Hackers are buzzing with ideas from Pi-powered arcade machines and drones to the home automation and low-cost tablets. 10 coolest uses for the Raspberry Pi article tells that TechRepublic has delved into the Raspbery Pi’s developer forums, and here’s our round-up of the best ideas so far, ranging from the eminently achievable to the massively ambitious. You can use your Raspberry Pi for example as media streamer, arcade machine, tablet computer, robot controller and home automation controller. Rasberry Pi homepage offers also some more interesting projects like Retro games and a retro joystick.
1,660 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pulse Train HAT Controlling Laser Light Show Raspberry Pi
https://www.hackster.io/cnc-design/pulse-train-hat-controlling-laser-light-show-raspberry-pi-d93ba7
Pulse Train HAT controlling laser light show with Raspberry Pi, using PWM and galvanometer scanners.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic Watering System © Apache-2.0
Water your garden with up to three sprinklers directly from your water tap.
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/PRosenb/automatic-watering-system-160d90
This project consists of up to four valves and can control up to 3 sprinklers or other kinds of watering devices. It uses one extra valve in order to be more resistant against valve failure and also implements a leak check if you decide to use the water flow sensor.
The three watering devices can water up to 3 different areas of your garden.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bring-Your-Own-Network Ethical Pentesting Tool
https://www.hackster.io/daniel-goodman/bring-your-own-network-ethical-pentesting-tool-b03003
Inspired by the LAN Turtle 3G, when bringing your own network never worry about an IDS or Firewall blocking your access back to the network.
It’s a lot of things! Well, it can be at least. Simply put, the P-BON is a penetration testing platform designed with multi-factor persistence in mind. With P-BON, maintaining access to a remote network has never been easier. With the power of a 3G cellular connection, you make sure that P-BON keeps you connected, even if the internet goes out at the target location.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The state of netbooting Raspberry Pis
https://blog.alexellis.io/the-state-of-netbooting-raspberry-pi/
I’m going to walk you through a few of the pieces involved in net-booting a Raspberry Pi and then talk about the challenges of running cloud native apps on a net-booted RPi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to deploy Kubernetes on the Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/17/3/kubernetes-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=70160000001273HAAQ
In a few steps, set up your Raspberry Pi with Kubernetes using Weave Net.
By having the Raspberry Pi as a secure gateway to my home network, I could use my phone to control my desktop and remotely play Spotify, open documents, and a bunch of other fun things. I used an existing tutorial for that first project because I was afraid of piping anything into the command line on my own.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build Yourself a Cardboard-Framed Raspberry Pi Tablet for Under $60
https://blog.hackster.io/build-yourself-a-cardboard-framed-raspberry-pi-tablet-for-under-60-492b55fafa3a
For most people, designing and fabricating a case to house an electronics project is the one of the hardest parts of the entire process. CAD and mechanical design are skills that take years to develop
These days, people tend to jump straight to rapid prototyping with a 3D printer. But, the reality is that it’s only rapid relative to traditional manufacturing
In his tutorial video on building a Raspberry Pi-based tablet, Josh of JoshBuilds demonstrates how prototyping can be done much more quickly with cardboard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi NFC Clothes Tracker
Use DFRobot’s PN532 NFC module to track if your favorite clothes are clean or dirty.
https://hackaday.io/project/28517-raspberry-pi-nfc-clothes-tracker
If you’re like me, then you have a small pile of clothes on the floor that may or may not be dirty. This could include jeans, dress shirts, and barely worn shorts. So how can you tell which clothes are clean or dirty? I came up with a way to track various articles of clothing using NFC and a Raspberry Pi. You simply insert the NFC card into a pocket and then scan it, which bring up information about that clothing item along with an ability to change it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Light Photography Robot
https://www.hackster.io/hackerhouse/light-photography-robot-d47951
Use this robot and a camera with a long exposure to create some stunning images that are painted with light from an LED matrix.
Tomi Engdahl says:
THE RASPBERRY PI PISERVER TOOL
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/piserver/
As Simon mentioned in his recent blog post about Raspbian Stretch, we have developed a new piece of software called PiServer. Use this tool to easily set up a network of client Raspberry Pis connected to a single x86-based server via Ethernet. With PiServer, you don’t need SD cards, you can control all clients via the server, and you can add and configure user accounts — it’s ideal for the classroom, your home, or an industrial setting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Car Alarm Tracker
https://www.hackster.io/amerch92/car-alarm-tracker-4bb21c
Create a device that will send you a text when your car’s alarm goes off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EyeTap Is a DIY Raspberry Pi-Based AR Eyeglass with Thermal Vision
https://blog.hackster.io/eyetap-is-a-diy-raspberry-pi-based-ar-eyeglass-with-thermal-vision-22a79cdb81ea
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brewing beer with Linux, Python, and Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/17/7/brewing-beer-python-and-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=70160000001273HAAQ
A handy how-to for building a homemade homebrew setup with Python and the Raspberry Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiEyeR Enhanced Thermal Camera
https://www.hackster.io/rgrokett/pieyer-enhanced-thermal-camera-66180a
Add new features to the “FLIR-like” Raspberry Pi $39 Adafruit AMG8833 Grid-Eye Thermal Camera.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultimate 4 channel audio recorder
Portable, 2 channel, balanced input, 24 bit 96khz recording
https://hackaday.io/project/28716-ultimate-4-channel-audio-recorder
Using knowledge gained from the ultimate vlogging mic & knowledge of its mane use patterns, the plan for replacing the venerable Zoom took shape. Basically, merge the microphone preamp of 7 years with the AK4524 circuit. Make it permanently phantom powered, with XLR inputs. The AK4524 can be used as a differential ADC by combining its 2 channels & it’s not a huge drop from the PCM4222.
Based on the use pattern, it also needs a way to monitor 2 channel audio from another digital source without recording it. Maybe this audio could be injected from WIFI. Another circuit will record TOSLINK output from the computer, at a different samplerate than the microphone audio. This should allow it to be used for the ultimate narration of screen captures, as well as ASMR audio & rocket launches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Overclock Your Raspberry Pi The Right Way
https://hackaday.com/2018/01/16/__trashed-5/
One way of speeding the Raspi up is to overclock it.
[Dmitry] has written up an excellent overclocking guide based upon Eltech’s write up on the subject.
Boost your Raspberry Pi in Minutes
https://hackaday.io/project/29898-boost-your-raspberry-pi-in-minutes
learn how to overclock your Raspberry Pi device in a safe and efficient ways for reaching any goal!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Offers Soulless Work Oversight
https://hackaday.com/2018/01/15/raspberry-pi-offers-soulless-work-oversight/
Raspberry Pi based facial recognition punch clock
https://github.com/dekuNukem/facepunch
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pi Weather Lamp Puts Lava Lamps To Shame
https://hackaday.com/2018/01/14/pi-weather-lamp-puts-lava-lamps-to-shame/
Weather/Matrix Lamp
http://www.instructables.com/id/WeatherMatrix-Lamp/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Pinewood Derby Replay System
https://blog.hackster.io/raspberry-pi-pinewood-derby-replay-system-f21211a7994f
if you’re familiar with pinewood derby races, they are events were kids or adults build model cars to race down a ramp to see which goes the fastest. While it looks interesting, if these events were to be judged manually, there would certainly be arguments as to which car finished first. To mitigate this problem once and for all, Andre Miron came up with a novel device that not only senses each car at the finish line, but generates an instant replay on a nearby monitor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trail Camera
https://www.hackster.io/cybermah/trail-camera-e1deff?utm_content=65896648&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
This is a trail camera that will notify you using a cellular network that there has been activity nearby..
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matrix Voice lets you talk to your Pi
https://newatlas.com/matrix-voice-raspberry-pi-voice-recognition/53034/
Matrix Labs has come to the rescue with a Raspberry Pi-compatible Internet-of-Things development board with built-in microphones that can bring custom voice recognition smarts to any maker project. And following a successful crowdfunding effort on Indiegogo last year, the Matrix Voice is now on general release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CUSTOM VIDEO WALL
https://www.patrickfuerst.at/projects/video-wall/
After some research, the Raspberry Pi 3 appeared to be the right hardware for this.
One of the advantages using the Raspberry Pi are the cheap price, being able to play HD videos, having an ethernet port and support for the GStreamer open source multimedia framework.
The GStreamer framework with its support for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) provides a solution to playback videos locally while synchronizing them with others. This allows to connect almost unlimited Raspberry Pis to the network while still being able to playback individual HD video files.
Further, we created a custom deployment system using Ansible to reduce the manual setup for each Raspberry Pi to a bare minimum.
https://github.com/patrickFuerst/Cinder-GstVideoSyncPlayer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firing up 750 Raspberry Pis
https://hackaday.com/2018/01/24/firing-up-750-raspberry-pis/
Creating Raspberry Pi clusters is a popular hacker activity. Bitscope has been commercializing these clusters for a bit now and last year they created a cluster of 750 Pis for Los Alamos National Labs. You might wonder what an institution know for supercomputers wants with a cluster of Raspberry Pis. Turns out it is tough to justify taking a real high-speed cluster down just to test software. Now developers can run small test programs with a large number of CPU cores without requiring time on the big iron.
The system is modular with each module holding 144 active nodes, 6 spares, and a single cluster manager. This all fits in a 6U rack enclosure. Bitscope points out that you could field 1,000 nodes in 42U and the power draw — including network fabric and cooling — would be about 6 kilowatts. That sounds like a lot, but for a 1,000 node device, that’s pretty economical. The cost isn’t bad, either, running about $150,000 for 1,000 nodes. Sure, that’s a lot too but not compared to the alternatives.
Scalable clusters make HPC R&D easy as Raspberry Pi.
http://www.bitscope.com/blog/FM/?p=GF13L
Denver 13th November 2017, BitScope Designs, developer of BitScope Blade, an infrastructure platform for Raspberry Pi available globally via element14, has built a large Raspberry Pi cluster for a pilot conceived at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
The 750 node cluster, comprising five rack mount BitScope Cluster Modules, each with 150 x 64 bit quad-core Raspberry Pi ARM boards and integrated network switches is the first step in a program run by the New Mexico Consortium (NMC), an organisation of three NM Universities and led by LANL.
Tomi Engdahl says:
rpvlcdmp: Raspberry Pi VLC Dedicated Media Player
raspberry pi 3b tv box running vlc with remote control input via hdmi.
https://hackaday.io/project/43859-rpvlcdmp-raspberry-pi-vlc-dedicated-media-player
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry-Pi DVB Transmitter: The Benefits of Open-Source Hardware
https://www.eeweb.com/profile/paul-dillien/articles/raspberry-pi-dvb-transmitter-the-benefits-of-open-source-hardware
Is this Raspberry-Pi-based device the world’s smallest DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) transmitter?
Lime Microsystems is one company that evangelizes an open-source philosophy and provides full details of its wireless chips. As a result, the open-source community has embraced the software defined radio (SDR) boards from Lime and is creating some exciting applications, which greatly extend the functionality of the device through the use of a natively enabled app store.
This digital TV transmitter, which is based on a combination of a LimeSDR Mini and a Raspberry Pi Zero, provides a perfect example.
This setup processes the camera output into a DVB2 compliant transport stream and onwards to the SDR, while the receiver features a decoder and display chain to drive an HDMI output (it also includes a spectrum analyzer). The demo uses RF tuned to 1.2GHz, which sits within the 10MHz to 3.5GHz range of the Mini. Designers can download the app to provide a DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) video link and customize it to their exact requirements.
The open-source community is busy creating a wide variety of wireless applications using LimeSDR products, and then making these applications available for “app enabled” products. In addition to the video example discussed above, there are already designs for narrow and wideband FM transceivers, a spectrum analyzer using a UDOO X86 single board computer, a GSM base station using a Raspberry Pi and — with the addition of a Lime frequency range extender — the LimeSDR transmits and receives LTE signals at 10GHz.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Powered Nerf Sentry Gun
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/raspberry-pi-powered-nerf-sentry-gun-22-01-2018/
The DIY Nerf sentry gun is also equipped with a USB web camera, two power relays an Adafruit DC & Stepper Motor HAT for Raspberry Pi as well as a SparkFun Stepper Motor and DC motor all mounted to a DIY turntable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenAuto turns a Raspberry Pi into an Android Auto Head Unit [Video]
https://www.xda-developers.com/openauto-raspberry-pi-android-auto-head-unit/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspad: Raspberry Pi Tablet For Your Creative Projects
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/35410622/raspad-raspberry-pi-tablet-for-your-creative-proje?ref=4skmyz
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital Signage on Raspberry Pi with Screenly and resin.io
https://www.hackster.io/88019/digital-signage-on-raspberry-pi-with-screenly-and-resin-io-923e0f
Deploy a digital signage application on a Raspberry Pi using Screenly Open Source Edition and resin.io.
Screenly is the most popular digital signage platform for the Raspberry Pi. It powers more than 10,000 screens around the world for all kind of use cases, ranging from advertising in retail stores and public spaces, to dashboards on office walls, to screens in elevators.
In this tutorial, we will cover how to run Screenly Open Source Edition (OSE) on resin.io. Running Screenly OSE with resin.io enables you to remotely manage and update your Screenly OSE installation(s).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Document Reader Features an Extremely Simple User Interface
https://blog.hackster.io/raspberry-pi-document-reader-features-an-extremely-simple-user-interface-b1aecd7f416f
There are lots of readers available to translate words printed on a paper into speech, however, according to Russel Grokett they either cost thousands of dollars, or require an Internet connection and the use of a smartphone. As he has an elderly parent struggling with eyesight issues, neither option seemed suitable, and he instead turned to the Raspberry Pi 3 for assistance.
PITEXTREADER – AN EASY-TO-USE DOCUMENT READER FOR IMPAIRED VISION
http://www.instructables.com/id/PiTextReader-an-Easy-to-Use-Document-Reader-for-Im/
PiTextReader allows someone with impaired vision to “read” text from envelopes, letters and other items. It snapshots an image of the item, converts to plain text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and then speaks the text using text-to-speech.
The Reader is designed to be as absolutely simple to use as possible. No Internet needed, no graphical interface, only one button. Just place the item to be read onto the stand and press a button. After a few moments, the text will be read back to them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Modular AIY Voice HAT Bonnet
https://www.hackster.io/shiva-siddharth/diy-modular-aiy-voice-hat-bonnet-22fba2
Make your own modular AIY voice HAT Bonnet for Pi Zero and other Pi boards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Thermal Camera
https://www.hackster.io/BlitzCityDIY/raspberry-pi-thermal-camera-b50856
A portable, battery-powered thermal camera using a Raspberry Pi and an AMG8833 thermal camera sensor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The physical computing capabilities of the Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/17/3/physical-computing-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Tomi Engdahl says:
Add Android Auto to Your Car with a Raspberry Pi and Touchscreen
https://blog.hackster.io/add-android-auto-to-your-car-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-touchscreen-fee51fcefb78
Android Auto is a great alternative to the expensive, clunky, and quickly-outdated infotainment systems many cars have as an upgrade option. It essentially takes your phone’s apps and displays them in a driver-friendly way on a large touchscreen. Android Auto-compatible stereos are an option in some new cars, but if you have an older vehicle you’d need to purchase a expensive aftermarket head unit.
he created his own setup called Crankshaft, which uses a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen to run Android Auto. Crankshaft is still in the early stages of development
Tomi Engdahl says:
Setting up a Headless Raspberry Pi Zero
https://medium.com/@aallan/setting-up-a-headless-raspberry-pi-zero-3ded0b83f274
Tomi Engdahl says:
Running DOS on the Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/18/3/can-you-run-dos-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Differing CPU architectures mean running DOS on Raspberry Pi isn’t effortless, but it’s not very complicated, either.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi goes Android Auto: Now you can build your own cheap car head unit
http://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-goes-android-auto-now-you-can-build-your-own-cheap-car-head-unit/
Why buy a finished Android Auto head unit when you can hack one together with a Raspberry Pi 3?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make a digital camera from a 1950s Kodak Brownie with a Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/18/3/creating-digital-camera-1950s-kodak-brownie?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
With a Raspberry Pi, a webcam, and old-fashioned ingenuity, an old Brownie becomes a decent digital camera.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make An Animated Conference Badge With Inkypha
t
https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/make-an-animated-conference-badge-with-inkyphat
Tomi Engdahl says:
GPIO Zero and Raspberry Pi programming starter projects
https://opensource.com/education/16/2/programming-gpio-zero-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firewall your home network with a Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/life/16/3/firewall-your-home-network-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
I use CentOS on my other infrastructure servers, so I wanted to use it on the Pi too.
A second network interface
Because this Pi is to be used as a firewall, I needed another network adapter. After taking eth0 down, I added an ASIX AX88178 USB Gigabit Ethernet dongle. I disconnected my internal network from the on-board network adapter and connected it to the dongle. I configured the dongle as eth1 with a static address on my internal network and I configured the on-board Ethernet with a static external address and connected it to my ISP’s router. Be sure to use the HWADDR= line in the interface configuration files to set the MAC address that the configuration file pertains to. I also added the gateway IP address and at least two name servers to the interface configuration file for the inside adapter.
Firewall
The new firewalld is really overkill for my environment, so I installed iptables-services and iptables-utils.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to configure Raspberry Pi as a microcontroller
https://opensource.com/life/16/3/how-configure-raspberry-pi-microcontroller?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
sometimes the line between the Arduino (and Arduino-style embedded microcontrollers) and the Pi gets blurred.
Fact is, Raspberry Pi and Arduino are very different devices, even though they are often seen on the same workbench together.
RPi.GPIO is a Python library that provides you with the ability to read from and output to GPIO pins.
WiringPi is a GPIO access library written in C. Its syntax and general design will feel familiar to anyone who has used an Arduino system, and being a low-level library, it even contains modules that allow you to use external boards (like an Arduino, or similar device) as analogue inputs.
Contributors to the original WiringPi project have written wrappers for Python, Ruby, Perl, Java, and more.
Unlike the Arduino, using the GPIO library does not provide real-time performance.
Launch on boot
Since the Arduino is an embedded system, the program you flash onto its chip is always running. You power the Arduino on and your program runs, looping constantly, until it is powered off. The Pi doesn’t do that. When you power the Pi, it loads an OS and then sits patiently waiting for you to log in or perform some action.
If you need embedded behavior, you need to essentially tell the Pi to auto-launch an application upon boot.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi project to regulate room temperature and sleep better
https://opensource.com/life/16/3/how-i-use-raspberry-pis-help-my-kids-sleep-better?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Raspberry Pi temperature monitoring network
The first step was to build a Raspberry Pi temperature monitoring application that could be used to aggregate data from remote sensors (whether Raspberry Pi or something else entirely, like an Arduino, which I initially experimented with).
Many people recommend the DS18B20 1-Wire thermometers for accurate and inexpensive temperature measurement, so I bought a bundle of these sensors, and tested them on a Raspberry Pi (via GPIO) and an Arduino UNO (via digital PWM pins). I bought both waterproof sensors (like this one) and transistor-sized sensors (like this one)
These sensors are fully supported by the built-in w1-gpio library, which allows easy readouts of 1-Wire devices via /sys/bus/w1/devices
After building a quick alpha version of the monitoring app (using Node.js and Express to build a very simple API and dashboard page), I put all my code and instructions up on GitHub in my temperature-monitor repository.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turn your old Raspberry Pi into an automatic backup server
https://opensource.com/life/16/3/turn-your-old-raspberry-pi-automatic-backup-server?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
Tomi Engdahl says:
Holographic Audio Visualizer with Motion Control
https://www.hackster.io/hackerhouse/holographic-audio-visualizer-with-motion-control-e72fee
Tomi Engdahl says:
pISO Is a Super Flash Drive Built on Raspberry Pi Zero
https://blog.hackster.io/piso-is-a-super-flash-drive-built-on-raspberry-pi-zero-d3a37c56567d
It’s the Last Flash Drive You’ll Ever Need to Buy!
It’s a hat that turns your Pi Zero into a series of mountable virtual drives that are compatible with whatever file system you’re using. With updates, it should also be compatible with whatever file system you may eventually use, making it future proof.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Circumference
https://www.crowdsupply.com/ground-electronics/circumference
The datacentre-in-a-box for high-performance-computing and cloud software development, testing, and education
Circumference is a miniaturised datacentre-in-a-box, complete with power distribution and sequencing, instrumentation, cooling, networking and remote console. It is intended for use as a lab platform to support cloud and HPC (High-Performance Computing) software development, testing, and education. Available in 8+1 (C25) and 32+1 (C100) node configurations, Circumference is based around the Raspberry Pi and UDOO x86 platforms, with custom electronics for power distribution, instrumentation and control, and status indication.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to build something ‘useful’ with a Raspberry Pi
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17120764/raspberry-pi-button-sound-guide-how-to-diy
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Hello World programs for your Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/18/3/10-hello-world-programs-your-raspberry-pi?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY
“Hello world” is the beginning of everything when it comes to computing and programming.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Extended Time Lapse with Raspberry Pi Zero and a Hacked Alarm Clock
https://blog.hackster.io/extended-time-lapse-with-raspberry-pi-zero-and-a-hacked-alarm-clock-6a2ebfdd0a77
Along with the Raspberry Pi Camera Module, Raspberry Pis are great for all kinds of visual capture tasks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rice University Students Develop a Device to Help Diabetes Sufferers Inspect Their Feet
https://blog.hackster.io/rice-university-students-develop-a-device-to-help-diabetes-sufferers-inspect-their-feet-5f37183d85a7
students from Houston’s Rice University have created a device that makes it easy for sufferers of diabetes to inspect their own feet.
That device is an inexpensive setup consisting of a box with a mirror and toe separator, along with a camera connected to a Raspberry Pi. A person with diabetes simply places their foot on the platform, and the camera takes photos of the top and bottom of their foot.
http://news.rice.edu/2018/03/29/device-for-patients-with-diabetes-puts-feet-first/