Making a Raspberry Pi based computer for my elderly parents. Advice?

September 17, 2024 1:27 PM

My folks are lovely, fairly tech-naive and their laptop is past end of life. I'm thinking about setting them up on a Pi-driven Ubuntu install with just a couple of icons for web browsing, email and Skype. Any suggestions or advice?

My parents' needs as far as computers go are pretty light. They use Skype (laptop's built-in camera) for church services, the Internet for a little light research, and get and send about 20 or so emails a week, usually family or church related. While it's technically a laptop it is never a "laptop," it has a fixed position in the house and never moves.

They don't shop online and are very, very cautious about Internet safety and paranoid about cybercrime -- my mom doesn't even like to use ATMs. I'll take it! Far better than the alternatives.

As their laptop dies and I'm getting calls fairly constantly about it (their BIOS battery is dying so the clock keeps resetting; for some reason; Windows 10 keeps corrupting the icon cache so the taskbar doesn't have icons on it when the computer reboots; Windows keeps throwing new shit at them like garbage on the taskbar that they don't know what to do with and they think they've been "hacked" -- I live a 3-hour drive away, so I'm not much practical help) I'm thinking about installing Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi and setting them up with a very simple desktop that has a web browser, an email client, and Skype installed.

I'm confident in 90% of this, but questions include:

• Skype on Ubuntu -- it seems to have a native install, but any concerns there?
• Running a video camera off a USB hub
• Whether a Pi5 is robust enough (4GB RAM) to do this

My wife has had Ubuntu on her laptop for years now, and I'm confident it's stable enough to be fit for purpose for my folks.

Any other thoughts/advice on how to set this up would also be welcome.

posted by Shepherd to Technology (17 answers total)

Running a video camera off a USB hub

This I can answer: I have a 2GB Pi4 running OctoPi to drive a 3D-printer. There are two Logitech C902 webcams connected via an USB2 hub (as well as the printer itself and an USB-controlled relay to switch power and light, but data-wise those hardly register) and they work flawlessly, no stuttering or blockiness.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:08 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

At work we use RasPi 400's for our test stations on the manufacturing line, and they might be an option worth considering. I personally have had bad results doing video conferencing on linux, but that was with Teams, I have not tried Skype
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:30 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

There are some very nice little RPi-based mini PC cases, like this one.
posted by pipeski at 3:00 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

You seem more tech-oriented and DIY-handy than me, but when my parents (who are in their mid-to-late 70s) needed a laptop with needs similar to the ones you describe, I just got them a ChromeBook and used the accessibility settings to embiggen the text and the cursor arrow. Plus a desktop shortcut to Chrome Remote Desktop for my mom to double-click if she needs to me share her screen and figure something out for them. Every so often I visit and let the security updates install, and presto! Done.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:05 PM on September 17, 2024 [6 favorites]

Seconding the Chromebook recommendation. It's slightly more expensive but would likely be less of a setup headache. Most Pis use SD cards for storage, which are not necessarily reliable for that purpose.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:13 PM on September 17, 2024 [2 favorites]

I bought the raspberry pi 4 (with 8 gb of RAM) under the premise that it could be a viable desktop replacement. I found it painfully slow to handle even basic webbrowsing. It also wasn’t that cheap after I bought all the components I needed. While the five will be faster than the four, I think there are cheaper, lower friction ways to accomplish the goal.

Instead your parents a used or last gen iPad. The webcam and audio will be significantly better. It will just work. If there is a philosophical objection to Apple, then a chrome book or used mini pc is still likely the better value IMHO.
posted by oceano at 6:25 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

You may want to visit Jeff Geerling's Raspberry Pi YouTube Channel. He is usually pretty even handed in his comparison of RP4 vs RP5 and against other tiny computers. For instance, he cautions that when you add a case and a fan the total price of a Pi may be more than some better competitors. I only ever owned the original Pi and eventually could no longer update it because the update sites went off line. FWIW.
posted by forthright at 7:03 PM on September 17, 2024

I would also set up a Chromebook and some good remote assistance software and/or a relationship with a local tech support professional and call it a day, personally. I don’t think a homebrew RasPi setup and Ubuntu are a good choice for most tech naive parents who are already having tech support troubles.

That said, my partner seems to have a mostly good experience using Skype on Ubuntu. That piece of your plan will likely work fine, should you decide this is the right route.
posted by Stacey at 9:39 PM on September 17, 2024

This Ars Technica review may help you decide if this is the right solution.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:13 PM on September 17, 2024

(Personally I would do something like this, but with a second hand small form fact x86 PC. You also might want to look into remote management via something like TeamViewer.)
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:19 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

I have a Radxa Rock 4c+ that I use as a Debian desktop in some circumstances. Because it can accept an NVMe device, it is _much_ faster than an equivalently priced Pi. Getting it set up the way I want it involved getting it to boot from the eMMC, but mount the NVMe as the root device.

I've been running Unix/BSD/Linux servers for other people as a career for 25+ years, and I like to tinker with things. The RPi and RockPi stuff is _fun_ for me (and when it breaks, I have plenty of other options for computers to use). For most people, it is not. I wouldn't subject most professional sysadmins to a Pi-based daily driver (I suspect that most sysadmin/devops folks without deep esoteric hardware experience would have a hard time getting a 4c+ set up with NVMe as root filesystem, so we're not even going to go there).

More importantly, I definitely wouldn't send one to my parents.

The use case you're describing really is better suited to a Chromebook or Chromebox (desktop). That (for better or worse) is the best of the "appliance computers" on the market right now, and it fills that niche very very well.
posted by toxic at 10:32 PM on September 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

I appreciate the attraction to you of having a little fun project setting up a Pi, but I'm on team Chromebook. With Ubuntu, you would be their only tech support. With a Chromebook, most anyone would have a fighting chance of fixing a problem.

I'd be leery of changing from one email client to another. They may not use "advanced" features, but even things like whether messages are automatically previewed are different, and it could be difficult to imposible to bent the history along.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:54 AM on September 18, 2024

I would also suggest using a basic laptop or desktop rather than a Pi. It can be a second-hand machine with modest specs, especially if you install one of the more lightweight desktop environments. Depending on your budget and what is available to you, you could also beef up an older machine by adding more memory and/or replacing the HDD with an SSD. Pick extremely boring hardware -- Intel processor, Intel graphics.

Little computers are nice, but not optimised for this.

I believe that Ubuntu (possibly with a more minimalist environment) is a viable OS option, as long as you're willing to do tech support.
posted by confluency at 6:53 AM on September 18, 2024

Ubuntu is still a second-class citizen in the Raspberry Pi world, if you must go down this route. I'd go for the least breakable (in a software stack sense) possible option, which is likely a Chromebook. Better yet if it allows remote access for those inevitable maintenance calls.
posted by scruss at 7:10 AM on September 18, 2024

nthing the Chromebook suggestion.
posted by alby at 9:26 AM on September 18, 2024

I've been using a Raspberry Pi5 with 8 gb and use an M.2 as the hard drive instead of a micro SD card, as a second desktop at home. I have PiOS on it, not Ubuntu. I use it for Skype, but I use the web browser version of it. I'm pretty sure there is not an app version of Skype that will run on a Pi. There is a TeamViewer app that works on it, which is decent, but with less features than the Windows version. It works great for most web browsing, but watching video can be hit-or-miss -- it definitely does not like high definition video. Set up was super easy, and it detected and ran my web camera, keyboard (which is an ancient IBM Model M connected through a PS/2 to USB adaptor), mouse, and everything else through a USB hub without a hitch.

It works fine for most things and I like it and use it a lot, but I have a real desktop with Windows to handle everything it can't.

I think the above advice to get a Chromebook instead is right. Or, if you are deadset on a small Linux box, get an N100-based mini computer instead, those have a lot more oomph than a Pi5. And if you have a set up like mine, by the time you buy the Pi5 8GB, M.2 adaptor, M.2, case, cooling, etc., you are pretty well at the same price point as an N100. Plus, unless you get a case like the Argon One, the Pi has micro HDMI and power off of one side and the rest of the connectors off the back and is generally annoying for cable management.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:24 PM on September 18, 2024

Mini-PCs are cute but also are generally pricier than Chromebooks. Also - many Mini-PCs come from dubious Chinese sources, so overall quality/reliability may be suspect.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:29 PM on September 18, 2024