retiring the pigeon homelab

https://www.josephbellahcen.com/engineering/2025/08/29/retiring-the-pigeon-homelab

Trading the Pi(geon) for power

35 points · 9 comments · view on lemmy.world

9 Comments

non_burglar@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 362d

I went the other way; I had a Dell r430 and downsized to two hp elitedesk g4 mini. Together, they use less than half of the power of the 1u server.

But I am never satisfied, I'm sure I'll want to iterate again next year.

Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show · 3 pts · 362d (4 replies)

I went: Pi 2 -> Pi 4 -> Odroid H3 -> Intel N100 box (current). All in all from about 4W idle on the pi to about 10W idle on the N100 box. So not a big power jump all in all, but my needs did get bigger since the Pi.

vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 362d (3 replies)

Love the evolution! How are you measuring the power consumption of your devices? I’d be interested in profiling my build as well.

modeh@piefed.social · 2 pts · 361d

I use a device similar to this. Pretty useful and handy.

Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show · 2 pts · 359d

Probably the easiest way. It's plugged into a smart plug with energi monitoring.

N0x0n@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 361d

Them probably uses a special plugin device in the outlet.

I have this bash script you can use and have a general overview but I'm not totally sure if I fully understand it and if it's the whole system's wattage or only the CPU 🤷‍♂️

#! bash
time=5
sum_1=$(cat /sys/class/powercap/*/energy_uj | awk 'BEGIN { sum = 0; } { sum += $1; } END { print sum; }' "$@");
echo "before" $sum_1
sleep $time;
sum_2=$(cat /sys/class/powercap/*/energy_uj | awk 'BEGIN { sum = 0; } { sum += $1; } END { print sum; }' "$@");
echo "after" $sum_2

sum_1f=$(printf "%.0f" $sum_1)
sum_2f=$(printf "%.0f" $sum_2)

final_sum=$(echo "(($sum_2f - $sum_1f) / 1000000) / $time" | bc -l)
#echo $final_sum | bc -l | xargs printf "%.2f\n"

formated=$(echo $final_sum | bc -l | xargs printf "%.2f\n")
echo $formated "w"
CuriousOtter@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 362d (2 replies)

Nice write up. I'm in a very similar place at the moment, considering upgrades to my pi4.

Routhinator@startrek.website · 2 pts · 362d

Zimaboard.

vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 362d

Thanks! What kinds of things do you intend to do with your lab? I felt that the Pi was suitable for most everything except media pipelines.