I'm working on fleshing out my homelab and I am looking for ideas on what to host or build with a Raspberry Pi 5.
Here is my current setup: – Raspberry Pi 5 with 4GB of RAM – Boot setup: 256GB SATA drive scavenged from an old laptop – Storage: 1TB hard drive connected to the Pi – Backup node: A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W running Pi-hole – Network: Everything connected and accessible through Tailscale
Currently I am just running Pi-hole and LaraPaper (a self-hosted TRMNL server for an e-ink dashboard) as my main workloads. They are both very lightweight and leave plenty of headroom under the hood.
I am trying to decide whether my next move should be turning the drive into a personal NAS for photo management by installing Immich, primarily to free up space on my phone and other devices. I am also wondering if I should instead focus on setting up a home media player that involves getting into torrenting for movies and TV shows. I have some concerns about getting into trouble with my ISP or similar issues regarding the legal gray areas of torrenting.
The 4GB of RAM feels pretty weird to me right now. I am not using much at all at the moment, which makes it feel like a waste. But it is not enough for more intensive tasks like hosting a basic vanilla Minecraft server. I do not want to overload the Pi and end up with a slow, bloated server, but at the same time, I feel like I am not pushing it enough with just DNS and an e-ink dashboard.
I will be moving out to a dorm soon, so I am looking for something low-effort to maintain. I won't be able to fix things quickly if something breaks, so I want a setup that just works and stays running. Any recommendations for lightweight, high-value self-hosted projects that would run well on this hardware?
Source: r/selfhosted · by /u/Hermeslop