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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
BeetBox Uses Raspberry Pi to Turn Veggies Into Drum Kit
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/raspberry-pi-beetbox/
Scott Garner’s BeetBox turns vegetables into a drum kit thanks to a Raspberry Pi edible circuitry project.
BeetBox uses the tiny Raspberry Pi computer along with a capacitive-touch sensor and an audio amplifier to make each beet generate a sound when touched.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BeetBox
http://scott.j38.net/interactive/beetbox/
Tomi says:
Raspberry Pi used as a Squeezebox server
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/raspberry-pi-used-as-a-squeezebox-server/
[Jacken] loves his lossless audio and because of that he’s long been a fan of Squeezebox. It makes streaming the high-bitrate files possible. But after Logitech acquired the company he feels they’ve made some choices which has driven the platform into the ground. But there is hope. He figured out how to use a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox server so that he can keep on using his client devices and posted details about the RPi’s performance while serving high-quality audio.
Tomi says:
10 More Mind-Blowing, Skill-Building Raspberry Pi Projects
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/more-raspberry-pi-please/
Tomi says:
FireHero: Raspberry Pi Controlled Pyrotechnics
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/firehero-raspberry-pi-controlled-pyrotechnics/
To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the FireHero 3. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air.
The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. A server runs on the Pi and allows a remote computer to control the system. The Pi sends commands over serial to the Arduino, which switches solid state relays that actuate the valves.
Vaporized propane creates the fireballs.
Tomi says:
Expand your pi with a Gertboard
http://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/expand-your-pi-with-a-gertboard/
Dubbed the Gertboard, this expands the Raspi with some GPIO goodness.
Tomi says:
Home automation with RC wall plugs and Raspberry Pi
June 5, 2012 By Mike Szczys
http://hackaday.com/2012/06/05/home-automation-with-rc-wall-plugs-and-raspberry-pi/
[Jake] took some cheap hardware and figured out a way to use it as a huge home automation network. He’s chose a Raspberry Pi board to connect the radio controlled power outlets to his network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
RasPiLapse
https://sites.google.com/site/raspilapse/home
An affordable solution for building a time lapse rig for cameras, using a Raspberry Pi as the controller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pi-Point – turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2929
Guy Eastwood has documentation and an SD card image which will allow you to turn your Pi into a wireless access point
Tomi Engdahl says:
CAS Raspberry Pi Educational Manual
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2965
a team of UK teachers from Computing at School (CAS) was working on a Creative Commons licensed teaching manual for the Raspberry Pi, with recognition and encouragement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. That manual is now available at the Pi Store (which you’ll find on your Raspberry Pi’s desktop) as a PDF.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The MagPi
A Magazine for Raspberry Pi Users
http://www.themagpi.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turning a Raspberry Pi into an SNES
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/turning-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-snes/
After desoldering a cartridge connector from an original SNES, [waterbury] plugged it in to a piece of perf board and started to figure out how to actually read the cartridge. An SNES cartridge need 16 address pins, 8 data pins, 8 bank control pins and 4 other control pins to be read; a total of 36 pins that [waterbury] accessed with the help of a neat I/O expander and a whole bunch of level converters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adding Airplay to an external usb audio interface
http://mattshirley.com/adding-airplay-to-an-external-usb-audio-interface/
how to use the Pi as an Apple Airplay receiver. This is perfect. Let’s get started turning our little computer into a single-purpose appliance.
My USB audio interface is made of thick steel and aluminum, and will be plugged in to the Pi anyway (since the Pi uses onboard pulse-width modulation to approximate an audio signal at low quality).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking a Raspberry Pi into a wireless airplay speaker
http://jordanburgess.com/post/38986434391/raspberry-pi-airplay
The raspberry pi is fully functional credit card-sized computer that is cheap enough ($25) that it can be used just for a single purpose. With this hack the computer imitates an airplay speaker, making it possible to send songs over to an old stereo wirelessly from your phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
One-button scan to email using Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/10/one-button-scan-to-email-using-raspberry-pi/
Millard Manansala says:
Wow this is great thank you so much for sharing!! I love this cute little house and I’m going to hop on over to Tyler’s blog to check out his 30 day project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Putting the BBC in Seattle
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/13/putting-the-bbc-in-seattle/
Among great British traditions, there’s tea, knowing how to lose an empire, tea, Parliament, big ben, tea, incalculable wit, Parliament, big ben, tea, and BBC radio. While Britons in foreign lands may not be able receive BBC radio over the airwaves, there is the remarkable BBC iPlayer that allows online streaming of all those awesome BBC radio stations.
Yes, it’s really just a Raspberry Pi-powered web radio, but there’s a twist to this build: everything from BBC radio is buffered and time shifted. A program that airs at noon in London will now play on [Adam]‘s radio at noon in Seattle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Z-Wave module connects Raspberry Pi to home automation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4404873/Z-Wave-module-connects-Raspberry-Pi-to-home-automation
Home control technology group Z-Wave intends to tap the potential of the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer for applications in the realm of home automation including light control. A plug-in module connects the two worlds.
Z-Wave.me, a member company of the Z-Wave alliance, has introduced the RaZberry kit consisting of the Raspberry Pi and the plug-in module at the CES 2013 in Las Vegas. The module is plugged onto the Raspberry’s serial I/O channel and contains the RF circuitry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspi astrophotography board also does everything else
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/17/raspi-astrophotography-board-also-does-everything-else/
Their PiXi-200, like their previous AstroCam board, is able to take image sensors out of cameras and turn them into telescope mounted cameras. That’s only one of its tricks, though: The PiXi-200 also has accelerometers, gyroscopes, enough UARTs to do just about anything, a four channel ADC and four channel DAC, two dozen GPIO pins, enough LEDs and buttons for any project, and a 200,000 gate FPGA. All this in a board that plugs directly into the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi just like an Arduino shield. Needless to say, there’s a lot you can do with this board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Talk bot running on Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/17/google-talk-bot-running-on-raspberry-pi/
[Michael Mitchell] put together a demonstration of how Google Talk can be used to communicate with scripts. Although the concept isn’t new we haven’t seen very many projects that use the chat interface for issuing commands and receiving data. The one that does come to mind is this home automation project which uses Google Talk because it’s quite a bit faster than SMS or email communications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi and R
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/20/raspberry-pi-and-r/
He ended up not liking Python, and didn’t like the C-ness of wiringPi. He’s a scientist, so he’s most comfortable with R and Matlab. Of course, playing around with a R and a Raspberry Pi means replicating his sensor-reading code in R.
[Stephen] put together a neat little package that will allow him to read his sensors over an SPI bus with his Raspberry Pi. Yes, this functionality can easily be duplicated with Python, but if you’re looking to generate beautiful graphs, or just do a whole lot of statistics on something, R is the tool you need.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FireHero: Raspberry Pi Controlled Pyrotechnics
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/firehero-raspberry-pi-controlled-pyrotechnics/
To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the FireHero 3. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air.
The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flatbed scanner eliminates the perils of macro photography
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/20/flatbed-scanner-eliminates-the-perils-of-macro-photography/
If you have ever played around with macro photography, you’ll know how hard it is to get a focused image of something that isn’t two-dimensional. For virtually every 3D object, you’ll have to deal with the depth of field – the small region where things are actually in focus. [David] came up with a neat homebrew solution for making sure everything in his macro photos is in focus using a discarded flatbed scanner and a Raspberry Pi.
Flatbed scanner eliminates the perils of macro photography
January 20, 2013 By Brian Benchoff 11 Comments
IMG_7728
If you have ever played around with macro photography, you’ll know how hard it is to get a focused image of something that isn’t two-dimensional. For virtually every 3D object, you’ll have to deal with the depth of field – the small region where things are actually in focus. [David] came up with a neat homebrew solution for making sure everything in his macro photos is in focus using a discarded flatbed scanner and a Raspberry Pi.
[David]‘s technique relies on focus stacking. Basically, [David] takes dozens of images of the same object, moving the camera closer by a fraction of an inch before snapping each frame. These pictures are stitched together with CombineZ, a piece of software used for extending the depth of field in images.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Macro Pi – Focus Stacking using Raspberry Pi
http://davidhunt.ie/?p=2826
Tomi Engdahl says:
Projectors, Pandora and Pyrotechnics — 10 Pimped-Out Projects for Raspberry Pi
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/even-more-raspberry-pi-projects/
Increasingly, the Raspberry Pi is the platform of choice for these forward-thinking gadgeteers. Makers are using the tiny $35 platform to help the blind, manage their e-mail, play games — even put on pyrotechnic stage shows that would make the most hardened hair band weep with joy. These 10 projects show the enormous potential of this tiny board and should keep your weekend full of prototyping fun.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tiny Terminal: Maker Builds a Working Raspberry Pi Laptop
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/raspberry-pi-laptop/
Look out, Apple, there’s a new ultra small laptop on the market featuring cutting-edge hardware, a solid-state hard drive, and a glowing fruit icon on the lid.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 Cool Raspberry Pi Projects for Diminutive Computing Fun
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/raspberry-pi-roundup/
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 More Mind-Blowing, Skill-Building Raspberry Pi Projects
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/more-raspberry-pi-please/
More projects…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi plays MIDI without an operating system
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/22/raspberry-pi-plays-midi-without-an-operating-system/
For all the interesting DSP functions locked away in the Raspberry Pi, it’s still hard to imagine using the Raspberry Pi as an eminently capable software synthesizer, tracker, or sequencer. Running any of the usual Linux digital audio programs means – surprise – running Linux, and the performance penalty associated with that.
He’s playing MIDI files without an operating system, in effect making the Raspberry Pi a very powerful embedded platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Operating systems development with the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2012/09/02/operating-systems-development-with-the-raspberry-pi/
The goal of this tutorial is to throw a budding Raspi tinkerer into the strange and confusing world of registers, hexadecimal, and ARMv6 assembly. After going through the necessary toolchain, [Alex]‘s tutorials cover blinking the ‘OK’ LED on the Raspberry Pi using only assembly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspi-controlled RGB LED strip display
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/raspi-controlled-rgb-led-strip-display/
[4RM4] over at the Stuttgart hackerspace Shackspace ran into a guy selling individually addressable RGB LED strips when he attended the 29th Chaos Communication Congress last December. He had a Raspberry Pi with him
After getting back to the Shackspace, [4RM4] decided to go in a more classic direction by building an RGB Snake clone.
To control his pixel-munching snake, [4RM4] used a Wii Nunchuck controller hooked up to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TurboScalextric
Control Scalextric / Slot cars via an Raspberry PI and a PCB.
http://code.google.com/p/turbo-scalextric/
TurboScalextric uses PWM combined with a N-Channel Power MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) to replace standard Scalextric controllers with a Raspberry Pi, allowing speed to be controlled with any joystick supported by the Linux Kernel Joystick API.
The project also supports timing laps via an Arduino and custom built light gate using IR LEDs and sensors – This data is transmitted to the multi-threaded controller application on the Raspberry Pi via USB Serial.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Replacement controllers for slot car racing
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/replacement-controllers-for-slot-car-racing/
Tomi says:
OpenArena now Playable on Raspberry Pi
http://paritynews.com/software/item/582-openarena-now-playable-on-raspberry-pi
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the release of OpenArena – a multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) game based on Quake III, for Raspberry Pi.
Tomi says:
Hacker Builds the Voice-Controlled Raspberry Pi R2-D2 You’re Looking For
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/raspberry-pi-r2d2/
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, a dozen roses may look like a lackluster gift for the robot-lover in your life after seeing what Lingxiang Xiang built to woo his girlfriend — a Raspberry Pi-powered, voice-controlled R2-D2.
A detailed tutorial and blueprints are coming in February for bot builders interested in making a RPi2D2 droid of their own.
Tomi says:
Raspberry Pi RC Race Car Is Controlled With Cheese
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/rc-car-raspberry-pi-cheese/
While most people spent their holiday playing with toys, Irish maker Conor O’Neill was busy daisy-chaining a Raspberry Pi, MaKey MaKey invention kit, and slices of cheese — yes, cheese — to create a uniquely controlled RC car.
He came across the “i-Racer” a £19.99 (about $32.50) RC car with a Bluetooth radio, rack-and-pinion steering and a rechargeable battery. The car is supposed to be controlled with an Android phone, but O’Neill figured that with a little MaKey MaKey hacking it could be steered with something more unique.
The MaKey MaKey breakout board allows everything from bananas to pails of water to become inputs for a computing device. Paired with a $2 Bluetooth dongle and Raspberry Pi board, the toy race car could potentially be controlled with anything in a pantry.
Tomi says:
MaKey MaKey + Raspberry Pi + iRacer + Bluetooth = Cheese Controlled Car (CCC)
http://conoroneill.net/makey-makey-raspberry-pi-iracer-bluetooth-cheese-controlled-car-ccc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi becomes a guitar effects processor
http://hackaday.com/2013/01/28/raspberry-pi-becomes-a-guitar-effects-processor/
One of the more interesting use cases for the Raspberry Pi is exploiting its DSP capabilities in interesting ways. There’s a lot of horsepower inside the Raspberry Pi, more than enough to do some very interesting things with audio, all while being powered by a small wall wart adapter. [Pierre] over on the Pure Data mailing list has a proof-of-concept working that uses the Raspi as a guitar effects processor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build a Retro Computer: The Raspberry Pi!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWI1CcJM0y8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi – Controlling mains electric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pikhq99q5E
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi home automation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70-OmHZe6tY
Fairly cheap and wireless home automation using Raspberry Pi.
Tellstick for RF controlling of sockets
USB Ifrared MyToy for controlling TV and so on.
ArchLinux on the Pi
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rack Mount Home Automation with a RPi
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/06/rack-mount-home-automation-with-a-rpi/
The automation system is based on a Raspberry Pi running Arch Linux, which talks to an ATmega over SPI.
The box controls outdoor lighting at sunset and sunrise, generates wakeup calls, controls IR cameras, and plays sounds based on events. It’s capable of monitoring sump pump water level, the state of a house alarm, and more. A custom REST API is used to interact with the device. This allows for programs on any platform to interface with his home, and acts as an API for his house.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Complete Siri home automation controls everything but the kitchen sink
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/06/complete-siri-home-automation-controls-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink/
[Elvis Impersonator] spent three full days but in that time he managed to hand control of everything in his house over to Siri. The technique used is a familiar one. A Raspberry Pi running SiriProxy listens for commands from the iPhone and acts on them based on [Elvis'] predefined configuration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi camera board incoming
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/06/raspberry-pi-camera-board-incoming/
Your Raspberry Pi has on-board connectors for cameras and displays, but until now no hardware demigod has taken up the challenge of connecting an image sensor or LCD to one of these ports. It seems everyone is waiting for official Raspi hardware designed for these ports. That wait is just about over as the Raspberry Pi foundations is hoping to release a camera board in the coming weeks.
Considering the Raspi USB webcam projects we’ve seen aren’t really all that capable – OpenCV runs at about 4 fps without any image processing and about 1 fps with edge detection – the Raspberry Pi camera board should be less taxing for the Pi, enabling some really cool computer vision projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Watch this guy use a Raspberry Pi and Siri to control his garage door, alarm, thermostat, lights, and even TV
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/02/06/watch-this-guy-use-a-raspberry-pi-and-siri-to-control-his-garage-door-alarm-thermostat-lights-and-even-tv/
Siri is great and all, but it’s limited to just your iOS devices. What if you could hook it up to a Raspberry Pi and then control everything in your house?
That’s exactly what a YouTube user by the name of Elvis Impersonator spent three days hacking together (over a long weekend). Now Siri is able to open and close his garage door, disable (and hopefully re-enable) his house alarm, change his thermostat’s temperature for his home, control the lights in his living room, and even change the channel on his TV.
Watch him do it all
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi is right at home inside of a Game Boy
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/08/raspberry-pi-is-right-at-home-inside-of-a-game-boy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mojang officially releases Minecraft for free on the Raspberry Pi
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/11/minecraft-pi-edition-officially-released-on-the-raspberry-pi-for-free/
A new version of Minecraft, which is arguably the most successful video game ever created by an indie developer, has been released today for free on the Raspberry Pi.
Built by Aron and Daniel over at Mojang, it features a revised feature set based on the Minecraft: Pocket Edition Android and iOS apps, and supports multiple programming languages straight out of the gate.
Minecraft already offers a pretty powerful creative mode, which strips away all of the game’s survival aspects and allows players to more easily create and destroy structures
Tomi Engdahl says:
N900 with a Slice of Raspberry Pi
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/n900-slice-raspberry-pi
in this article, I talk about a combination of two of my favorite pocket-size Linux computers: the Raspberry Pi and my Nokia N900.
At first you may wonder why combine the two computers. After all, both are around the same size and have similar initial hardware specs. Each computer has its own strengths, such as cellular networking and a touchscreen on the N900 and an Ethernet port and HDMI video output on the Raspberry Pi. In this article, I explain how to connect the N900 to the Raspberry Pi in a private USB network, share the N900′s cellular connection, and even use the N900 as a pocket-size display. In all of the examples, I use the default Debian Squeeze Raspberry Pi image
Tomi Engdahl says:
Untether Your 3-D Printer With a $35 Raspberry Pi
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/raspberry-pi-3-d-printer/
While most people still have trouble setting up an inkjet printer on a wireless network, a group of intrepid IT hackers are making big strides with far more advanced machines, using the tiny Raspberry Pi microcomputer to untether laptops from their 3-D printers.
“I just wanted to make a self-contained system that was easily transportable,” says Bales. “I am using my main computer to do the slicing of the STL files to generate the gcode. Right now I am saving everything to my Dropbox account and just downloading the G-Code files on the Pi.”
The credit card-sized computer still doesn’t replace a PC entirely — the slicing software that turns complex 3-D models into simple 2-D cross sections is too memory-intensive for the tiny board, and an Arduino still controls the mechanical components, but the Raspberry Pi is making printers faster and more convenient.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transmit FM using Raspberry Pi and no additional hardware
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/transmit-fm-using-raspberry-pi-and-no-additional-hardware/
Now here’s a project that actually hacks the Rapsberry Pi rather than just using it as an embedded computer. [Londons Explorer] figured out how to turn the RPi into an FM transmitter.
The technique requires nothing additional except a 20cm wire to serve as an antenna. The trick is to map GPIO pin number 4 to a position in memory. The clock generator is then used to toggle this pin at 100 MHz, which is the frequency to which your radio should be tuned.
The problem is that this technique is limited in the amount of data which can be sent. Right now it’s only about 6-bit audio.