30 Raspberry Pi projects that show the pos­sib­il­it­ies of the mini computer

Raspberry Pi’s ap­plic­a­tions are won­der­fully diverse. In addition to ful­filling many standard tasks, the micro-computer has evolved to perform more unusual jobs. To implement a Raspberry Pi project, users sometimes require a lot of pre­lim­in­ary knowledge, and at other times require barely any. But if you’re in­ter­ested in a project, lack of prior knowledge shouldn’t be an obstacle. On the contrary, the Pi has been spe­cific­ally designed for ex­per­i­ment­a­tion with the circuit board and to help users develop new computing skills.

The internet provides a wealth of in­form­a­tion on Raspberry Pi’s various uses, alongside tips on im­ple­ment­a­tion of different ap­plic­a­tions and projects. The following examples highlight the range of pos­sib­il­it­ies the micro-computer offers. Below, you’ll also find links to some of the most popular and helpful projects, alongside brief guides on how to implement them.

For many users, Raspberry Pi functions as a web server. There are many different web server programs available (such as Apache, lighttpd and nginx. However, in most cases, Raspberry Pi’s per­form­ance is in­suf­fi­cient for hosting extensive, dynamic web content, hiccup-free. The mini-computer is instead far better suited to per­form­ing as a local testing en­vir­on­ment. However, simple static websites with low visitor counts may be hosted by a Raspberry Pi server. Learn how to create a Raspberry Pi web server here.

2020 forced lots of people to work from home. One of the ele­ment­ary work tools in home office: software for video con­fer­en­cing such as Zoom, Jitsi Meet, Skype, or Microsoft Teams. Since not every company provides the equipment needed for this, many rely on using their own private devices - unless they build a video con­fer­en­cing station using the Raspberry Pi for this sole purpose. Alasdair Allan has published his thoughts on a video con­fer­en­cing station based on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B in the official Raspberry Pi blog for Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts.

Plants enliven your home and con­trib­ute to a relaxed working at­mo­sphere. But it’s easy to forget to water them when caught in the stress of daily life. While some species cope well with little water, others such as bonsai trees, for example, are more demanding. That's why there’s now a tutorial for building a Raspberry Pi bonsai watering system, which ensures that your plant’s getting the right amount of water.

For this purpose, a humidity sensor is used in con­junc­tion with a pump. The Python 3 source code for the project is available on GitHub. All house­plants can be watered this way.

Neural networks are among core future concepts and can make life a lot easier. Raspberry Pi hobbyist Kutluhan Aktar took advantage of this and developed a ripeness metre for fruit and ve­get­ables based on a Raspberry Pi. The homemade machine uses a light sensor to detect the col­our­a­tion of food. The neural network was trained with a dataset that maps the ripeness of different fruits and ve­get­ables over ten days at all possible stages. This rather elaborate project is perhaps less suitable for home use, but it provides a great op­por­tun­ity for the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sector. Farmers, for example, could reduce the time they spend manually sorting spoiled crops.

Coffee machines have become near in­dis­pens­able whether at home or in the office. Modern coffee makers are capable of brewing everyone’s favourite cup of coffee with a single push of a button – as long as the water tank has been refilled recently. Alex Stakhanov and his col­leagues set out to address this short­com­ing and developed an automated water pumping system for their office coffee machine – a SAECO Aulika Focus. At the heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi. The micro-computer is connected to a HC-SR04 ultra-sonic sensor that con­sist­ently measures the remaining water level. The de­velopers pro­grammed the sensor using Python. A detailed ex­plan­a­tion of the Raspberry Pi project and Python scripts are available via medium.com.

Net­work­ing all your domestic tech­no­logy and household ap­pli­ances is becoming in­creas­ingly popular. The smart home approach, and allows you to centrally control and man­age­ment home heating, lamps, blinds, re­fri­ger­at­ors, washing machines, etc. It doesn’t just improve your quality of life, but also con­trib­utes to efficient energy con­sump­tion. Thanks to it’s low price, internet cap­ab­il­ity and status as a fully func­tion­ing system with excellent hardware support, more and more hobby craftsmen are relying on Raspberry Pi to implement projects for their own homes. The required software basis is formed by open source tools like openHAB or Home Assistant.

Those who do not have a modern smart TV that can connect to the Internet have to rely on a separate streaming device to play Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, etc. directly on their TV. The selection of sticks and boxes is huge, with the hardware by market leaders like the Google Chromecast, the Amazon Fire TV Stick, or the Apple TV box being par­tic­u­larly in demand.

However, this can be replaced with a little time and the right tricks by im­ple­ment­ing a home-made con­struc­tion. Using Raspberry Pi, an SD card, a mouse and a keyboard, you can create a streaming device, as user Maggie Shah proves in her examples of the ‘Raspicast’ on in­struct­ables.com. The Chromecast al­tern­at­ive brings Google's YouTube video portal to your old, offline device, and allows you to stream all of your own media files that are on the Raspberry.

LED back­light­ing for tele­vi­sions is becoming in­creas­ingly popular. However, re­spect­ive devices available to purchase are rather expensive. You can build your own ambient lighting with a little skill and a Raspberry Pi. The device changes colour to match the images displayed on the TV, making it even more powerful than tra­di­tion­al LED lighting. All you need besides a Raspberry Pi is a colour-ad­justable RGB light bulb and a USB web camera. The latter scans the colours of the displayed image.

When used as a mail server, emails are saved ex­clus­ively on Raspberry Pi, so no other provider or server has access to your messages. With a Raspberry Pi mail server, users have complete control over their mail system, and the ability to set up any number of email addresses using their own domain. As the central platform for your elec­tron­ic com­mu­nic­a­tions, the micro-computer provides superior privacy and security and a high degree of flex­ib­il­ity. A more detailed list of the ad­vant­ages and pos­sib­il­it­ies and step-by-step in­struc­tions for setting up a mail server using Raspberry Pi can be found here.

The Raspberry Pi offers more than just con­veni­ence – it makes for a great addition to a home security system. Max Williams has shown how to build a neat security system with the Raspberry Pi 3 A+ at the core. When switched on, Williams’ security device scans the sur­round­ing area in real-time and alerts a user by sending a photo message. Users are also warned each time the device is turned on or off. If you want to give this Raspberry Pi project a go at home, take a look at hackster.io. The in­struc­tions include the Python code to remote-control the camera.

The hobbyist Vincent Deconinck has shown that Raspberry Pi isn’t just for amateur projects. For around €130 (£125), he equipped a standard IKEA table with an in­ter­act­ive display that reacts to objects with colourful an­im­a­tions and even allows users to play Tetris. At the heart of the project is a Raspberry Pi that processes all in­ter­ac­tions recorded by Arduino mi­cro­con­trol­lers and converts them into an­im­a­tions using Glediator software. On his website, Deconinck has published a detailed guide to building an in­ter­act­ive LED table.

The com­bin­a­tion of LED units and the Raspberry Pi isn’t limited to playful, game-like projects. User dannyk9 published a guide to building a handy LED window that fakes sunlight on in­struct­ables.com. Rooms without windows, like basements, can be brightened up and change the mood of any room. The ‘fake’ window can be con­trolled via a web interface, whereby the bright­ness can either be adjusted manually or auto­mat­ic­ally according to time of day and weather (through the Yahoo! API).

If you’re in­ter­ested in the in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents and steps and are curious about the result, you should def­in­itely take a look at the forum article.

Minecraft has been one of the most popular computer games for years now, es­pe­cially among younger gamers. The many pos­sib­il­it­ies offered by the game let your ima­gin­a­tion run wild. The Minecraft: Pi Edition even goes one step further - the software can be installed on a Raspberry Pi and gives you the option to customise the Minecraft code to ma­nip­u­late the objects of the virtual world in any way you want. To this end, Pi Edition offers support for various pro­gram­ming languages such as Python. For a deeper look into the pro­gram­mable Minecraft edition for the Raspberry Pi, check out the article published by Lucy Hat­ters­ley in MagPi Magazine ‘The best Minecraft with Raspberry Pi resources’. To set up your own Minecraft server, check out our dedicated article on Minecraft server set-up.

To set up your own Minecraft server, check out our dedicated article on Minecraft server set-up.

With a Raspberry Pi VPN (virtual private network), you can encrypt all data traffic in a network. This is par­tic­u­larly useful to establish a secure con­nec­tion when using public WiFi; without en­cryp­tion, sensitive personal data is at risk of being in­ter­cep­ted at any time. Using a Raspberry Pi VPN server is a re­l­at­ively easy way to prevent this from happening. As a VPN server, the Pi is suitable for both private and corporate en­vir­on­ments. Find out how it works.

If you’ve always dreamed of owning a binary clock, Simon Monck’s Raspberry Pi project is the one for you. The developer and writer equipped the Pi with a Unicorn Hat – an expansion board with 64 RGB LEDs which displays the current time in a binary code. Viewed from top to bottom, this special watch displays year (the last two digits), month, day, hour (24-hour format), minute, second and even hundredth of a second. A detailed manual was published in issue 42 of The MagPi magazine, and is available in a condensed form on the Raspberry-Pi-Website.

Voice control is among the most important topics in modern history of tech­no­logy. That’s precisely what developer duo ‘8 Bits and a Byte’ thought and developed a toaster that can talk and recognise voices. Although the fun factor is evidently central here, this en­ter­tain­ing Raspberry Pi project shows the im­press­ive range of pos­sib­il­it­ies and flex­ib­il­ity of the micro-computer. The voice function of the toaster is based on the Google AIY Voice Kit. The Raspberry Pi 3 B (including camera module) provides the computing power. You can find out more about the project in the article 'Ted and the talking toaster' on in­struct­ables.com.

High levels of air pollution are an es­tab­lished health hazard. However, it’s difficult to maintain con­sist­ently good air quality in your own home. The AirPi is an effective solution. It consists of a Raspberry Pi combined with various sensors that, depending on con­fig­ur­a­tion, measure the tem­per­at­ure, humidity, air pressure, UV level, carbon monoxide or nitrogen dioxide level in your home. In addition to air quality, the Raspberry Pi ap­plic­a­tion also provides in­form­a­tion about the weather. Thanks to the micro-computer’s internet cap­ab­il­ity, the measured values can be compared on a web interface.

Wireless Internet con­nec­tions are practical, but strongly dependent on the signal strength that is output by the router and received. It is not unusual that you get the best reception in the lounge, but get frus­trated due to constant con­nec­tion in­ter­rup­tions in the next room. A WiFi extender that receives the signal from the router and re­dis­trib­utes it can help. On the PiMyLi­feUp site, the Raspberry Pi user Gus has published in­struc­tions how to easily build an extender with a Raspberry Pi. Depending on the model, you will also need one to two WiFi adapters (also called WiFi dongles) - the crucial question is whether the model has its own WiFi adapter or not.

Boring photo frames are so yesterday. There is another way. An ideal project for Raspberry Pi beginners is the digital picture frame. You just need a Raspberry Pi 4, a 7 inch touch display and a memory card storing your photos. It is entirely up to you which images you select to be displayed. Filtering for certain keywords in search engines like Google Images or dis­play­ing your vacation photos is no problem for the digital picture frame.

Paper pocket calendars are a thing of the past. Smart­phones and laptops are the devices of choice to keep track of our ap­point­ments. But paper calendars still adorn our walls. Wouldn't it be more practical to connect your wall calendar to your smart­phone? That's exactly what In­struct­ables user Piney thought, using a Raspberry Pi to build a Google Wall Calendar. A monitor attached to the wall ensures that all ap­point­ments can be kept track of. Moreover, with the keyboard connected to the Raspberry Pi, new ap­point­ments can be added and are syn­chron­ised thanks to the Raspberry Pi con­nect­ing to its own WLAN.

Nick Johnson’s Advice Machine proves that good advice doesn’t always have to come at a high price. The home-made speech robot, operated by a Raspberry Pi, gives free advice. The quality of the advice, handed over on a small piece of paper (thanks to a thermal printer), depends on how high the coin con­tri­bu­tion was. This advice is usually in the form of humorous tips, pearls of wisdom and jokes which it gets from the Fortune database, which provides humorous content on Unix and Linux systems.

Users who wish to connect their data across multiple devices can set up a home server, which is a fileserv­er that can host any kind of file (documents, images, videos, music, etc.), and provides access to any device connected to that server (PCs, laptops, smart­phones, tablets, etc.). Devices can be connected via cable or WiFi. You can also go a step further and use the Raspberry Pi as a complete media centre. The micro-computer not only serves as a storage location for your media content, but also as a central platform for playing movies, music, and images from a hard disk, or for accessing streaming services such as YouTube or Spotify. 

One of the most commonly used ap­plic­a­tions for running a Raspberry Pi media centre is the open source software Kodi, which sorts media by type, among other options.

The Pi 3D Scanner, developed and perfected by the Dutch Richard Garsthagen is an expensive but equally breath­tak­ing Raspberry Pi project. One hundred Raspberry Pis, each with their own SD card and camera modules, form the basic structure of this two-metre high, full-body scanning machine. Thanks to a home-made 3D scanning man­age­ment software, the recorded values can be optimised and then used to print a 3D model.

Raspberry Pi’s abilities enable users to play arcade video games or games in the style of early-gen­er­a­tion gaming consoles. En­thu­si­asts have managed to replicate the arcade machines both in miniature form and also in their original size. Some machines even come equipped with a coin slot for an authentic arcade feel. The com­bin­a­tion of Raspbian and the emulator ap­plic­a­tion  RetroPie form a popular software basis for these Raspberry Pi projects.

Magic Mirror is a Raspberry Pi project created by Dutch developer, Michael Teeuw. This is a one-way-mirror, which conceals a monitor and the micro-computer. The time, weather, upcoming ap­point­ments, and more can be displayed on the mirror’s glass. Due to the pop­ular­ity and publicity the developer has received since pub­lish­ing his DIY manual, he’s created a second, optimised version of the Ma­gicMir­ror, which can be extended endlessly due to its modular structure. Since the code is com­pletely open source, the Ma­gicMir­ror has developed into a huge community in recent years, with the ma­gicmir­ror.builders page serving as a central exchange platform and contact point for all in­ter­ested parties.

YouTuber Allen Pan, aka Suf­fi­ciently Advanced came up with a special Raspberry Pi project. He has created a ‘smart home’ en­vir­on­ment to control the technical devices within his own four walls, all operated by a Raspberry Pi. However, this home auto­ma­tion system is not engaged using voice or text commands nor a web interface. Instead, it is con­trolled by playing melodies from the game ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ by Nintendo. Much like Link - the hero of the video game - the YouTube star uses an ocarina to play ‘Zelda’s Lullaby’ to open his front door, for example.

Towards the end of 2012, user Dark Therapy showed that Raspberry Pi can be used to open a garage door in just a few steps. In his official Raspberry Pi forum editorial, the amateur en­thu­si­ast explained how he converted his iPhone to function as a remote control using a Raspberry Pi and Siri proxy software. Siri, which is pre-installed on most modern iPhones, acts as the voice recording ap­plic­a­tion.