Alternatives to Raspberry Pi for WebControl

WebControl General Discussion
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In light of the on-going and seemingly endless supply chain disruptions that are effecting RasPi availability and cost, I have been experimenting with several alternatives for server platforms for running WebControl. I have found that using old Dell WYSE 3040 thin clients to be a highly effective alternative to the RasPi.

There are a few tricks to get it to work properly and Linux command line knowledge is a must but for those wanting a low power alternative to RasPi, it’s available. The WYSE 3040 tc’s currently go for $30 - $50 usd on ebay.

Gauging interest in the community before I go through the effort of posting the full procedure.

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I might be interested as I wouldn’t mind being able to repurpose the RPi that I have for something else, but this would be a project for me well down the road.

Thanks for your efforts in thinking outside the box for this!!

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No worries. Admittedly, there is a lot of hardware that can be used. I was just trying to replicate physical size, processing power, functionality, etc… I have a stack of Pi’s I need for other projects as well.

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Using a Pi has a couple advantages

  1. GPIO available
  2. a well defined platform to create a pre-built image for

If you are going to create an image for other platforms, I would like to see it
be made generic enough to run on most hardware (laptops, other pucks like this,
etc) or be a generic “install distro X on the machine, then follow these
instructions to get WebControl running” rather than something specific to one
particular piece of hardware.

There are a lot of small computers out there now, just about any of them will do
the job, it’s just a matter of creating instructions (including video
wal-throughs) that can be supported over time.

David Lang

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Very true, but so many of these particular devices are coming off lease and getting upgraded that they are cheap to be had. Can buy them by the dozen. No GPIO is a problem but if using as a pure web server then its not really needed.

Agree that specific image instal images aren’t really helpful which is why my approach favored installing Debian-standard OS then installing WebControl. Its a process that could be used for any small form factor pc or appliance. The only tricky bit is how Dell implemented UEFI boot in the BIOS.

That being said if its not helpful then ill move on.

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It would be extremely helpful, I would just split it into a couple chunks

  1. getting Debian (or Ubuntu) installed on the system (including UEFI issues,
    disabling power saving, etc)

1a. updating the underlying OS

  1. Installing, configuring, upgradng WebControl.

David Lang

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thanks for the advice. i like the idea of a video…… have to look into that.

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I was running wc on an older laptop that wont do much else and it had some different install “issues” than the raspberry pi, but it worked. Free laptops are easier to come by then raspberry pis these days.

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