Starter project enabling you a Minecraft Server using just a Raspberry Pi.
This project has been tested on and Raspberry Pi 4 B 4GB. We do not recommend using a Raspberry Pi 3 or deeper. They have not enough RAM and power to calculate all the things. 💥
- It works out of the box, just start it and it just works. 👍
- You can play anywhere. You can take the Pi to a friend, connect to his Wifi and enjoy playing. 🎮
- It is free. No costs, no big server and no complication. 🆓
- Why hosting on a computer? A Pi is power efficient! 🚀
- You can easy maintain the files on the Pi by using your PC. 💻
- Raspberry Pi 4B (The best is 4GB. 1GB is not enough.) 🎉
- Micro SD Card (we recommend 8GB Sandisk Extreme Pro) 💾
- Power supply 🔌
- A download of this project (of course)
- Software to flash an SD card (balenaEtcher)
- A free balenaCloud account
- The balena CLI tools
To run this project is as simple as deploying it to a balenaCloud application; no additional configuration is required.
- Sign up for or login to the balenaCloud dashboard
- Create an application, selecting the correct device type for your Raspberry Pi
- Add a device to the application, enabling you to download the OS
- Flash the downloaded OS to your SD card with balenaEtcher
- Power up the Pi and check it's online in the dashboard
- Install the balena CLI tools
- Login with
balena login - Download this project and from the project directory run
balena push <appName>where<appName>is the name you gave your balenaCloud application in the first step.
You can see in the Dashboard a IP-adress and a UUID. They are the adress the from your server. One example:
In my case is it 192.168.178.35or 463e101. You can connect to it like that:
NOTE: Please don´t use the copy option of the UUID. If i copy i get 463e101d32c154b6d68e8ddac6eca552. Thats wrong. Copy the short part 463e101.
Now you are the one with a balenaServer 😎:
NOTE: This works only in the connected Wifi. If you want to play worldwide click here: https://github.com/AlexProgrammerDE/balena-server/blob/master/README.md#play-worldwide-optional-earth_americas
The server has no console input option in the cloud dashboard, so you need RCON. The port is 25575 and the password is balenaserver. It is a protocol for connecting to the server.
There are many clients, but you can pick one here:
NOTE: You will need for starting this script this batchfile if you are using windows (Just paste it in the unzipped directory.): https://github.com/AlexProgrammerDE/RCON-Script/blob/master/launch.bat
- Minecraft Server RCON: https://mega.nz/#!SgAAyaxJ!6LQb3HMmms8QjslHH31_4SXdmIjWR-6G6H2aU_KanBY
You can connect to the server and change your serverfiles. I recommend using a Tool like WinSCP.
The IP is the one above, the protocoll SCP, the port 22, the username root and the password is balenaserver.
The files are in the root directory folder serverfiles.
NOTE: You can also change your scp password by setting the SCP_PASSWORD enviroment variable.
balenaMinecraftServer has wifi-connect integrated. You can use it for taking the Pi everywhere. If you want to read more is here the link to the programm: https://github.com/balena-io/wifi-connect (There is explained how it works.)
Devices like the Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB have enough RAM to run the server with 2GB RAM(at defaulf 1GB). If you set DOUBLE_RAM to true will be the double of RAM used.
balenaMinecraftServer also supports plugins. Just drop the in the plugins folder using SCP. The current Minecraft version is 1.15. You can get your plugins from there(Other work too.):
- Spigot resources: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/categories/spigot.4/
- Bukkit: https://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins
NOTE: Before adding the plugin and getting an error look if the plugin supports 1.15.
You can also add with the scp feature new servers. You want something different, but don´t know where to start? Here are some servers listed:
- Spigot (Vanilla Java Edition): https://getbukkit.org/download/spigot
- Craftbuckit (Vanilla Java Edition): https://getbukkit.org/download/craftbukkit
- Vanilla from Minecraft (Vanilla Java Edition): https://getbukkit.org/download/vanilla
- Paper (Vanilla Java Edition): https://papermc.io/downloads
- Forge (Modded Java Edition): http://files.minecraftforge.net/
- Pocketmine-MP (Vanilla Pocket Edition): https://pmmp.readthedocs.io/en/rtfd/installation.html
- Bedrock from Microsoft (Vanilla Bedrock Edition): https://www.minecraft.net/de-de/download/server/bedrock/
Not satisfied:expressionless:? There are many tutorials, just google it. If you need help can you ask in an issue, but first google it. balenaServer uses Paper. It is a efficient and powerfull server. It is compatible with spigot and bukkit plugins.
You are maybe asking yourself how this works. Here is a little explanation:
You need first to create a No-IP account. Then you need to create a hostname (It is no matter what.). Then you need to Port Forward the Port 25565 on your Pi (UDP and TCP). The devicename is what is in your UUID field. After this you need to Log in to NO-IP in your Router (Somewhere at Dynamic DNS). At least you need to paste the internet adress your router is saying you(NOT something like 192.168.178.xx) in the NO-IP dashoard. Youre done. 👍
Here is also a link to a guide: https://www.noip.com/support/knowledgebase/getting-started-with-no-ip-com/ (Skip the DUC part please. You need to write in the dashboard the Internet IP your router is giving you.)
This project is in active development so if you have any feature requests or issues please submit them here on GitHub. PRs are welcome, too. 
Here is a little server demo 👑:
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