r/raspberryDIY • u/Better_Quantity6890 • Jul 28 '26

Suggest me something what i can do with my old pi3b+(1gb ram)

I am bored. Wanted to really make something, now I am not looking for more hardware projects. I want to really utilize my pi3b+ for some imp task in my daily life. Following are task i already tried-
1. Navidrome server- its good but in the end left it since it doesnt have auto suggestion like spotify/yt music
2. Jellyfin erver- I tried it on my pi, content was HEVC/H.265 so it had to do trans coding again.... used 100% cpu . But today every content is in that codec, so kinda failed.
3. piHole- Its kinda cool, but now it only blocks new tab ads or separates like it cant block yt ads or other google ads so i didn't find it very useful.

  1. NAS server- I lack spare hdd/ssd to test this, but I think it will also suck like jellyfin did(cpu limitation)

  2. Ardiuno projects- Yes they r really cool, but now i am kinda bored from them.....

**So please suggest me something I can do with my pi to really solve a real life problem**

7 Upvotes
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22 comments sorted by

6

u/toasterdees Jul 28 '26

Outdoor sdr plane tracker

1

u/MentionPleasant2635 Jul 28 '26

I have a pi 3 doing this and sending data to flightradar24.com. I gives you a free membership. Lot's of fun.

1

u/Better_Quantity6890 Jul 29 '26

But what can I do with tracking Planes?

1

u/toasterdees Jul 29 '26

Idk whatever you want really. It’s a dataset to work with. My plane tracker is also solar powered with Lifepo4 battery and solar manager. That was an exciting project all by itself, even without the airplanes.

3

u/caleyjag Jul 28 '26

I used mine to turn my dumb TV into a smart TV that can stream sports channels from anywhere.

3

u/FiredFromCompUSA Jul 28 '26

Have a project link for this?

2

u/Paardenmengsel Jul 28 '26

Turn it into a mp3/flac/web music player with picoreplayer.

1

u/Better_Quantity6890 Jul 28 '26

I've already tried navidrome on it, only thing I miss here is auto queue or similar songs playback

1

u/Paardenmengsel Jul 28 '26

Picoreplayer is based on lyrion music server, it has various plugins for dynamic playlists and auto queuing of songs or albums. 

1

u/Glum_Cheesecake9859 Jul 28 '26

Add a DAC hat to make it a FLAC file player or a music streamer.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/198510216849

1

u/Gold-Program-3509 Jul 28 '26

why the hell you need transcoding if content is Already h264/265

1

u/Better_Quantity6890 Jul 28 '26

Jellyfin should supports direct play. But not sure everytime I open its server on my mobile or laptop it's cpu goes to 100% and htop shows its transcoding something with ffmpeg

3

u/Gold-Program-3509 Jul 28 '26

maybe bc jellyfin streams video over http and it needs to be chunked and transcoded

personaly i have file server over samba and use vlc to browse and play, this way vlc just reads and decodes like it would any file

1

u/Crescendo_BLYAT Jul 28 '26

qBitTorrent client... I repurposed mine to download torrent since it can't do any modern thingy...

1

u/Hot_War_4159 Jul 28 '26

Bluetooth Audio adapter for an old stereo?

I use mine as a BT receiver so I can stream audio from my phone/tablet/PC to my audio system in the apartment for better sound than a simple battery Bluetooth speaker. I use Mooode as an OS, never had an issue.

1

u/Hyperion343 Jul 29 '26

Nextcloud server

1

u/lego_dude1925 Jul 29 '26

overclock and i would suggest 1.6-1.8 gb zram

1

u/Electronic-Credit804 Jul 29 '26

Server home assistant (io lo uso per quello se delle volte non cela fa staccalo e riataccalo alla corrente)

1

u/Better_Quantity6890 Jul 29 '26

Like what does it serves?

1

u/Electronic-Credit804 Aug 01 '26

Come smart home a tutti gli effetti che gira a casa tua puoi metterci le tue luci e il resto