Raspberry Pi Zero W

This is a Raspberry Pi development board I bought eight years ago; it lacks a case and has no protective sleeve.

Its Wi-Fi hardware is now malfunctioning, so I have to use a USB-to-Ethernet adapter to connect to the network.

I plan to upgrade to a new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W when I have the funds. It has the same form factor but offers five times the performance of the Zero W at a similar price point. Crucially, it uses the ARMv8 64-bit architecture (whereas the Zero W uses ARMv6 32-bit, which is incompatible with many modern Docker containers and applications).

I intend to use the Zero W as a network hub for services like WireGuard (VPN), frp (NAT traversal), VNC, and SSH.

Raspberry Pi 3B+

The Raspberry Pi 3B+ comes with only 1GB of RAM.

Online recommendations often suggest using it for Pi-hole ad-blocking; it isn’t suitable for heavy workloads, yet it’s overkill for very lightweight tasks.

You could install a lightweight version of Home Assistant, but I don’t recommend it. The Pi 3B+ uses the ARMv7 architecture, while modern Home Assistant and ESPHome versions are optimized for ARMv8. Even if installation is possible, the 1GB RAM falls short of the official 2GB recommendation, and the lack of ARMv8 compatibility for third-party apps leads to a poor user experience—it’s really only suitable for experimentation.

If ad-blocking doesn’t interest you, I recommend using it for message forwarding. Aside from the Pi 5 (which supports SSD adapter boards), the Raspberry Pi series isn’t ideal for local data storage; they are best suited for relaying and processing data.

Regarding ARMv7 support: I’ve checked, and tools like ntfy and QingLong (for scheduled tasks) are supported. However, others like EMQX MQTT and Caddy are not, as they typically require ARMv8 or x86 architectures.

Video surveillance is another option, but motionEye hasn’t seen significant updates, and the Pi 3B+ can only handle a single 720p video stream, so I don’t recommend it for this purpose either.

In summary:

I recommend only two options:

Pi-hole for ad-blocking

A standard Linux setup Deploying ntfy notifications and Qinglong Panel scheduled tasks on the server

Of course, the Raspberry Pi 3B is suitable for the same use cases as the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W—and often even better suited (unless it’s overkill; generally, the newer generation is superior, though one must consider practicality—for instance, using a Raspberry Pi 5 solely for Pi-hole would be a waste).

Raspberry Pi 4

This series marks the shift to the ARMv8 64-bit architecture.

The first application to consider is Home Assistant; it can barely run on around 2GB of RAM.

I currently use an Orange Pi 3B (performance comparable to the Raspberry Pi 4) running Debian and Proxmox (PVE), with Home Assistant OS installed on PVE. It works perfectly for tasks like monitoring room temperature and humidity.

Secondly, since the Raspberry Pi 4 features USB 3.0 ports, you could connect an external USB-to-Ethernet adapter and install OpenWrt on PVE to turn it into a network hub.

For models with at least 4GB of RAM, you might consider Nextcloud for a lightweight office NAS, or repurposing the device as an Android TV box, running LineageOS (as a cloud-based Android phone or tablet system).

To summarize:

The main options are Home Assistant, OpenWrt, Nextcloud, and LineageOS.

As always, the Raspberry Pi 4 supports the same services as the Raspberry Pi 3 and Zero 2 W. You can use PVE + Linux to run various other Docker services, such as a Git server (Gitea), media server (Jellyfin), music server (Navidrome), or game server (Minecraft), as well as applications like Audiobookshelf (audiobooks), Showdoc (Markdown documentation), Bitwarden (password management), WordPress (personal blog), and more.

These are primarily entertainment-focused Docker applications.