this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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How can I host a small api/database accessable from a phone app as cheap/easily as possible? (programming.dev)
submitted 11 hours ago by vrek@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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So background, my kid has seizures often. He is currently on 5 different medications to try to control it(plus 1 for sleeping and 1 for his liver enzymes) plus severe non verbal autism so he can't tell us if he already had his meds. Currently when it's medication time, it's always "did you give him his meds yet?" and we have no way of tracking how many seizures he actually has besides "alot more recently" or "it's gone down recently". Yes he had multiple doctors and this is NOT a post looking for health advice.

I am creating an app for phones(c# Maui) which will send json objects to a api to store/retrieve data in a database(when he last had medication x, when he has a seizure etc). It will probably only be used with in my family, maybe 20 entries a day on a really bad day(7 medications twice daily + 6 seizures to give a round number) but should be less then 10 transactions(most medications given at same time).

What's the cheapest/easiest was I can host something like this? I do not have a static ip. Yes it's health information but I'm only storing first names and tracking time of events, not too worried about hippa like security.

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[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

If it is for home use, why not go with a raspberry pi (or similar, there are lots of cheaper alternatives like it) which is only accessible from the local network and not from the internet?

If access through the internet is needed, you can use one of many free dyndns services. (e.g duckdns.org)

You could also look into existing projects and maybe contribute instead of building from scratch, but thats up to you. Through a quick search I found https://github.com/FSchiltz/Helse

[–] vrek@programming.dev 3 points 6 hours ago

Hmm...i do have a raspberry pi that isn't being used... Since it's asp.net should be Linux compatible... Not a bad idea

[–] filtoid@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Just a quick note for hosting a DB on a pi (or anything that uses SD cards for the OS), SD cards fail with some regularity, so I strongly suggest getting an NVMe board with a stick of SSD memory to store the actual files, because it's much more reliable long term for data integrity. SD cards support reading large amounts but writes wear them out more quickly.

You can find great cases that come with the boards (but not the SSD, however that's very easy to find separately).

For RPi 4 I have an Argon (NVMe board sold as accessory): https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v2-case-for-raspberry-pi-4

And fro RPi 5 I have a Pironman case (NVMe comes as part of the kit): https://www.sunfounder.com/products/pironman-5-nvme-m-2-ssd-pcie-mini-pc-case-for-raspberry-pi-5

I recommend both of those but your use case may vary.

[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Thank you very much for pointing this out.

I completely forgot to mention this, since I've been running compute modules with nvme's for ages.

Just to add a further alternative: The pine64 soquartz baseboards are also compatible with rpi compute modules.

Also for extra saving: by the time you buy all that, there are a lot of second hand office mini PCs that are considerably cheaper on ebay.