Quick 'n Dirty Mikrotik/PiHole mod.

[RollinLower]

Alright, so i've been running Pihole for a few weeks now, and i absolutely love it! I can definitely recommend it to anyone who has a spare rPi laying about.

 

Personally, i've been using a Raspberry Pi 3B+. it's a bit overkill for just a DNS sinkhole, but atleast it won't run hot and i finally have a permanent usecase for this thing.

The only problem i had was mounting. i previously just had it laying on top of my rack.

(this is an older pic, please ignore the AP just laying there, it's been ceiling mounted since!

 

this looks pretty jank tough, and my cat would constantly knock it off there so it would just hang off of the USB/ethernet cable.

How would you mount a Pi in a 19" server rack tho? spacing out an entire U for just a Pi seems a bit overkill, and it's not like there is rackmount hardware available. Atleast, not if you don't own a 3D printer that is.

 

Now in the top U of my rack there's my router. it's a Mikrotik RB2011 UiAS-RM. and inside, its just a tiny little board and lots of empty space.

 

Perfect for a Pi!

 

now that just leaves the cables. sadly, my router doesn't have any internal connectors. so i have to route cables into the enclosure somehow.

lucky for me, the Mikrotik has some ventilation holes cut into the front. perfect for routing a cable through!

 

i just had to make sure to pass the cable through the hole before crimping on the second connector. otherwise passing it through there would be a real challenge.

the router also has a USB port in the front, which i used to power the Pi in the same way the eth cable comes into the box.

i originally wanted to use the PoE of this router to power the Pi, but Mikrotik uses some weird proprietary PoE standard, and none of the PoE HATS i used ever worked with this.   So regular old USB it is i guess.

 

and here's the finished product!

definitely looks a lot cleaner than just a little PCB on top of the rack. and if it wasn't for the cables, you wouldn't ever know there was a Pi running PiHole in there!

 

excuse the lower-light photo, my cheapo Xiaomi phone doesn't handle those very well.

 

Edited June 29, 2020 by RollinLower
the typos, dear god!

[Drama Lama]

A raspberry pi rackmount 

awesome

[kkpatel87]

17 hours ago, RollinLower said:

-snip-

Not bad! Now this is a cool build log!

 

Personally, i would have tapped off internal power if there was a 5V rail if i went with your solution.

 

Another solution could be to attach the pi (in its own enclosure) behind the routerboard...that way the power would be hidden and the network cable would go through the comb under the router like the other connections.

 

All this to say that your cool idea has sparked my thought process haha.