I picked up a Raspberry Pi mostly out of curiosity. Everyone online made it sound like the perfect little toy for nerds who want to break stuff and learn. I didn’t really need a VPN, but the idea of tunneling into my home network from anywhere sounded too cool not to try.
It turned out to be equal parts magic, frustration, and late-night Googling of error messages at 2 AM.
Setting Up the Pi
First step was simple: install Raspberry Pi OS, plug everything in, and run system updates. To my surprise, that actually worked without issues. A small win before things got messy.
Installing the VPN
Everyone on Reddit swore by PiVPN as the easy button, so I gave it a shot. The script asked me to pick between OpenVPN and WireGuard. At first I had no clue, but after some quick reading:
OpenVPN: older, reliable, but heavy.
WireGuard: newer, faster, and way simpler.
I went with WireGuard — because “less headache” sounded good.
Router Hell
This is where everything broke. I had to configure port forwarding so the VPN would actually let me connect from outside. At first, nothing worked. My phone refused to connect and I thought I bricked the Pi.
The fix: WireGuard defaults to port 51820. I had typed in some random number instead.
Adding Clients
Once the server was alive, adding devices was surprisingly smooth. PiVPN generated a QR code, I scanned it with my phone, and it immediately showed “connected.” It wasn’t fully working yet, but it felt like progress.
Debugging Everything
DNS leaks, routing issues, dropped connections — I ran into all of them.
My fix-it loop was basically restarting the Pi, running
systemctl status wg-quick@wg0, and staring at logs until
something made sense.
Eventually I realized my firewall rules were wrong. After correcting them, the VPN finally worked. I even tested it from Starbucks — and watching my phone tunnel into my home IP felt like straight-up hacker vibes.
What I Learned
1. Networking is trial and error: half the learning comes from breaking things.
2. Port forwarding will test you: one wrong number and nothing works.
3. StackOverflow and Pi forums are lifesavers: most of my fixes came from late-night forum hunts.
Next Time
With the VPN running, I want to start tunneling into my self-hosted apps like Plex and Nextcloud. For now, I’m just proud I didn’t completely brick the Pi. That’s the fun of it — breaking, fixing, and learning along the way.