One of the biggest advantages of a Raspberry Pi is the ability to run your apps, services, and background jobs 24/7 - often at a fraction of the cost of cloud VMs or PaaS solutions.
In this video, I share my experience using a Raspberry Pi 5 to power my daily services around the clock, explore the electricity costs, and compare them with the expense of maintaining a VM in the cloud. While this isn’t an exact apples-to-apples comparison, some may find single-board computers a practical way to reduce their cloud expenses.
0:00 - Introduction / Why I decided to use Raspberry Pi
1:29 - What is the Raspberry Pi and what Single Board Devices could be used for
4:32 - Required components
5:14 - Installing Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi and running web api .NET app as a service
9:52 - Power Consumption and Cost of running Raspberry 24/7
Used Components:
- Raspberry Pi 5 device (8 Gb version)
- Power Supply: Raspberry Pi 5 27W USB-C PD PSU (or a cable which I used to supply from Powerbank: Type-C 100W (5A/20V) 480 Mbit/s PD 2.0 (Power Delivery) QC 4.0)
- Memory Card (storage): SanDisk Extreme microSDXC 256GB UHS-I U3
- Official Cooler for Raspberry Pi 5
- Aluminium case for Raspberry Pi 5
Ubuntu Installation:
1. Download & Install Raspberry Pi Imager app https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
2. Run Raspberry Pi 5 Imager app
2.1 Select your device
2.2 Select OS (Other General-purpose OS - Ubuntu - Ubuntu Desktop (use the latest stable release available))
2.3 Click Command - Shift - X on MacOS (or Ctrl - Shift - X on Windows) to bring the OS Customization window
2.3.1 Set hostname, username and password, configure Wifi SSID and password, configure SSH in the Services tab
2.4 Choose storage (connect an SD or USB Flash drive). (SD card is preferred)
2.5 Click Next up until OS image installation starts
Remote connection:
1. Install an ssh client to your OS
2. Use cmd command "ssh username@[your raspberry pi ip address]" (ip address could be checked on your wifi router admin page) to connect to your raspberry pi device remotely
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Background Music:
Song: Avatar
Artist: Kia
Music by: [CreatorMix.com](http://creatormix.com/)
#singleboardcomputer #raspberrypi