at the factory and ready to roll as soon as I unboxed it. I can take the system out of the tiny case and screw around with the hardware, but I’ve never been ambitious in the “learn home electronics!” kind of way. Maybe in a few years when the thing has either served me well enough to earn retirement, or has collected enough dust to resurrect as a memory from a point in time, I’ll pop the case and see what’s inside. But I’m a software guy, and that’s more or less what I’m trying to decide on when I give this a good think.