Over the years, I have played with and experimented with Virtual Machines in various forms, typically to run Ubuntu or Windows based systems. These were used for either game servers, web servers, file systems, or just for basic experimentation. Currently, I am running one which holds my Home Assistant instance, on an old Windows laptop, which is used for our gaming with Fantasy Grounds.
I have also used a Raspberry Pi for several years now to run Octoprint for my 3d printer, to manage the print jobs, create timelapses, and generally track the operation.
My next goal now is to combine both efforts into a single piece of hardware, and utilize Docker to run them both from the same Raspberry Pi. In concept, from some basic research this should be doable with what I already have. My expectation however is that it likely wont be nearly that simple, and I risk disabling my currently optimized Octoprint installation in the process.
Assuming I can follow thru, I will try to document my progress and process here, in the vain hopes that it might benefit someone else.
For this particular experiment, I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of memory, and a 32 GB SD card. My goal is to have two equivalent docker images, running separately Octoprint and HomeAssistant, with all the functionality that I have today with separated environments, and the ability to add additional docker images for other purposes in the future.
