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:
Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter
http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter
Now connect a 20cm or so plain wire to GPIO 4 to act as an antenna, and tune an FM radio to 103.3Mhz
It will work from about 1Mhz up to 250Mhz, although the useful FM band is 88 Mhz to 108 Mhz in most countries.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking a Coffee Machine for a Better Brew
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/14/hacking-a-coffee-machine-for-a-better-brew/
Senseo coffee makers are automated brewers that use coffee pods. [Ronald] had one, but wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the coffee it produced. His solution was to hack it apart and build his own automatic coffee machine with the innards.
The coffee brewing part of the system is controlled by an ATmega8. This reads the temperature using the NTC sensor from the original machine and actuates the various parts of the Senseo machine, and the added grinder.
Keeping with the trend of adding Raspberry Pis to everything, [Ronald] connected one to this build for remote control. He runs a very hacked version of LCD2USB which deals with communicating with the RPi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi as a plug-in hash harvester
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/14/raspberry-pi-as-a-plug-in-hash-harvester/
Plug in the power and Ethernet and this Raspberry Pi board will automatically collect Windows hashes from computers on the network.
a great little test to see how the board performs with the well established attack.
It uses the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol (WPAD) to request hashes from any Windows machines listening on the network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Playing with the Minecraft API and a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/16/playing-with-the-minecraft-api-and-a-raspberry-pi/
It hasn’t been a week since Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi has been released, and already we’re seeing some cool builds that bridge our analog world with Minecraft voxel land.
Basically, [Martin] created a small Python script that draws the face and hands of a clock in a Minecraft world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hobbyist combines Raspberry Pi with Siri to fully automate his home
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Systems/Standalone_Mobile/Hobbyist_combines_Raspberry_Pi_with_Siri_to_fully_automate_his_home.aspx
Amazing demonstration of two technologies working together
YouTube user Elvis Impersonator (EI) recently posted a video that demonstrated hooking Siri up with a Raspberry Pi to automate everything in his house.
Hacks like this have been done before, but what makes EI’s so unique is the fact that he was able to set up a system not limited to just one device, but rather a whole a bunch of them — by the time he was done setting the system up, he had Siri controlling his garage door opener, house alarm, thermostat, living room lights, and even gave it the ability to change the channels on his television.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WeMo without a smartphone
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/23/wemo-without-a-smartphone/
setting up the Belkin WeMo outlet without using a Smartphone app
He started with this Python script used for WeMo hacking.
he was able to set up a Python script to turn on, off, and toggle the state of the outlet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home Automation mit dem Raspberry Pi: Teil 2: Hardware – Interface vom Raspberry Pi zur Funksteckdose
http://www.μc.net/2012/12/home-automation-mit-dem-raspberry-pi_16.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Multibooting the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/24/multibooting-the-raspberry-pi/
Those of us have been dual booting Linux, Windows, and OS X operating systems for a while will be familiar with bootloaders such as GRUB and its ilk. Surprisingly, though, we haven’t seen a bootloader for the most popular computer of the last year – the Raspberry Pi. It makes sense to have a bootloader for the Raspberry Pi; with dozens of different distributions from Raspbian, Occidentalis, and a bunch of more esoteric distros, we’re surprised we’re only just now seeing a proper bootloader for the Raspi.
Tomi says:
RPi Printer Server for your 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/03/rpi-printer-server-for-your-3d-printer/
Want to run your 3D printer without your laptop attached? Looking to make your hackerspace printer network accessable? OctoPrint aims to make a 3D print server for the Raspberry Pi.
The open source Python project allows you to upload and manage GCODE files on the RPi. You can then select files that you want to print, and get basic statistics before running the printer.
Some other nifty features include streaming video to the UI so the print job can be watched remotely. Support for creating time-lapse videos is also available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using OpenCV with the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/04/using-opencv-with-the-raspberry-pi/
[Lentin] didn’t feel like installing OpenCV from its source, a process that takes the better part of a day. Instead, he installed it using the synaptic package manager. After connecting a webcam, [Lentin] ssh’d into his Raspi and installed a face detection example script that comes with OpenCV.
It should be noted that [Lentin]‘s install of OpenCV isn’t exactly fast, but for a lot of projects being able to update a face tracker five times a second is more than enough.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audiobook player used only NFC tags for control
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/04/audiobook-player-used-only-nfc-tags-for-control/
The project was inspired by a one-button reader we featured back in November. Like that project, [Martynas] chose to use the inexpensive, yet powerful Raspberry Pi. The main difference comes in the control method. He’s using an NFC tag reader, which is mounted in the top portion of the RPi case.
Each book has its own NFC tag. When she’s done reading she can simply cut the power and it will resume in the same place the next time it is plugged in. The tag setup is a vast improvement since it allows an entire library to be stored on the SD card and chosen using a different tag.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wiimote Controlled RPi Robot
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/07/wiimote-controlled-rpi-robot/
Pi Matrix
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3364
Emma’s second-grade poster project
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3359
Tomi Engdahl says:
Minimalist user interface for headless Raspberry Pi applications
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/13/minimalist-user-interface-for-headless-raspberry-pi-applications/
His add-on hardware gives feedback using several LEDs and a four-line character LCD screen. It provides control using just four momentary press switches.
Raspberry Pi Headless
http://www.newsdownload.co.uk/pages/RPiHeadless.html
Celebrate Pi Day « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog says:
[...] you want to see more hacking ideas for this tiny computer, check also my Cool uses for the Raspberry Pi posting and it’s [...]
Tomi Engdahl 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. O’Neill took on the grating task of connecting and debugging the various components, sharing his recipe in a very detailed blog post.
MaKey MaKey + Raspberry Pi + iRacer + Bluetooth = Cheese Controlled Car (CCC)
http://conoroneill.net/makey-makey-raspberry-pi-iracer-bluetooth-cheese-controlled-car-ccc/
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Rogue Pi: A RPi Pentesting Dropbox
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/24/rogue-pi-a-rpi-pentesting-dropbox
A pentesting dropbox is used to allow a pentester to remotely access and audit a network. The device is dropped onto a network, and then sets up a connection which allows remote access.
Once powered on, the device creates a reverse SSH tunnel, which provides remote access to the device. Using a reverse tunnel allows the device to get around the network’s firewall. Aircrack-ng has been included on the device to allow for wireless attacks, and a hidden SSID allows for wireless access if the wired network has issues. There is a long list of pentesting tools that have been built to run on the Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi: the perfect machine for old DOS games
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/26/raspberry-pi-the-perfect-machine-for-old-dos-games/
There’s a treasure trove of excellent yet ancient games made for DOS that are nearly unplayable on modern computers.
[Patrick] has been doing his best to help out classic gamers with an x86 emulator for the Raspberry Pi. It’s designed to be a very capable DOS box with 20 MB of extended memory, a 640×480 display with 256 colors, an ~20MHz 486 emulated CPU, and a Soundblaster 2.0 sound card.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi-Powered Projector Tells You How Fast You’re Riding Your Bike
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=261222
Matt Richardson, the Brooklyn-based maker, video producer, and writer, who hasn’t taken the onset of these devices lightly by the looks of all of the crafty gadgets he’s built.
This time, Richardson shows off his newly-assembled tech gear that straps onto his mountain bike and projects his real-time riding speed on the ground as he rides around the streets of New York at night.
To detect the bike’s moving speed, a Hall sensor is attached near the front wheel of the bike.
From the breadboard, another wire is hooked up to a Raspberry Pi that is powered by an onboard USB cellphone battery pack charger. Finally, an HDMI cable runs along the tubes and up onto the bike’s handlebars where a small, downward-facing projector is clamped.
The result of Richardson’s invention is a high-tech headlight capable of projecting a rider’s current speed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Snowboard goggle HUD displays critical data while falling down a mountain
http://hackaday.com/2013/04/05/snowboard-goggle-hud-displays-critical-data-while-falling-down-a-mountain/
[Chris] has been hard at work building a Heads Up Display into some Snowboarding goggles. We’re used to seeing the components that went into the project, but the application is unexpected.
The display is fed by a Raspberry Pi board which connects to a GPS module, all of which is powered by a USB backup battery.
Snowboard HUD Part 10 – Summary
http://random-stuff-of-chris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/snowboard-hud-part-10-summary.html
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Tomi says:
How to Turn a Raspberry Pi into a Low-Power Network Storage Device
http://www.howtogeek.com/139433/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-a-low-power-network-storage-device/
Mix together one Raspberry Pi and a sprinkle of cheap external hard drives and you have the recipe for an ultra-low-power and always-on network storage device. Read on as we show you how to set up your own Pi-based NAS.
Tomi says:
BrickPi Controls Mindstorms Bots With a RasPi
http://blog.makezine.com/2013/04/09/brickpi-controls-mindstorms-bots-with-a-raspi/
Dexter Industries builds Lego Mindstorms add-on sensors and other compatible products, and their latest project — not yet completed — is the BrickPi, which allows the Pi to control up to 3 Mindstorms motors and four sensors
The board’s firmware is written in Arduino 1.0.
BrickPi
Bricks with a Pi Brain
http://www.dexterindustries.com/BrickPi/introduction/
The BrickPi allows you to build robots with LEGO® Technic parts, LEGO® Mindstorms sensors and motors, and the Raspberry Pi.
Connect up to 3 motors and read the encoder values.
Connect up to 4 sensors, both digital and most analog sensors.
DexterInd / BrickPi
https://github.com/DexterInd/BrickPi
This project combines the brains of a Raspberry Pi with the brawn of a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT.
The board firmware is made in Arduino in order to make it super-hackable. The firmware is written in Arduino 1.0 and can be uploaded via an ISP programmer.
The board supports NXT motors and NXT sensors, as well as many of Dexter Industries sensors for LEGO Mindstorms.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet Drone Shield, an ambitious idea for a $70 drone detection system
Aerospace engineer wants to scan for audio signatures of flying robots.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/meet-drone-shield-an-ambitious-idea-for-a-70-drone-detection-system/
On Tuesday, an ambitious aerospace engineer from Washington, DC began seeking donations on Indiegogo to create an “open-source drone detection system.”
The Drone Shield would combine a Raspberry Pi, a signal processor, a microphone, and analysis software to scan for specific audio signatures and compare them against what known drones sound like (because obviously a Predator drone is going to sound very different from a small quadcopter.) Once a match is found, the Drone Shield then sends an e-mail or SMS to its owner. As of this writing, the campaign is only closing in on one-tenth of its goal with $301 out $3,500 raised.
John Franklin, the project’s organizer, believes it would cost around $60 to $70 to make one
Franklin estimated it probably would take “about $100 and two months” to figure out if the idea would work. There are other anti-drone tactics and devices out there, but none quite as cheap as this one—assuming it functions as advertised. Not all experts are convinced.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building a PBX setup around the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/building-a-pbx-setup-around-the-raspberry-pi/
When talking about PBX setups the most common software package is Asterisk. That’s what’s at work here, rolled up with a bunch of other helpful software in an RPi targeted distro called Incredible PBX
This guide doesn’t delve into hardware connected hand sets. You’ll need to use a SIP phone. But that’s easy enough as there are free apps for most smart phones that will do the trick.
VoIP on Steroids: Introducing Incredible PBX 3.7 for the $35 Raspberry Pi
http://nerdvittles.com/?p=3026
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Tomi Engdahl says:
33 Node Beowulf Cluster built with Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/05/21/33-node-beowulf-cluster-built-with-raspberry-pi/
Not only did [Josh Kiepert] build a 33 Node Beowulf Cluster, but he made sure it looks impressive even if you don’t know what it is. That’s thanks to the power distribution PCBs he designed and etched.
Quite some time ago we saw a 64-node RPi cluster. That one used LEGO pieces as a rack system to hold all of the boards
Tomi says:
Listening to aircraft transponders with a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/05/23/listening-to-aircraft-transponders-with-a-raspberry-pi/
Last year’s big hack was software-defined radio; a small USB TV tuner that could listen in on radio broadcasts anywhere between 64 and 1200 MHz. This year, it’s all about the Raspberry Pi, so it’s surprising we’re only just now seeing a mashup of these two pieces of hardware. [Corq] is using a Raspi and RTLSDR TV tuner to listen in on aircraft transponders, and getting a whole bunch of data from aircraft flying overhead.
ADS-B Sniffing with the Raspberry Pi and the NooElec 820T Dongle
http://corq.co/?p=1865
Tomi Engdahl says:
RPi control your server PSU over the Internet
http://hackaday.com/2013/05/24/rpi-control-your-server-psu-over-the-internet/
Here’s an interesting use of a Raspberry Pi to control the PSU on a server. [Martin Peres] is going to be away for a few months and still wants access to his PC. This isn’t really all that tough… it’s what SSH is made for. But he also wants lower-level access to the hardware. Specifically he needs to control and get feedback on what the PSU is doing, and even wanted to have access to the serial console without having to go through the computer’s NIC.
WtRPM: A Web-based (Wt) Suite to Power Up/down Your Computers
http://mupuf.org/blog/2013/05/11/wtrpm-a-web-based-wt-suite-to-power-up-slash-down-your-computers/
So, a hardware-based solution seems more interesting! The standard solution to solve this issue is called IPMI. The interesting features are:
Being able to cut the power down and put it back up again;
Read back some of the state (Power & disk LEDs for instance);
Having a serial console.
However, I don’t have an IPMI-ready motherboard as they are usually used on servers. I thus decided to make myself an equivalent. The only thing that was worrying me was that I had to be able to control that from the internet. So, one machine had to be up and running! I decided to buy a Raspberry Pi as it was the cheapest and lowest-power consumption computer I could get with an ethernet port and a few General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO).
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Tomi Engdahl says:
HOT Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Build
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/HOT-Raspberry-Pi-DIY-Mini-Desktop-PC-Build/
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Alarm clock uses Raspberry Pi to poll Google Calendar
http://hackaday.com/2013/06/06/alarm-clock-uses-raspberry-pi-to-poll-google-calendar/
We know a lot of people love using their smart phone as a bedside alarm clock. The problem is that a mobile phone is mobile by nature and eventually you’ll forget to put it in the bedroom one night. That’s why we like the solution that [Devon Bray] has chosen. He set up his Raspberry Pi as an alarm clock that is set using Google Calendar.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Image of the Day: This Raspberry Pi captured images of Earth from a weather balloon
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Systems/Standalone_Mobile/Image_of_the_Day_This_Raspberry_Pi_captured_images_of_Earth_from_a_weather_balloon.aspx
Last week, Dave Ackerman, a British man with an interest in high-altitude ballooning, used the new $25 Raspberry Pi, 5-megapixel camera module to capture pictures of earth from almost 25 miles high. Ackerman has been toying around with this idea since he received his first Raspberry Pi computer last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi used to build a smart television
http://hackaday.com/2013/06/08/raspberry-pi-used-to-build-a-smart-television/
In the title of his post [Donald Derek] calls this a Google TV you can build yourself. That’s certainly an over-reach. But the project is still a very impressive smart television built using a Raspberry Pi.
The open source project starts with the Rasbian OS, an RPi version of Debian Linux. Functionality is built up by installing Chromium to display webpages, a script to download YouTube videos, and OMXPlayer to play videos including 1080P HD content. The image above shows the smart phone controller for the system. This is provided by a Node.js configuration that manages communication between the remote and the RPi board.
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Raspberry Pi and Spotify are powering Volvo’s Twitter Jukebox
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2281305/raspberry-pi-and-spotify-are-powering-volvo-s-twitter-jukebox
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Tomi says:
Multiple Raspberry Pi boards used to create video wall
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/22/multiple-raspberry-pi-boards-used-to-create-video-wall/
Five Rasberry Pi’s are used to drive this four-display video wall.
Each screen has its own Raspberry Pi which generates the HDMI video shown on the screen. These are fed from one central RPi board which acts as the controller. Video is pushed between the boards using the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) available through the Linux GStreamer package. Synchronization between the different video boards is taken care of using network time. [Samer] mentions that this system is scalable — each additional screen simply requires one more RPi to drive it.
Tomi says:
Home audio and lighting taken over by the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/24/home-audio-and-lighting-taken-over-by-the-raspberry-pi/
We’re beginning to see a lot of momentum building for using Raspberry Pi boards as the basis of your home automation. This latest offering from [Iain Hamilton] combines lighting and audio control through a single web interface. His frontend is run as a web page from the RPi board. It even includes separate layouts for mobile devices and computers in order to maximize use of the screen real estate.
[Iain's] home lighting system uses X10 modules for control. He’s using a USB dongle to facilitate control of that system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Tether Your Raspberry Pi with your iPhone 5
http://www.daveconroy.com/how-to-tether-your-raspberry-pi-with-your-iphone-5/
There are plenty of resources online about tethering the iPhone 5 with the graphical interface, but I wanted to be able ‘hotswap’ my Raspberry Pi’s Internet connection without command line, and without the graphical interface. Plug and play, essentially.
I was able to get this working last night using Raspian (a free operating system based on Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware) and a few scripts.
Tomi says:
Self-contained time-lapse rig braves elements from thirty feet
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/30/self-contained-time-lapse-rig-braves-elements-from-thirty-feet/
This time-lapse photography box makes use of the sun and a Raspberry Pi to document the goings on.
solar array which powers the box
The Raspberry Pi uses GPIO pins to switch the Nikon D7100 camera on once every five minutes during the work day. It snaps a photo before powering it down again. It also monitors a temperature sensor and actuates circulation fans if necessary.
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