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---
title: "Balkon Pi"
section: "smarthome"
parent: "/"
description: "Balcony sensor, lighting, and audio automation running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W."
layout: base.njk
---
<h1>Balkon Pi</h1>
<div class="detail-content">
<p>A Raspberry Pi Zero W mounted near the balcony acts as a small,
self-contained smart-balcony controller: light control, an internet
radio player, sensor readings, and its own backup/monitoring, all on
very modest hardware.</p>
<h2>What it does</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Audio output</strong> via a DIY PWM-to-analog circuit on two GPIO pins — the Pi Zero has no built-in audio jack, so this is a well-known community workaround using a small RC filter.</li>
<li><strong>Physical controls</strong>: a push button for the balcony light and a toggle switch for music playback, read directly via GPIO.</li>
<li><strong>HTTP communication</strong> with an ESP32-based balcony light controller.</li>
<li><strong>Internet radio</strong> via a lightweight command-line audio player, controlled by a small custom tool ported from an earlier bathroom-Pi project.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Monitoring & backup, even on tiny hardware</h2>
<p>Despite the very limited RAM, this Pi still participates in the same
Prometheus monitoring pattern as the rest of the fleet — with the metrics
collector's default configuration trimmed down to only the essential
collectors, since the full default set noticeably overloaded the CPU on
this specific board. It also runs a nightly rsync backup of its own
configuration to the NAS over the internal network.</p>
<h2>Planned next steps</h2>
<ul>
<li>Adding a USB webcam stream, mirroring the pattern already used for the 3D printer.</li>
<li>Migrating onto the planned isolated IoT network segment once that's fully set up.</li>
</ul>
</div>