Just got a Pi1B. What can you actually do with it these days?

One thing that comes to mind is a serial terminal. If it supports ethernet that could be expanded to a terminal server.

hth,

bob prohaska

I believe software for the RPi Zero (v1) will just work on it, except slightly slower due to the 700MHz clock speed (or maybe you could try over-clocking). So pick any of the endless RPi Zero projects that don't require the full 40-pin GPIO header.

Or anyway it's plenty of power for most things I do with PCs except using Firefox (which I only do when lightweight browsers like Dillo and Links don't work at all with an important website).

I never owned a pre gen3 Pi, I did watch Jeff's video, and it seemed that anything GUI is a complete waste of time, Midori browser did run, it was OK as an SSH host, e.g. to run PiHole

Works very well here as an NTP server, running with a GPS/PPS patch antenna indoors. Can support dozens of clients.

I have a couple of (much newer) Pis around the house with temperature sensors on, feeding a Grafana instance. I expect the 1B would be fine in a sensor host role, if you can arrange connectivity.

In principle it can do a reasonable job of displaying video but based on

Agreed, I'd suggest they're best as a 'one function' appliance. I just used an original Pi Zero to bridge between a USB OBD-II device and wifi, that allow phone OBD-II apps to connect to the USB OBD cable I already had. Installed OpenWRT and a few minutes of setup and that was it. Similarly I have a Pi 1 to bridge between Modbus and ethernet, and another Pi Zero as a VPN endpoint.

I'm sure I could do something similar with an ESP32 or a Pico or similar microcontroller, but the setup with a full-fat Pi is quicker and easier.

Main irritation is the Pi 1 doesn't have wifi, but a $5 wifi dongle fixes that if you need it.

Theo

Put on PIOS as a server. Don't run X or any GUI.

Then its fine for any serverish app.

Back in the day we used to run obsolescent 366 machines as DNS servers...

The modern equivalent - a Pi Zero - is great for many things. One runs my central heating controller.

Another acts as an audio input to my hifi, that can play any music on my server and some internet radio stations.

I think that is my conclusin with the SZero

A Pico can run a single function, but once it gets more complicated - like a web server, a pi zero running linux is just *easier*

Or an ethernbet hat

Static webserver, network backup, here.

I've got two Pi1s and a P1A with Si7021 temperature/humidity sensors that send via UDP the temperature every minute to a Pi3 with a temperature display. They also record the temperature and humidity every 1/10th of an hour to a file. They could easily be doing other work but I have none for them.

You could run Volumio or MoOdeAudio on it. I have a Pi2 for that purpose, but a Pi1 will have enough cpu power to run it. Sound output from the headphone jack is not too good, so a cheap usb sound card would make sense...

-jw-

It should be able to run an OSS home thermostat with plenty of CPU time left over.

A couple of things I used to use my Pi 1 for (same unit doing both functions but not at the same time):

1. The Pi 1 captured off-the-air TV from a PVR-USB2 device and directed the stream to a named pipe. A netcat session read from the named pipe. The other end of the netcat session was a Linux machine with plenty of disk storage. SSH on the larger Linux machine set up and tore down the stuff when activated by cron. If interested in that, I have the command options and so forth. The PVR-USB2 hardware and/or driver would sometimes lock up and require a reboot, and it was easier for me to reboot the Pi 1 than the bigger machine.
2. Had an HP 6300c scanner that would work with an old (roughly

I was going to suggest that, as that is what I used my old 256MB and

You'll need a Pi compatible WiFi dongle, and reliability might be a bit questionable, but that could have been down to using old mobile phone chargers with the original Pi's, I would recommend the official PSU used on later ones.

I did briefly use it as KODI media player on the bedroom TV, and it could do a lideshow of camera photos from the NAS OK, but it wasn't until the Pi 2B that many videos were possible.

---druck

I use one as a print server. I put Alpine Linux on it, and run two instances of this to drive a laser printer and a label printer:

I didn't watch the video but I'm posting from an old laptop with only slightly better specs (1GHz CPU, 768MB RAM), and I've played around with GUI programs on my RPi Zero W. But it's about the software you choose, Dillo and Links would run even better than Midori. I'd also pick a lightweight Window Manager / Desktop Environment.

Heck you can surely use most Usenet newsreaders fine on a Pi 1.

Bah, just convert the videos to SD resolution for it using ffmpeg. That's what I've been doing with the hacked Playstation 2 I've used for videos since before RPis, and checking the specs for that:

CPU: Emotion Engine @ ~300?MHz Memory: 32?MB?RAM, 4?MB?Video?RAM

Nothing running a desktop. It is fine for light server/connectivity stuff, interfacing/sensor data etc..

I use old PIs as ethernet to JTAG/SWD adapters:

cu Michael

That's why I only mentioned MoOde and volumio as possible media players for the Pi1, and since nowaways quite a lot of videos available appear to be in HEVC (x265) the minimum hardware for Kodi/LibreElec would imho be a Pi4 since it does the decoding natively on its GPU, stutter-free in

-jw-

I read Pi OS Lite should be possible.

Pi-Hole & Unbound.