so all I need is a monitor basically?
Don’t go for anything less than a Pi 4 w/ 8GB RAM imo. Even then by the time you add case, cable, micro sd,l and ssd it’s not gonna the best bang for the buck, and pretty easy to outgrow quick.
Even better, skip the Pi completely and go for something like a Elite Desk 800 G 2 Min w/ i7 processor and 16gb RAM - Currently $178 at Amazon. Add a 1 TB M.2 SSD for another ≈$75 and you’ll have a screaming node that will far outperform a pi for about the same price in a much nicer package.
HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini Business Desktop PC Intel Quad-Core i7-6700T up to 3.1G,16G DDR4,512GB SSD,VGA,DP Port,Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit-Multi-Language-English/Spanish (Renewed) https://a.co/d/4EHldg5
Discussion
No monitor necessary! You access the UI from any other device on the ip address of the node.
For Umbrel, you just type in Umbrel.local in any browser to get to the GUI. Think: mini personal server - and your node is the cloud.
interesting. I have so much more to learn. Thanks for getting me started on a new project. Will definitely be digging into this and researching and playing around with it as this will be a fun side hobby and learning experience for me with this type of tech.