I’ve always loved gadgets. When the first Raspberry Pis came out a few years ago, I was pretty confident that eventually, I’d get one. About three years ago I decided I wanted to build a media server and the RPI seemed the perfect tool for the job. While it works, it didn’t do all that I had hoped. It wasn’t the device’s fault; the software just didn’t quite match up with my particular use case. So, the device sat idle for a while. 5}
For the past 8 years I’ve managed a personal weather station consisting of a Davis Vantagse Pro and a Windows computer running the excellent Weather Display software. Last December I decided that the inexpensive computer I was running the scripts on may well be coming to its end-of-life and went looking for alternatives. Another goal of this move was to lower my cost of operations. The Jetway computer I was running didn’t use a lot of power, perhaps 25 W, but if I could do better, I would. After all, at 25 watts, that’s about 219 kW or $26.25 annually. With the growth of small computers such as the Raspberry Pi, I knew I could do better.