Five more really cool Raspberry Pi projects while stuck at home

avatar

image.png

I have previously written a few Raspberry Pi project recommendations here and here. Oh and here too!.

I love the Raspberry Pi and I think it is a fantastic tool for parents to teach and bond with their kids. If you haven't checked it out, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has a free downloadable magazine you can check out.

Here are five unique projects built with a Raspberry Pi.

Music Time Machine

image.png
Source

You can find the project here on Reddit.

I really wish I could embed the video, but you can't with Reddit.

This project has amazing aesthetics and is a really fun project. Basically it is a Raspberry Pi that acts like a radio pointing to Spotify playlists for each decade. Each playlist has a few hundred songs and you can select a year (from 1920 to 2010) to automatically play songs from that decade. I highly recommend watching the video as the project is beautiful.

This project requires a lot of talent in woodworking if you are going to go for the look and feel. But you can also use a simple Raspberry Pi case with a dial. It doesn't need to be fancy but if you have the skills it looks like a fun project.

Raspbian XP

This is really cool. One of the fun things about the Raspberry Pi is it is a complete working computer and you just need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor/tv.

A new project skins the Raspbian Linux to look just like Windows XP or Windows 95. It also bundles software to give a very similar experience to Windows XP and can even run some old PC games like Hotline Miami. Got a parent or a kid that needs a PC for just doing basic functionality like web, email, and wordprocessing this is a great idea.

I would recommend a Raspberry Pi 4 for the best performance.

UniFi Controller

image.png
Source

I know a lot of you don't use Ubiquiti networking gear, it is pretty high-end gear for schools and enterprises but it very powerful for home use.

One of the great features is having multiple Wifi access points and being able to seamlessly switch between them without having to reconnect or run different network IDs. This feature does require a centralized server to run the controller software. You can buy a $170-$200 CloudKey from Ubiquiti that does this, or you can use a $35 Raspberry Pi that handles it perfectly.

You could also run other networking software like a VPN, network-wide ad protection, proxy server, or even a NAS.

Pet Camera

image.png
Source

There are tons of implementations of this, I saw a project I was planning on building for my neighbors that monitors their chickens and saves an image and audio clip every 1 minute to and provides an easy to use a web page to watch them.

You can build these projects to work indoors or even weatherproof for outdoors.

There are many projects you can download the source code and only have to build the physical components.

Google Assistant

Did you know you can install Google Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and build your own Google Home device?

Prefer an Amazon Alexa? You can do that as well!


Securely chat with me on Keybase

Why you should vote me as witness



0
0
0.000
9 comments
avatar

I appreciate your concern for your neighbour's chickens. Are there a lot of predators in the neighbourhood?

0
0
0.000
avatar

Not really at the time (although they just had two killed from a fox).

It was just something fun to document their life and the kids could check in on at any time.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Makes sense. I guess it could give clues about how they are attacking because most animals that go for chickens are afraid of humans.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Dang Boy... WindowsXP was so good! It was in my life when I really started getting into PCs and IT and looking at that UI feels so nice to me.

And those PI builds are also just great, thanks for the post. I really enjoyed it at 5:05 am straight outa my bed. At first, I see Hive at .52 and then I read this, what a great way to start a day :D

0
0
0.000
avatar

Raspian 95? Awesome! Now I know what to do with this pi that's been sitting on the corner of my desk gathering dust for the last year after I shut down my storj host.

0
0
0.000
avatar

The funny part is that I only heard about Google Assistant, lol. But I'm happy I got to learn something new today! :)

0
0
0.000
avatar

Hey, thanks for sharing these ideas. I'm getting a Raspberry Pi this week, time to learn!

0
0
0.000
avatar

We shall now commence betting on when @dronegraphica will purchase his second raspberry pi. I think we shall open with May 1st. Any takers? 🤣

0
0
0.000
avatar

Haha @lacking. Gives you the bug does it? How many do you have? I'm thinking up a way of using this for a home brew (beer/wine) kit. Automatic temperature control, gas concentration etc. Got a long way to go through to be honest!! I'll be blogging on this soon :)

0
0
0.000