Make Raspberry Pi SD card last longer

If you have one Raspberry Pi always on or running several hours every day, probably you also had some SD card faults.

Unfortunately SD cards have a limited number of writings allowed. After that number the internal electronics is no more reliable and there could be read/write errors.

Debian usually do several writings on the os partitions, so the maximum writing cycles is rapidly reached.

So, what could we do to make the sd last longer with our RPi?

Using AirPlay with Raspberry Pi

AirPlay is an Apple protocol which allows wireless streaming of audio, video, photo and so on. Even if it's a proprietary protocol, it can also be used with Android devices or personal computers by installing simple apps.

Of course you can also install AirPlay on a Raspberry Pi.

When I built my Sphaera, I also added an external audio card, an audio amplifier and a speaker. Initially I used this audio system just for some notification, but going from that to a wireless speaker it really easy.

Home automation server - Sphaera

When I showed you my RaPiRo some post ago I explained why I would not use it as a case for my home automation server.

Let's summarize just something...

First of all the power. 12 motors are quite "hungry" and this means that using batteries is not an option if you need to keep it active all the day. You need to power with a plug, so it's mobility would be greatly limited.

It's noisy. All that motors can be quite annoying.

It can detect movement, but only when it's not moving itself, so it can check just a small area at a time.

There are other cons, but these are enough to let me think about a different solution for my home automation server.