Cheapest platform on which to run MSR

[Talisker]

Please can anyone give me advice on a cheap way to run MSR (both initial cost and ongoing electricity cost). I currently run it on my QNAP network drive (which works very well incidentally). However, this draws a constant 35Watts (£90/yr @ 30p/kWh) and given the recent rise in fuel costs I am evaluating the best way forwards. Note, I only really need to turn my QNAP on for an hour a week to back-up my computer data. I understand that MSR can run on a Raspberry PI, but I am not competent with Linux! Thanks.

[toggledbits]

RPis are, I think, a good alternative. But, you're not likely to find much that is price-competitive with RPis that has a management GUI like the QNAP to reduce the learning curve. My advice to you would be to learn some basic Linux command line stuff and get fluent. This a good place to do it. The RPi is a good platform to do it on. If you make good backups, you really won't set yourself back very much if you end up wrecking something accidentally. As they say, the best time to start was yesterday; the second best time is now.

A 2GB RPi 4B+ runs about USD45 right now. You absolutely can run on 1GB if you don't run too much alongside (e.g. no InfluxDB, for example, although an MQTT broker would probably not be much of an issue), and that would get you down to USD35. I have run successfully on a 512MB 3B+ as well.

Continuing in that direction, I strongly recommend that you use a real SSD rather than a MicroSD card. The latter is not usually designed for the high write cycles of a typical Linux system. You may do fine with one of the camera-targeted MicroSD cards (""high endurance"), at least for a while. Capacity can be small; 8 or 16GB would suffice, so you're in a cost-effective range, and that may hold you for a while until you can upgrade to SSD. Going to an SSD, you would need not only the SSD, but a USB3.1 to SATA interface; the latter runs about USD15 on Amazon, and make sure you get a true USB3.1 version (there are two very similar, one is only USB3.0 and was previously not supported by the Pi firmware, although it may be now; there's a compatibility list published somewhere; we can dig later if you need it). Cheap small SSDs run <USD30 on Amazon, and I even found a five-pack of 64GB for USD18 (you may get a surprise later from the Department of Getting What You Pay For).

In terms of power, it's going to be in the 5-10W range depending on what it's doing, so I think worst-case, you're down to about a third the energy cost, but in the first year, the hardware cost will eat up the difference.

[Talisker]

@toggledbits new Raspberry PI are in short supply here in the UK and therefore quite expensive. I have come across a Raspberry PI 2. Do you think this is worth a try or is it a non-starter from the off? Thanks.

[toggledbits]

No, a Pi 2 won't do it. Well, you probably could, but I don't recommend it and I haven't tried it. A 3B+ is workable. I've tested that, so that's the safest minimum I can recommend.

I've had trouble getting Pis as well for multiple projects, but I recently found rpilocator.com and I can highly recommend it. If you follow them on Twitter you can basically get alerts from them and it helps. You need to be quick. Yesterday they reported over 100 units available from a popular US seller, and today that seller is reported out of stock.

I recently managed to get a Compute Module 4 with 8GB EMMC (built-in Flash storage like an SSD). That ran me US$45 for the CM4, and another $40 for the I/O board on which you mount it. I am testing that right now, and will likely use it as my build system for 64-bit Raspbian Bullseye releases (coming soon). It's much tidier than fussing with the USB-SATA adapter. That is all equivalent to a 4B+ in power, and may be equivalent or even a little lower in price -- by the time you've purchased a Pi 4B+ with 2GB RAM, an 8GB or larger SSD, and the USB 3.1 to SATA interface, you're in the same price range. Either way you go, the investment is a computing platform you can use for a long time; they've got good power, are well-built little boards (all), etc.

Also, for any configuration with less than 2GB RAM, I recommend using the "Lite" version of the OS install (no desktop/GUI, command line only). That would include the 3B+.

[Black Cat]

Raspberry Pi's are in short supply (scarce) and also costly now, thanks to the chip shortage.
Also the power supply is VERY important, a phone charger won't cut it especially on the most recent Pi4, I swapped an V1 Pi4 out with a new and now more expensive Pi4 yesterday and couldn't get it to boot on the old Power Supply. It was doing my head in until I swapped it for a 2.4A Inline charger.
This brings me to what I was going to start a new thread on but you beat me to it.
What are are alternatives to a Pi4?

[CatmanV2]

Bloody hell they have got spendy! Unless there's a specific chip that's running short for the Pis I'd expect all similar devices to suffer from the same inflation

C

[toggledbits]

I'm not seeing that, at least, not here in the States, among the usual major sellers, they all seem to be sticking to normal pricing when they have product (Adafruit, Arrow, Pishop, Digi-Key, etc.). It has been reported that Raspberry is focusing on its commercial customers first, so their production has leaned more into the Compute Modules than the standalone boards, but you can still get them, and I look at that availability of 100 at Adafruit as a good sign -- it was the largest single block of product I've seen in a while. They sold off the 2GB RAM models at US$45 each, which has been MSRP since release. There are a few opportunistic new/pop-up vendors (on eBay especially, to the surprise of no one, I hope) digging for gold, but the majors seem to be toeing the line.