Testing PoE
I was reading an article about ad blockers and the author mentioned running AdGuard on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2. That caught my attention — why have an RPi 4B when I could just use a Pi Zero? And it could even run on PoE! Since the Dream Router supports PoE on two ports, the choice was obvious. I just had to wait for rpishop.cz to get it back in stock.
Assembly is straightforward — four standoffs. Screw it in from the top, secure it from below in the case. Insert the memory card, plug in the cable. That's it. The system booted in a few seconds. Open a terminal, type ssh pi@rpi and you're in. It's worth cleaning up the system and removing unnecessary things to give it the maximum available headroom.
Installing AdGuard is quick — download the binary and run the installer. Configure and done!
You do notice it when you throw too many requests at the frontend at once… it can freeze up. But nothing simpler than closing the tab and giving it a moment. After all, the Pi Zero 2 only has 512 MB RAM — not a lot.
Hardware used: