Raspberry Pi 4 Home Lab: 5 Projects to Start With

A Raspberry Pi 4 is a small, quiet and low-power computer, which makes it a great first home lab machine. It can run all day in a corner of your desk. Here are five projects that teach useful Linux skills.

1. Learn the Linux basics over SSH

Install Raspberry Pi OS Lite, enable SSH and manage the Pi from your laptop. You'll practise users, permissions, package updates and editing config files, which are the foundations for everything else.

2. Block ads for your whole network

Pi-hole turns your Pi into a network-wide ad blocker. It's a friendly introduction to DNS and how devices on your network find each other.

3. Run services in Docker

Install Docker and run a few containers, such as a dashboard or a note-taking app. Containers let you try software without cluttering the system, and they're a skill employers look for.

4. Build a small file server

Attach a USB drive and share it with Samba so every computer at home can back up to it. You'll learn about disks, mounting and network shares.

5. Monitor your network

Set up a monitoring tool such as Uptime Kuma to check whether your devices and favourite websites are online. It's a simple way to learn how monitoring works in real IT teams.

Which Pi 4 should I get?

For one or two projects, 2GB is enough. If you want to run several Docker containers at once, choose 4GB or 8GB. Our Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Starter Kit comes in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB versions with a case and power supply, so you can start right away.

Ready for more power? See all our home lab computers and boards.