What To Use A Raspberry Pi For

When it comes to DIY maker technology, few bits of hardware take had the versatility and outright longevity of the Raspberry Pi. Launched in 2012, the Raspberry Pi is a silent, energy-efficient, single-lath calculator that fits inside the palm of your hand—or inside just about anything you might want to make computer-controlled.

The Pi planet has seen four master releases of Raspberry Pi boards, along with various mods and variants, over the concluding decade, with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B the latest and greatest revision. (That will stand up, at to the lowest degree, until the Raspberry Pi Foundation(Opens in a new window) reveals the next rumored Pi model(Opens in a new window) in 2022 or 2023.)

Some of the older pre-Pi 4 models, though, are still bachelor for less than the price of an entrée at your local diner, and the creativity they have spawned is near limitless. Let's accept a await at some of the best Raspberry Pi projects nosotros've seen in 2021.

Raspberry Pi Intercom

[Projection source: Open Source Intercom for Kids Using Raspberry Pi and Telegram(Opens in a new window)]

While social distancing might take become less of a priority for many equally 2021 has drawn to a close, this DIY project helps bring the distant members of your household (including kids or spouses working from home) a piffling closer. Information technology started as an effort to keep a quarantined-for-weeks father in touch with his daughter in the same house.

(Photo: Chordata)

Thank you to the creative apply of a Telegram vox-chat bot, yous can use Raspberry Pi to call family members to dinner or permit them know that Daddy or Mommy (hopefully, not both at once) is leaving the business firm for a mental wellness day. All that is needed hither is a Raspberry Pi board, a USB microphone, a USB speaker, a few buttons, and a willingness not to shout at family members who don't reply immediately.

Raspberry Pi Automated Temperature Check With Mask Detection

[Project source: TouchFree v2: Contactless Temperature and Mask Checkup(Opens in a new window)]

Another ingenious manner that Raspberry Pi has been tweaked to help individuals and communities during the pandemic: How almost as a COVID cop? By using facial landmarking software and infrared temperature sensors, this Pi project makes for an affordable, touch on-free kiosk that provides contactless temperature checks and confirms that each person that passes is wearing a mask.

Considering fever is the leading symptom of COVID-19, temperature checkpoints accept been staples in some schools, offices, and other workplaces. Information technology'south non always possible, though, to manually cheque temperatures using a contactless thermometer (you need the personnel to do that), and they place the person testing temperatures at run a risk of exposure.

To solve these problems, 19-year-old Saksham Bhutani designed a kiosk that automates the process of temperature checks by using facial landmarking, deep-learning tech, and an IR temperature sensor. Behold, above, the TouchFree v2: Contactless Temperature and Mask Checkup. His model was made with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, a Pi Affect brandish, a Pi Camera Module, and several other $.25, supplemented by a 3D printed structure. The Raspbian variant serves as the Bone.

Raspberry Pi LED Art

[Project source: LumiCube: An LED Cube Kit for the Raspberry Pi(Opens in a new window)]

Although this project seems unproblematic, information technology's a fantastic fashion for beginners to piece of work on basic logic, or for more than advanced makers to bear witness off their skills. Using LEDs to get from elementary patterns to circuitous transitions, you can create a stunning visual-accent piece for your home.

(Photograph: Abstract Foundry)

Add a microphone, and you can even program the LEDs to alter their colour or design based on sounds, reacting to voices or music in your home. The LumiCube project shown above is projected to exist available every bit a kit in 2022 via an Indiegogo(Opens in a new window) button (preceded by a Kickstarter) that was running at this writing. (In this pattern, y'all would bring your own Pi to the kit.) The "project source" link further upwardly showcases the build and programming backside it. You tin too find a much more than hands-on/DIY arroyo to a luminous cube at this Hackster.io page(Opens in a new window). (Registration may be required to view.)

Raspberry Pi Vintage Laptop

[Project source: Macbook Pi(Opens in a new window)]

1 of the virtually popular uses for Raspberry Pi hardware is to breathe new life into older applied science that would have otherwise joined a landfill. Take that dead old Apple laptop out of your closet or grab that '90s-era IBM ThinkPad from your parents' cranium, and use any of them equally a housing for a Raspberry Pi!

Older laptops are ideal for this project, as their chassis' larger internal volume provides enough space for the hardware y'all need. Virtually of the Pi hardware can be placed under the keyboard after gutting the original internals. In the example project higher up, the user hollowed out an older MacBook laptop and showed off the projection at this Reddit thread(Opens in a new window).

Mind you, none of this will be easy. The original onboard batteries may need to be replaced or modified to ability both the Raspberry Pi and the display, with careful selection of a voltage regulator or switching power supply to ensure the Raspberry Pi sees just 5 volts of input. Also notation that external controllers will be needed to get the laptop screen interim as the Pi display. (Bold that that part of the laptop still works!) Not one for the faint of heart or hardware.

Raspberry Pi Retro Game Console...in a Cartridge?

[Project source: SNES:Pi Nothing(Opens in a new window)]

Many resourceful gamers have created retro-gaming consoles using emulation software running on Raspberry Pi. (Here'due south a guide we did a few years back, trying exactly that.) The newest variation on this theme is creating mobile game consoles the same size equally the original Nintendo Game Boy, or fitting an unabridged retro gaming console inside a unmarried SNES game cartridge. How's that for a dramatic meta-illustration of how far things have come in video gaming?

(Photograph: GroupGets)

The SNES:Pi Zero runs the RetroPie(Opens in a new window) operating arrangement. RetroPie tin emulate thousands of games. (Of course, you need to download the game ROMs separately.) The Raspberry Pi Zilch Due west at the heart of the SNES cartridge tin run the majority of console games released prior to the N64. Hardware inside comprises a USB hub, the Pi Zero, and a micro SD card. Yous will, of course, also need an external display or TV.

[Projection source: The Pi-hole, via Linus Tech Tips(Opens in a new window)]

End wasting time installing ad blockers on every device and every web browser in your home and use the power of Raspberry Pi to block ads across your entire dwelling network. The Pi-hole is a DNS-based filtering tool that runs on the super-cheap Raspberry Pi Zero and blocks ads earlier whatever other device on your Wi-Fi network gets involved.

If you're concerned about blocking ads that you need to see (perchance your boss wants you to confirm that ads are working on the company website) you can likewise whitelist specific URLs and so those ads remain untouched.

Raspberry Pi Smart Doorbell and Video Intercom

[Project source: Smart Doorbell/Video Intercom System(Opens in a new window)]

You want to block door-to-door salespeople or other solicitors. Or maybe the pandemic has left you lot unready to bargain with bodily humans at your front door quite yet. Then try a Raspberry Pi-based smart doorbell with video intercom. For this project, you'll need an LCD screen, a telephone call button, a speaker, a microphone, and a camera so you lot tin can video chat with people at your front door. (It can besides be implemented as a room-to-room intercom.)

With this project, you tin implement a simple script to ship a Gmail notification to your phone whenever someone presses the doorbell/intercom button. From in that location, the Raspberry Pi tin use a costless video conferencing service like Jitsi Meet(Opens in a new window) to enable a live video chat. The bits include a Pi 3 Model B; LCD, camera, and mic components; and a host of internal connectors.

Raspberry Pi Porch Pirate Alarm

[Project source: Porch Pirate Cam(Opens in a new window)]

No 1 appreciates having their Amazon deliveries stolen from their front porch. You can find a variety of cheap alarms online that use move detectors, but and so you have an alarm that goes off every time someone approaches your front door.

This porch pirate warning projection uses Raspberry Pi and artificial intelligence to place when packages take been delivered and then sounds an alert only when a package has been removed. Yous can fifty-fifty fix up the camera to ship y'all footage of the thief so you can provide that bear witness to local authorities. The model demonstrated here is built off of a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Wyse video photographic camera.

Recommended past Our Editors

Raspberry Pi HAL 9000

[Project source: Raspberry Pi HAL 9000(Opens in a new window)]

Why apply a dull Amazon Echo with Alexa or a Google Home device when yous tin can utilise Raspberry Pi to bring HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey to life? Hal won't be a fictional artificial intelligence after you've finished this project.

Okay, the guts may exist a scrap less impressive than the film may suggest they should exist: At its core, this Raspberry Pi HAL 9000 is but a humble Pi Model 3 or 4, a speaker, a USB microphone, and a cherry LED with some creative window dressing. The maker here also has the HAL-alike serving as a NAS. Just remember to run if HAL starts singing "Daisy Bell."

Raspberry Pi Pet Treat Dispenser

[Project source: Pi Dog Treat Dispenser(Opens in a new window)]

Why should we hominids be the only ones to benefit from inexpensive DIY tech? You tin can utilise the power of Raspberry Pi, a button, and a unproblematic motor to build a dog treat dispenser so humanity'due south best friend tin can reap the rewards of bogus intelligence. (Granted, the pegboard-mounted design is a chip rustic.)

(Photo: milunova/Reddit)

Of course, the just thing better than pressing a push button to evangelize dog treats is to have information technology happen automatically. This Reddit user gear up his Raspberry Pi as a spider web scraper to detect when his Instagram account gets a new follower. The follower improver and then triggers the motor, which, in plough, activates the treat dispenser.

Raspberry Pi Smart Security Camera With Face up Detection

[Project source: Smart CCTV Camera (With Face up Recognition) Using Raspberry Pi 4(Opens in a new window)]

Aye, before you ask: Of class Ring cameras already exist. Those and other cheap security cameras are a great way to go along an eye on your abode, merely at present you can use Raspberry Pi and some creativity to place family and friends, and send you an alert to let you know if, say, a buddy or your mother in law drops by when yous're away, simply doesn't get out a note.

The basic setup consists of a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, a micro SD carte du jour, a camera with enclosure, and a power supply. One time you've set up the photographic camera, you can transport the footage to another client device or ship it straight to your telephone. With some additional programming, you tin use facial recognition to identify specific people and have the Pi send you an alert when an unknown person visits your home.

Raspberry Pi Smart Mirror

[Projection source: Raspberry Pi Smart Mirror(Opens in a new window)]

Become rid of that slow old mirror in your living room and replace it with a modern version of the mythical magic mirror! A smart mirror displays web-based applications that let you cheque local news, the weather, your daily agenda, and more than while y'all preen, pluck, shave, apply makeup, or clothes. The Pi comes into play as the compute source and the driver of the built-in video.

This project involves some basic carpentry (for the mirror frame) and benefits from a 3D printer for some of the framework, merely you tin go on it simpler: You lot can use an erstwhile LED desktop monitor, an acrylic encounter-through mirror, and a Raspberry Pi every bit the basis for your own smart mirror.

Daunted by all this inventiveness? If you're new to Raspberry Pi, yous can check out our starter guide here to get in on the ground floor.

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