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PatioPi

Nov 2024 Update: PatioPi actually has a purpose now! If you've ever wanted to self-host a website on a Raspberry Pi, patiopi.com now has some guides to help you do that.

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Oh PatioPi, what a silly little project you are.

After an extremely smooth experience implementing a few Raspberry Pis in my Homelab, one day I was marvelling at the fact that you could technically run a server on a Pi from anywhere as long as you had a battery pack and a Wi-Fi signal. I then jokingly thought, with a strong enough Wi-Fi signal, I could probably even hang a Pi in the tree outside our apartment and run a website from it. And thus, PatioPi was born.

PatioPi is, in fact, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W that currently sits outside on our patio, and it runs the website patiopi.com. Originally I was going to call it TreePi and have it hanging from a tree, but I didn't want to risk damaging any of the branches just outside our patio doors. In order to protect the Pi and battery pack from wildlife and the elements, it has to be in a secure container, which adds a tad too much weight for the somewhat dainty branches.

But why would you do such a thing? Isn't it pointless?

I really don't know. I thought it might be fun, so I figured, why not? If you think this is the oddest thing I did during the pandemic you probably don't know me very well.

And yes, it's quite pointless indeed. Though I'm thinking about getting some documentation setup on patiopi.com, detailing how someone would go about setting up something similar, and then it wouldn't be completely useless.

Proceed to PatioPi (patiopi.com)