Raspberry Pi Colo

SGraf

Users that want to co-locate there pi can do it for 3-4$ per month, bw, ip and power included in that price, your calculation is wrong because we dont have the same costs it seems, your numbers dont match ours.

Oh, i am pretty sure i am spot on about how much it actually costs to do this professionally. I was messing around with the pi/embedded colo idea around a year ago. Technically i already have everything i need for the pi4 including custom pcb's for power distribution, serial console access,.... for each individual board. So i would be able to do stuff with a high degree of automation.

Right now the co-location cost are $0 per month for our customers.

What this actually says is: The "customers" are not having any cost (so calling it a cost is misleading. Like someone gives away a drink to you for promotion on the street, you wouldn't claim you bought it for 0$)

Or with other words - you are giving things away for free (But at the end of the day, there is a cost somewhere. either because you are paying for it, hence loosing money - or - you found someone else to do the money-loss part for you, like a sponsor).

Then looking at realistic figures, and going: well that is wrong, is simply misleading to the average reader.

Also: your "customers" are actually people you PAY (with free stuff) to use your services.

@alexnf said:
No, $10 setup fee, 3-4$ per month, so it would be about $46 dollar upfront for the first year and $36 next year, its easy math.

Well i guess technically i could just pay someone to use my services. and while that would look and sound great, its still mathematically wrong in the long run. (and also "not so easy math")

if you do use a sponsor, i would also recommend checking with them - if its cool for you to charge for services associated with the resources they are giving you. So they dont kick you when they find out that you are re-selling stuff they are giving you free or at a reduced rate for a profit (even if its just from remote-hands)

Fun bit, and the reason why i didnt go for the "Pi Servers" project:
... its all good and fun until one of your power supplies goes really bad, ends up releasing a detectable amount of "magic smoke"... Worst case: you end up activating the fire suppression system of your colo space or dc. The DiY electronics bit will be fun to explain either to your insurance company(if you have any), or will eat into your "fun time" budget quite a bit.

But i am pretty sure stuff like this is priced right in at the 0$ right now or 3 to 4 $ in the future

PureVoltage

The biggest issue we found when doing a bunch of testing and some colocation for these services for a short term.
1. Not much profit margin vs time spent helping people.
2. Network ports for the amount of systems you can run you end up having to run more switches in order to connect all systems.
3. Low costs brought in a few people using it for spamming

At the end of the day they are great fun low cost and cheap to power. The biggest colocation problem comes into is it really worth the time and headaches.

We thought about setting up a niche market for it specifically however it just didn't look like it was worth the time after all of our testing we had over 200 units online and running.

You really need to charge for 1-2 years upfront to make it worth it.

alexnf

Thanks for all your comments, i appreciate it