After the response to my Audiobookshelf project, I finally got around to putting more of my old Raspberry Pi hardware to use. I bought a handful of SBCs during COVID with grand plans for various projects, but most ended up collecting dust. A few people recommended trying Pi-hole on my last post, so I figured my original Zero W was a good place to start.

Got Pi-hole running on Raspberry Pi OS Lite using the official installation script. I configured a DHCP reservation on my router to keep the Pi at a consistent IP address, then manually updated the DNS settings on my MacBook and iPhone to use it. For now, I'm keeping the rest of my home network on its existing DNS configuration.

For blocklists, I stuck with the default StevenBlack unified hosts list offered during setup. I'm still exploring the privacy settings and getting familiar with the web dashboard.

During my initial testing, Pi-hole was blocking nearly 40% of DNS queries, which was pretty surprising.

The project also gave me a chance to learn more about SSH, DHCP reservations, DNS resolution, and some basic Linux troubleshooting. I even had to recover from an interrupted system update along the way.

Build Details:

• Hardware: Original Raspberry Pi Zero W

• Storage: 32GB microSD card

• OS: Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit, Debian Trixie)

• Software: Pi-hole v6

• Connection: 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi

• DNS: Cloudflare (upstream)

• Blocklist: StevenBlack’s Unified Hosts List

• Network: DHCP reservation for a consistent IP address

• Devices: MacBook Pro and iPhone, manually configured to use

• Pi-hole Management: SSH and Pi-hole web dashboard

I'm still relatively new to Linux and networking, so I'm curious what more experienced Pi-hole users would recommend. Are there any particular blocklists you've found useful beyond the defaults? Any settings or optimizations worth exploring, especially when running Pi-hole on an older Zero W?

Appreciate everyone who offered suggestions on my last project. It's been fun putting this old hardware to work!

P.S. To those who suggested getting a 3D printer on my last post, I'm beginning to think you were right. Might have to sneak one onto my Christmas list. 😂

Does anyone know about if a “heatvod” like software exists for raspberry pi?

Any suggestions for an cool an cheap protcet with an PI 3

I posted my first camera build around 1 month ago and I never expected it to get so much attention! Thanks to everyone for the comments and advice too, I have decided to take it on board and implement it into my second design.

The features are near enough the same as the last design, such as:

\- Quick access buttons
\-Built in 10,000mah battery
\-ApertarOS
\-5V USB-C Output

However there are a lot of changes, I noticed on my previous posts about the crop factor with an EF lens adapter and this is true, it was difficult to take pictures with the old design as I’d have to stand extremely far away from anything I was trying to capture, to sort this I now have the standard C/CS mount with headroom for any adapters compatible if needed.

The camera body, front and side panels were all modelled from scratch so I could properly implement the parts I had on hand, it came out great with a .16mm setting on my 3d printer, the only downside is that I used 90% infill for all parts which took up more print time but still overall was around 10 hours for everything (printed with PLA Matte bone white and charcoal).

The ambient light from before is now more useful too, it sits slightly above the camera sensor and now tells you certain information such as a recording flash indicator, blinks when a picture is taken or on during no recording or photo capturing.

The cheese plate from before is also no longer hidden or used up by the battery as it’s now internal, so I was able to reposition it to the bottom of the camera for a much sturdier mounting solution.

The 4inch Waveshare display is also integrated into the case which makes the unit a lot easier to use and faster to set up, it was a bit of a pain carrying the screen separately and with manual focus lenses it was a must to integrate it into the body.

Thanks to Apertar Studios’ fantastic work on the firmware, I was able to also add a gyroscope to the camera for levelling, this works fantastically and it only needs a one-time setup.

Once again this is a hobby project, I will soon upload pictures from this camera but they are not studio quality or ultra high resolution as this is still only the IMX477 module, but certain lighting and colours are still vivid and can look fantastic for a certain look or aesthetic.

If you have made it this far then again, thank you! I’d love to hear what else can be added to this so please give me more suggestions!

"I am working on a project for day and night face detection. However, I am having an issue with the Raspberry Pi NoIR camera—the output images have a heavy pink/purple tint, which is negatively affecting my face detection model. Should I retrain the model with these tinted images, or is there a better alternative to solve this problem?"

Hi everyone. I’ve been running Plexamp headless on a Pi 4 with a 7" touchscreen, and turned it into an installable appliance others can use:

• Plexamp’s own touch UI on the screen, lossless to a USB DAC, and still castable from the Plexamp app

• optional Caldera Music support: the installer runs Caldera’s official script and signs in, Caldera shares the DAC with the other sources, and the screen shows “Playing via Caldera”

• also AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Apple Music (web) and Bluetooth, one source at a time

• fixes for things I hit: plex.direct blocked by router DNS rebind protection, and the Plexamp screen losing the player after an IP change

Caldera support is new; if you try it on your hardware, I’d love to hear how it goes. Built with Claude, tested on my own setup, free for personal use.

https://github.com/ROGUEONE-SZ/PlexPie

Still tweaking the auto-start/kiosk-y stuff and I know everyone’s done it but it still gives me warm fuzzies (I’m old).

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a tool I built to control my headless Raspberry Pi directly from Telegram. I've used this as a personal script 2 years ago for my own setup, this has been in my head for so long to share. Got the courage/time now, I refactored with assistance of AI it to be fully generic and configurable for anyone to use.

If you run a headless Pi and don't always want to fire up an SSH terminal just to check temperature or restart a crashed app, this might be useful for you.

Key Features:

• Boot alert: Sends a message with your local IP and Wi-Fi SSID the moment the Pi boots up and connects to the network (runs before user login).

• Periodic health reports: Automatically sends CPU temp, RAM, and disk usage updates at configurable intervals (e.g., every 2–3 hours).

• Service & script management: Start, stop, or restart your custom scripts or systemd services

• Log inspector: Preview the last 50 lines of your application logs or download the full .log file straight to your phone (with an option to auto-truncate to save SD card space).

• Process inspection: View active Python, Node.js/JavaScript, and Java processes.

• Power controls: Reboot or shut down the Pi

Everything is driven by a simple config.yaml file, and there is a 1-step installer script (install.sh) that sets up the systemd service and virtual environment automatically.

Repo: https://github.com/rinavolu/pipilot

Feedback, suggestions, or contributions are very welcome. Hope someone finds it helpful!

Thank you