When you think about the Raspberry Pi, you’d probably imagine wacky computing experiments that are both fun to work on and add some utility to your setup. But considering the extra computational prowess in modern RPi boards, there’s a surprising number of cool DIY projects you can build with these miniature systems.

Take self-hosted services, for example. Unless you go for something as complex as local LLMs, the newer Raspberry Pi systems can hold their own against most containerized applications – to the point where they can run more than a handful of containers with ease. Having tinkered with Docker-based Raspberry Pi servers in the past, I figured I could try running my entire productivity suite off the SBC – and it worked better than I expected.

Nextcloud is a solid personal cloud

But I won’t use it without certain App Store services

Nextcloud was my platform of choice back in my uni days, and I still prefer it over personal cloud services. While it’s nowhere near the fastest option, Nextcloud’s gorgeous UI, customizable nature, and solid collaboration facilities make it worth deploying. Nextcloud doubles as a solid application for storing important documents and images – and I’ve created dedicated Kopia schedules to back up my Nextcloud container’s storage volume.

On low-power devices like the Raspberry Pi, it’s also available as NextcloudPi – an image that can be flashed onto the SBC like any other distro. However, I went with the container version of Nextcloud instead, with a CLI version of Raspberry Pi OS as the underlying distribution, as this setup would let me run a handful of other containerized apps.

So far, my Nextcloud container might seem like a glorified collaboration platform. But its real utility came into light once I ventured into its built-in App Store. To be more specific, Collabora Online and Nextcloud Office are my favorite companion services for the cloud platform, as they add editing support for presentation slides, documents, and spreadsheets. Throw in the calendar and annotation apps, and my Nextcloud container is essentially a free Microsoft 365 alternative that runs off a mere Raspberry Pi.

Trilium Notes doubles as a second brain

And it doesn’t rely on AI, either

If you’ve read my articles on XDA, you might have seen me harp on about Trilium Notes. While the self-hosting domain has a ton of cool note-takers, Trilium is by far the most feature-laden tool for jotting down ideas and documenting important information. Between its Excalidraw integration and support for Mermaid diagrams, Trilium Notes lets me integrate graphical elements into my notes repository, and I’ve been using the Code template to save programming notes since my uni days.

However, it’s Trilium’s Relation, Mind, and Note Maps that make it the king of all note-takers, as they not only offer neat layouts for arranging my ideas, but can also be used to establish links or relationships between them. The best part? Trilium Notes is so lightweight that it can run on even the most RAM-starved Raspberry Pis!

NocoDB tackles my to-do lists

It’s a solid Airtable alternative

The next application on my SBC-based productivity hub is NocoDB, which lets me keep track of my daily tasks. I’ve tinkered with other self-hosted counterparts to Airtable and other project management platforms, but NocoDB’s support for row comments, automation web hooks, and different page views makes it my favorite option.

Plus, it’s fairly lightweight, and can run alongside my Nextcloud container without taxing my Raspberry Pi. My only nitpicks are that NocoDB doesn’t support graphs and restricts comment resolution to the premium version, which causes my comment history to look like the deranged ramblings of a lunatic.

Penpot is great for prototyping designs

While Darktable is decent for quick touch-ups

I’ve never been fond of online design tools, partly due to their restrictive free versions, and also because of the privacy issues of storing my data on external platforms. Although I tend to use Inkscape to edit vector designs on my PC, my self-hosted Penpot instance comes in handy when I’m on my iPad. My Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) can host a handful of Penpot projects just fine, and the UI doesn’t feel sluggish as long as I keep the number of boards in check.

I also wanted to give a shout-out to Darktable. Unlike Penpot, which serves my design needs, Darktable is a solid FOSS utility for quickly processing images. While it may not seem like a self-hosted service, I access it from my mobile devices via Kasm Workspaces.

That said, I don't run all my productivity tasks on the Raspberry Pi

Personally, I consider Home Assistant an essential part of my productivity suite, as its automations make my living space a lot more convenient. But as my smart home devices started piling up, my Raspberry Pi started to feel sluggish, and I ended up moving HASS to my Proxmox server instead. The same holds for my Vaultwarden instance, though I run it on my NAS instead.

But for lightweight apps like Trilium Notes and NocoDB, and (even) Nextcloud, my RPi 5 has enough horsepower to run them inside containerized environments, especially when paired with a GUI-less Raspberry Pi OS.