

Honestly, if someone is just looking to get started cheap and easy, buying a pi and installing pi hole is a great first project that has immediate positive returns. Adding more services can be easy (if you used containers) and expanding to add more services is cheap.
Then, when you decide to spring for a server box, those Pis can still be useful as home automation devices. For example, they can control a decent amount of programmable LED strip lighting. Attached to a sensor shield, a solar panel and battery it can do atmospheric monitoring outside (while also controlling your driveway lighting) while being easy to integrate into HomeAssistant.
If you need to retire it, you can throw some emulators on it (retropi), load it up with a few thousand ROMs and donate it to a place that buys kids toys for holidays/their birthday.


It gets weirder the longer you look at it.
Sure, let’s just say the guy was overzealous with the (silicone caulk? lol) adhesive compound. Maybe the white cord is DC power, replacing the battery… but the red wire that’s right beside the ‘power’ wire is a USB cable plugged into the phone’s USB port.
What is plugged into the other end? It’s Zalgo isn̴̝̂’̶̯̾ṭ̷̆ ̶̫̈i̷̹̚t̴̩̉?̶͊͜