Raspberry Pi (mmmm... pi)

[jeroly]

Anyone else doing stuff with Raspberry Pi's?
They're perfect for Mustachians!
You get a computer for as little as $30, they're highly configurable, and are perfect for building things that would cost lots more commercially!

What I've done recently...

Made a print server - I got to put my reliable nine-year-old printer on my network so that all my desktops, laptops, tablets and phones can directly print to it without needing to keep a more powerful, more energy-consuming computer on all the time (the RPi only uses 5 watts)

Made a couple of security cameras - I got to reuse an old webcam so that it can be accessed over the internet, again without needing to keep a regular computer running all the time.  For the second one I bought the 'Raspberry Pi Camera V2' for about $25 (yes, you can buy a Wyze camera for about the same bucks but they're out of stock, the new ones don't support the RTSP protocol yet, and the RPi Camera will also be eventually reused in conjunction with an 'object recognition' AI project I have on the back burner).

There are add-ons to the Pi's called 'hats' that let you add functionalities. I bought a special hat that's a vacuum tube-based DAC and headphone preamp (it was sold through a kickstarter a couple of years ago but I never got around to getting it working until last month), and in conjunction with it and the RPi, I made a music player using the 'Volumio' image - you just burn the Volumio image onto a micro SD card, pop it into the RPi, and presto - you have a music player!

Projects pending/contemplated...

Make a 'magic mirror' a la the "Mirror" that will display youtube videos which you can use while you work out, comb your hair, or whatever.  It is a pricier project as it requires two-way glass which is not cheap.  It also reuses an old LCD monitor, and you have to buy or build a frame if you want it to look good.

Make an 'art frame' (https://hackaday.com/2016/03/28/raspberry-pi-art-frame-using-openframe/) - same as above without the need for the mirror, but more for creating something like the Samsung Frame Television

Make an air pollution monitor for my home that texts/emails/tweets when high values are detected.

Anybody else have any fun, cheap, and easy Raspberry Pi projects that I might consider?

[ixtap]

We keep one on the boat for chartplotting. Other than that, we mostly use it to get movies from the hard drive to the TV. It was not powerful enough to rip our DVD collection to the hard drive, though, we had to use a laptop for that.

[BudgetSlasher]

Got one to run as a pi-hole.

Debating whether to get a small computer with dockers or another Pi to run home assistant on.

[FINate]

I have a headless Pi 3+ server with POE hat on my home network. POE makes everything very tidy. It's a great little device for running little services. It runs a squid proxy filter for my kids wifi network, dyndns, print server, and a few other odds and ends.

The kids needed a lightweight workstation for distance learning and later homeschooling. No way am I buying $1k computer each. The Raspberry Pi 4 desktop kit w/ 4GB ram + cheap 20" monitor works perfectly for this. Plenty fast, the kids love having their own computer, and as a parent I appreciate having full admin control.

[bill1827]

Here:

1 Pi4 with 20TB hard discs as a file server and JRiver media center server with TVhat for off air recording. Running an instance of Open Energy Monitor for temperature logging

2 Pi4 running Homeseer home automation

3 Pi zero running SBFspot for solar energy logging to PVOutput.org

4 Emonpi with Pi2-B running Open Energy Monitor logging power consumption and MQTT (been up for 177 days)

The first 2 used to be 3 Windows PCs.

At the flat

RPi3 running Homeseer
Pi zero running OEM temperature logging

[turketron]

Bought one a couple weeks ago to use as a pihole but haven't had a chance to set it up yet, looking forward to getting it in place!

[CowboyAndIndian]

I have a few projects that I am planning

- Magic mirror
- Photo frame

Glad to see that others here are also working on it.

[DoingMe]

I've got:

• Pi 3 running pi-hole
• Pi 4 with a DAC Hat connected to the stereo amp for a music server
• Pi Zero running a weather station (will get integrated into the one below when I get my mods added)
• Pi 4 running a new weather station that interfaces to my Weather Flow (new at Christmas)
• Pi Zero that connects to my alarm system to automatically turn the thermostat down when we leave

Keep an eye on prices ... I got a Pi Zero from Micro Center on March 14th (Pi Day) for $3.14

My wife had a friend ask what I was doing and she said "I don't know.  He makes these little boxes that are all over the house that control things!  I don't know what half of them do!" :-)

[cangelosibrown]

I'm typing this on my raspberry pi now! I have a work laptop, but needed to have something else, since my work laptop won't let me plug any storage media into it. I had all the needed peripherals so I could just buy a pi, velcro it to the back of display, and for $55 all in, I have a perfectly functioning PC.  I've been pretty pleased with it. There's a few things I can't get to work on it (mostly web-based stuff that requires latest browser versions), but it's perfectly adequate for everything I need it for (file management, photo editing/organization). Really pleased with it for the price.

I also have a 2nd SD card that's set up as a retropie, so I can play super mario kart during particularly boring meetings.