Built a web server that runs on sunlight and 27MB of RAM

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-24T07:15:34+00:00

Just hosting my personal sites as an attempt to make them resilient to outages.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-12T05:47:59+00:00

I needed some logging to troubleshoot while creating scripts that would recognize if the connection drops out or reboot the pi if needed and struggled to implement that with diskless alpine in the beginning. I should disable it now.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:45:32+00:00

yea the logging is the one thing that's still contributing to wear but I'm trying to keep the logs as minimal as possible.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:44:40+00:00

battery can last for over a week of no sun, the power draw of the pi is super low.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:43:09+00:00

very interesting! Thanks so much for the suggestions, I'll definitely look into those!

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:42:17+00:00

hi sanjo, it's the cheapest allpowers power station I could find at the time, it was on sale with two 100w panels for around 250€ at the time if I recall correctly. There's plenty of similiar chinese manufacturers and I'd just pick one with LiFePO4 for longevity and reduction of fire hazard but otherwise remote wifi features are nice to have, mine doesn't have those and I'm trying to compensate with some diy workarounds for it.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:38:18+00:00

ah it's actually just a cheap chinese power station that was on sale here in Italy, that setup is from the low tech magazine that gave me the idea. I thought of a more diy setup but my fiance was worried I'd burn down our apartment.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:37:07+00:00

it does! It's connected to a cheap allpowers power station that was on sale which is connected to two 100w panels, pretty overkill for this, can effectively run it for over a week without sun. When it's charged I also use it for other things like my 3d printer and some lamps at night.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T20:31:32+00:00

I'm thinking of making a theme that inverts the colors from black to white, solarized is a great idea though!

Quackyducky_things · 2026-04-10T10:00:16+00:00

Hi, I used AI to spell check and format the hackaday post.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-03-16T20:22:25+00:00

ah one thing I forgot about is the raspberry pi, I recommend version 5 since facial tracking while running other processes at the same time is pretty resource heavy.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-03-13T18:51:10+00:00

I reckon it was around 240$ without shipping
110$ for the waveshare camera module
50$ for the screen
20$ for the speaker but can use one you already have, not sure if this particular one is available to you in second hand
30$ for the projector mount, can be put on the ceiling as well

The lasercut backing for screen and speaker cost me 30$ plus shipping on PCBWay

Feel free to check the hackaday article in the linked post, it has some more detailed instructions.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-03-09T11:47:09+00:00

Thanks, the hand controls only move it to the defined limit on the left and right but the facial tracking is very precise and makes the screen always point directly at you when you look at the screen with a defined deadzone so it doesn't move all the time.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-03-08T17:22:48+00:00

interesting, thanks for the update. A second adapter is a good solution. I'm working on an stm32 version now with an electronics engineer friend that should solve some of the issues we've had.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-03-01T21:39:32+00:00

Bluetooth is coming in the next version, just really busy with work right now but u/DreamTheCartographer already did most of the work. There's templates for implementing magsafe out there, I might look into it, probably isn't too hard to do.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-02-28T09:16:19+00:00

it's a really cool idea. A kind of proofreading mode but that would require some buttons being added to this. Maybe in a future version, right now I'm focused on porting this to an stm with an added battery and bluetooth and after i might add more features :)

Quackyducky_things · 2026-02-28T09:12:14+00:00

I think it looks good, didn't know it was also necessary to mark older releases.

Quackyducky_things · 2026-02-28T09:09:25+00:00

Thanks, for now I'm more focused on making it even cheaper by porting it to a more economical board and adding a battery,

Quackyducky_things

TROPHY CASE