Denied Living the Pi Life, Mk2 (do not publish!)

[McDoob]

It has been about a year and a half since I moved. I have survived two winters, completely off-grid. It hasn't been easy, but it has been interesting. I've learned a lot!

Specific to this story, I've learned a lot about electricity, and efficiency. More specifically, I've learned to appreciate my Raspberry Pi. Please, keep reading!

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In the beginning, electricity was plentiful! I has cheezeburgerz! And my own apartment, complete with hot and cold running water and hydro!

When I bought my first Pi (Mk 3B), I was just curious. I'd 'heard' good things about it online, and I wanted to see for myself. I was honestly surprised, even then, by the capabilities of this tiny 5-watt computer. It couldn't ever compare to my 700-watt PC, obviously, but that's literally an unfair comparison! Yet, there were many things that this little-computer-that-could...did.

When the Pi Mk4 was released, it didn't take any convincing, I bought the 8GB model as soon as I could afford one.

Honestly, even then, that Pi4 was still competing with my gaming PC. So it was given the role of turning my bedroom TV into a 'smart' TV, a task that even the Mk3 would have no trouble with.

Life was good! I had a PC in the living room, and a Pi4-powered 'smart' TV in the bedroom!

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Then, my Dad asked for my help. Of course, I said 'Yes!' immediately! Because my Dad has always immediately said yes when I've asked him for help...I love my Dad, he's my hero.

And that was the day that electricity (and water on tap) died. I had no idea what I was getting myself into!

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I still had my Dell Precision m4500 laptop to fall back on...my 'Laptop Corvette'. I'd upgraded that thing to the max, i7-840m, 16gb of RAM, and SSD storage. Like the car, she had a cooling problem, and that problem eventually destroyed the onboard GPU. I knew she was as old as a Stingray, but it still hurt when I said...'She's dead, Jim!'
That was last winter...

At that time, I still didn't understand why off-grid power didn't like my 'Laptop Corvette'!

But this isn't a story about Dell, or laptops.

This story's title is 'Living the Pi Life'
And it has only just begun.

Post automatically merged: May 1, 2025

My inverter is screaming at me because my batteries are empty! See you later!

 

[Action_Hank]

I'm both befuddled and in need of more.

 

[Yousef]

I’m super confused on what this is supposed to be. I have to ask again, are you posting in the right channel? The Writers Guild is for gaming essays, not random topics. You’re supposed to write something that wouldn’t be out of place in something like Nintendo Power or any gaming magazine in general. It’s not a place for shower thoughts or life anecdotes. I’m not really sure what this piece is supposed to be about as it seems written to be vague and esoteric on purpose, which isn’t what we’re really looking for. You can publish this in “Random” if you want but please don’t use the WG to dump random essays that were sitting on your hard drive. I once again advise looking at the Article Guidelines to better understand the point of WG, because it doesn’t seem like you understood it or read it at all.