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:
Modeling Physics with the Wolfram Language
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/6021
Tomi Engdahl says:
University of Cambridge Develops Potentially More Secure Password Storage System
http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/03/11/002206/university-of-cambridge-develops-potentially-more-secure-password-storage-system
“University of Cambridge’s S-CRIB Scrambler resides in a Raspberry Pi and performs a hash-based message authentication code (HMAC).”
Can this $70 dongle stem the epidemic of password breaches?
Maybe not, but its approach could improve the security of password databases.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/can-this-70-dongle-stem-the-epidemic-of-password-breaches/
The S-CRIB Scrambler uses an additional layer of protection over methods many websites use now to prevent mass account compromises in the event a password database is exposed during a site breach, according to a post published Friday on the University of Cambridge’s Light Blue Touchpaper blog. Rather than relying solely on a one-way cryptographic hash to represent plaintext passwords, the small dongle performs an additional operation known as hash-based message authentication code (HMAC). The secret 10-character key used to generate the HMAC resides solely on the dongle. Because it’s not included in password tables that are stored on servers, the key could remain
secret even in the event of a major security breach.
The new method comes amid twin epidemics of website security breaches that spill password databases and a large percent of end users who use “princess,” “123abc,” and other easily guessed passcodes to safeguard their accounts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WS2812b Ambilight Clone For The Raspi
http://hackaday.com/2014/03/26/ws2812b-ambilight-clone-for-the-raspi/
For how often the Raspberry Pi is used as a media server, and how easy it is to connect a bunch of LEDs to the GPIO pins on the Pi, we’re surprised we haven’t seen something like Hyperion before. It uses the extremely common WS2812b individually controllable RGB LEDs to surround the wall behind your TV with the colors on the edges of the screen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frozen Pi — An Affordable Bullet Time Recorder
http://hackaday.com/2014/03/31/frozen-pi-an-affordable-bullet-time-recorder/
What happens when you strap 48 Raspberry Pi cameras together with nearly half a kilometer of network cables? You get your own bullet time capture rig.
To create the rig they’ve taken 48 Raspberry Pis, each with a PiFace controller board and the standard camera.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Create Your Own J.A.R.V.I.S. Using Jasper
http://hackaday.com/2014/04/09/create-your-own-j-a-r-v-i-s-using-jasper/
Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S. needs no introduction. With [Shubhro's] and [Charlie's] recent release of Jasper, an always on voice-controlled development platform for the Raspberry Pi, you too can start making your own J.A.R.V.I.S..
With the easy to use developer API, you can integrate Jasper into any of your existing Raspberry Pi projects with little effort. We could see Jasper integrated with wireless microphones and speakers to enable advanced voice control from anywhere in your home.
Jasper is an open source platform for developing always-on, voice-controlled applications
http://jasperproject.github.io/
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Emulated Commodore 64 Operating System for the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2014/04/09/an-emulated-commodore-64-operating-system-for-the-raspberry-pi/
It’s no secret that Commodore users love their old machines with the Commodore C64 being chief among them with 27 Million units sold worldwide.
Enter the Commodore Pi, an emulated Commodore 64 operating system for the Raspberry Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Raspberry Eye Sees All
http://hackaday.com/2014/04/20/the-raspberry-eye-sees-all/
[Roman Rolinsky] wanted to try to do something interesting with his Raspberry Pi and a 2.8″ LCD he had laying about… So he made a rather bulky version of Google Glass.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Recycled Foam Box is Now A Weather Station
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/05/recycled-foam-box-is-now-a-weather-station/
[Ioannis] grabbed a Raspberry Pi, WiFi USB stick and a camera module and went to work.
For the weather data, he’s using another design of his – the Sensor Stick.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The PebblyPi: A Smart Doorbell
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/08/the-pebblypi-a-smart-doorbell/
A Pebble smart watch, and a Raspberry Pi. They are a perfect match.
All you need really need is a Raspberry Pi, a switch, a resistor, and a Pebble Smart Watch (plus a smart phone). Using a simple Python script on the Raspberry Pi, button press notifications are sent to Pushover, which allows the notification to arrive on your smart phone (and thus your Pebble Smart Watch). Pushover is a very cool notification service for Android devices, iPhones, iPads, and your Desktop.
Comment:
If you have a Ninja Block (or a Raspberry Pi with their “Pi Crust” 433mhz addon), then you can do stuff like this with an off-the-shelf doorbell and their recently-released Pushover / Pushbullet driver.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rackmount RasPi Leaves No Excuse to Lose Data
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/12/rackmount-raspi-leaves-no-excuse-to-lose-data/
[Frank] knows how important backups are for data security, but his old method of plugging a hard drive in to take manual backups every so often is not the most reliable or secure way of backing up data. He realized he was going to need a secure, automated solution. He didn’t need a full-sized computer with a ton of power; why waste electricity for something so simple? His solution was to use a Raspberry Pi as the backup computer.
The main problem he faced with the Pi was finding a way to make it rack mountable. [Frank] started with an empty 1U server case.
the backup server pulls 29W under full load, 9W with the disk spinning, and only about 2W in an idle state.
The Pi connects to his main server via VPN and then the bash scripts use rsync to actually collect the files.
Comment to posting: Crashplan runs just fine on a RasPi too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oinker is Twitter for HAMs
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/12/oinker-is-twitter-for-hams/
Have you ever wanted to send a quick message to your HAM radio buddies over the air but then realized you forgot your radio at home? [Troy] created Oinker to remedy this problem. Oinker is a Perl script that turns emails into audio.
The script monitors an email account for new messages and then uses the Festival text-to-speech engine to transform the text into audio. [Troy] runs Oinker on a Raspberry Pi, with the Pi’s audio output plugged directly into an inexpensive ham radio.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Pi CNC Controller
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/23/the-pi-cnc-controller/
Back in the olden days, the latest and greatest CNC machines had minicomputers bolted onto their frames, replete with paper tape readers and seven segment displays. For the home CNC machinist of today, these hulking electronic brains are replaced with something a little more modern – desktop computers with parallel ports. Having a box filled with computers and motor drivers is just too cool though, and this tiny Raspberry Pi CNC controller fits the bill quite nicely.
The Pi AlaMode board is able to provide voltage level conversion between the CNC shield and the pi
Tomi Engdahl says:
HAL is Duct Tape for Home Automation
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/31/hal-is-duct-tape-for-home-automation/
When it comes to home automation, there are a lot of different products out there that all do different things. Many of them are made by different companies, and they don’t often play very well together. This frustration ultimately led [Daniel] to develop his own Python based middleware solution to get these various components to work as a single cohesive system.
For the brain of the system, [Daniel] chose to use a Raspberry Pi. The Pi runs a web server with a Flask based back-end system. Flask allows him to code the website in Python, which meant he could easily write a website that can interact with the various automation components. The Pi can directly communicate with all of the off-the-shelf components using the various Python libraries.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Controlling RC Toys With The Raspi
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/03/controlling-rc-toys-with-the-raspi/
An interesting trick you can do with a a fast CPU and a GPIO pin mapped directly to memory is an FM transmitter. Just toggle a pin on and off fast enough, and you have a crude and kludgy transmitter.
Cheap RC cars usually listen for radio signals at 27 and 49 MHz. It doesn’t take much to realize commanding RC cars with a Pi is possible.
The only problem with this idea is that most RC cars use pulse modulation. For an RC transmitter to send the command for ‘forward’, a synchronization pulse is sent, then a series of pulses and pauses.
[Brandon] realized that if he just moved the frequency up to something the RC car wasn’t listening to, that would register as a zero.
ll that was left was to figure out the command codes for his RC truck.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russians turn Raspberry Pi into fully-fledged autopilot
Brisk business for Navio team down at Indiegogo
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/04/raspberry_pi_autopilot/
Anyone with an interest in Raspberry Pis and autopilots – in common with the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team – should nip down to Indiegogo to check out the Navio: an impressive-looking autopilot shield for the diminutive fruity computer.
The Russian team behind the Navio is already well on the way to raising the modest $6,000 it needs to press ahead with production of the unit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Autopilot Shield For The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/04/the-autopilot-shield-for-the-raspberry-pi/
In the world of drones, quadcopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles, the community has pretty much settled on AVR microcontrollers for the low end, and ARM for the high performance boards. If the FAA doesn’t screw things up, there will soon be another market that requires even more computational power, and Navio, the autopilot shield for the Pi, is just the thing for it.
Where high end multicopter and autopilot boards like the OpenPilot Revolution use ARM micros, there’s a small but demanding segment of the hobby that needs even more processing power.
Think of something like the Outback Challenge, where fixed-wing drones search the desert for a lost mannequin autonomously. You’re going to need OpenCV for that, and that means Linux.
Navio is a shield for the Raspberry Pi, complete with a barometric pressure sensor, gyros, accelerometer, and compass, and GPS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Game Boy Pocket Rapi Mod Puts All Others To Shame
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/05/the-game-boy-pocket-rapi-mod-puts-all-others-to-shame/
There are hundreds – perhaps thousands – of builds out there on the Internet that put a Raspberry Pi in an enclosure with buttons meant solely for running emulators for old games. This one is unlike any other. Yes, it’s still basically a RetroPi emulator, but this Game Boy Pocket casemod goes beyond any remotely comparable build.
The Game Boy Pocket is incredibly small, but after sanding down the bosses on the inside of the case, gluing the battery door shut, and installing a bit of plastic over the cartridge slot, [WarriorRocker] was able to fit a Raspi inside. The buttons use the same PCB as the stock Game Boy, connected to a Teensy 2.0 board that simulates a USB keyboard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Tweeting Litter Box
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/06/a-tweeting-litter-box/
How can you not be interested in a project that uses load cells, Bluetooth, a Raspberry Pi, and Twitter. Even for those of our readers without a cat, [Scott's] tweeting litter box is worth the read.
Each aspect of this project can be re-purposed for almost any application.
The weight reading is transmitted via an HC-06 Bluetooth module to a Raspberry Pi. Using a simple Perl script, the excreted weight, duration, and the cat’s resulting body weight is then tweeted!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building a Twitter-enabled Litterbox
http://www.scottcutler.net/catpoop/catpoop.html
I was thinking the other day: are there any valid uses of Twitter? I couldn’t think of any. But I realized I could solve the problem and simultaneously fulfill a dream of humanity since ancient times: knowing the time, duration, and quantity of all of my cat’s defecations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi powers the Sherlybox personal cloud server
It is serious. And do call it Shirly.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2349015/raspberry-pi-powers-the-sherlybox-personal-cloud-server
RASPBERRY PI, the barebones single chip computer, is being used as the basis of a secure personal cloud server.
The Sherlybox uses peer-to-peer (P2P) networking to enable filesharing between computers and networks on a per folder basis, using a protocol known as Gateless Virtual-private Networking (GVN).
Unlike commercial cloud services, which run from a central server, GVN has no traffic or storage limitations and transfers are, the company claims, 20 times the speed of CIFS and SMB. All files are fully encrypted end-to-end so only the people you’ve authorised to see your documents can.
The Sherlybox runs on a Raspberry Pi module C with 4GB of RAM and support for 2.5in hard drives, which are available included or separately.
Sherlybox’s GVN software is already available in beta and is initially available for Windows, Linux and Mac, with mobile apps to follow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiGates Validates Your Concert Tickets
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/15/pigates-validates-your-concert-tickets/
[Seph] works for a company that handles ticketing for concerts and special events. One of his primary tasks is to check for counterfeit tickets at the gates of an event. Depending on the venue, this can be mag-stripes, bar codes, or one of several breeds of RFID. Until recently, netbooks coupled with USB readers performed the task. The netbooks weren’t a great solution though – they were expensive, relatively fragile, and took up more space than necessary.
[Seph] had a better idea. He created a ticket validation system using a Raspberry Pi. The Pi sits in a translucent case with a PiGlow RGB LED board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super Pi Brothers
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/super-pi-brothers
One nice thing about the Raspberry Pi project is the large number of people out there with identical hardware. For me, that meant instead of having to go through someone else’s instructions, knowing I’d likely have to tweak it to suit my setup, I basically could follow someone else’s guide verbatim. In my case, I found the RetroPie project, which wrapped up all of the commands you would need to install everything on a Raspberry Pi into a single large script. At the end, you have the RetroArch project fully installed and configured, which includes all of the major emulators you’d want and a centralized method to configure them, plus an EmulationStation graphical front end the Pi can boot directly into that makes it simple to navigate to the game you want, all from a gamepad.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Bluetooth Receiver for your Car Stereo
http://hackaday.com/2014/06/23/raspberry-pi-bluetooth-receiver-for-your-car-stereo/
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY 3D Printable RaspberryPi Raman Spectrometer
http://hackaday.io/project/1279-DIY-3D-Printable-RaspberryPi-Raman-Spectrometer
An open source 3D Printable Raman Spectrometer using a RaspberryPi and easy to find off the shelf components.
A 3D Printable Raman Spectrometer that uses a raspberryPi, a couple of arduino compatible ARM boards, a really bright laser and some parts you can grab from eBay, adafruit, sparkFun, Mouser, or wherever…!
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed PiGRRL – Raspberry Pi Gameboy
http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/07/05/2122224/3d-printed-pigrrl—raspberry-pi-gameboy
“Celebrate the 25th anniversary of the classic gaming device, Game Boy, by building your own with 3d printing and DIY electronics. This project uses a Raspberry Pi and TFT touch screen to make an epic DIY Game Girl.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiGRRL – Raspberry Pi Gameboy
The best enclosure for a Raspberry Pi!
https://learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-raspberry-pi-gameboy?view=all
Tomi Engdahl says:
Move Over Humans and Things, Flowers Now On The ‘Net
http://hackaday.com/2014/07/04/move-over-humans-and-things-flowers-now-on-the-net/
The ‘Internet of Flowers’ is upon us thanks to an artist named [Adrian]. He has designed a project that not only monitors the growth of Poppy Flowers but also monitors the soil, air and surrounding activity.
The entire project is based on a Raspberry Pi mounted in a purpose-built enclosure made from laser cut birch plywood. The enclosure is mounted in a window of an adjacent building that has a view of the flower bed. An internally mounted camera was carefully aligned so its field of view was mostly of the plants and would limit taking photos of unknowing passersby. The camera takes a snap shot every 5 minutes, see the time lapse video below.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Hat Puts Your Head in the Game
http://hackaday.com/2014/07/22/smart-hat-puts-your-head-in-the-game/
With Google Glass pushing $1,500, it’s only natural for hackers to make a cheaper alternative. [Avind's] $80 version might not be pretty, but it gets the job done.
Using a Raspberry Pi loaded with speech recognition software, a webcam, 2.5 inch LCD display and a handful of other parts, [Arvind's] hat mounted display allows him to view email, Google Maps, videos or just about anything he wants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building The Slimmest Raspi
http://hackaday.com/2014/07/17/building-the-slimmest-raspi/
[Colin], AKA [Domipheus], was working on a project to monitor a thermostat with a wall mounted Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen. Simple enough, but the Pi has a problem: The plugs are all around the perimeter of the board, and with a TFT touch screen shield, it’s a bit too thick to be wall mounted. What followed is a hack in the purest sense: [Domipheus] removed and relocated components on the Pi until the entire Pi/display stack was just a hair over 10mm tall.
A Raspberry Pi Model A was used for this build
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspi Ambilight Integrated in a 19″ Rack Packs Lots of Peripherals
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/02/raspi-ambilight-integrated-in-a-19-rack-packs-lots-of-peripherals/
Ambilight systems create light effects around your monitor that correspond to the video content you’re playing. [Sébastien] just build his (French translated to English, original here) and embedded all the elements in a 19 inch rack he bought from Farnell.
Rory says:
You could certainly see your expertise within the article you write.
The world hopes for even more passionate writers like you who are not afraid
to mention how they believe. At all times follow
your heart.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testing VR Limits with a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/07/testing-vr-limits-with-a-raspberry-pi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Backup Scripts
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/11/raspberry-pi-backup-scripts/
[Matthew's] recent blog post does a good job explaining the basics of the Raspberry Pi’s file system. The Linux operating system installed on a Pi is generally installed on two different partitions on an SD card. The first partition is a small FAT partition. All of the files on this partition are used for the initial booting of the Pi. This partition also includes the kernel images. The second partition is the root file system and is generally formatted as ext4. This partition contains the rest of the operating system, user files, installed programs, etc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Famous Art Museum Is Offering Everyone Remote Tours, Using Robots
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/a-famous-art-museum-is-offering-everyone-remote-tours-using-robots/
Since at least the 1960s, we’ve romanticized nighttime visits to art museums.
Now, for a few nights in August, anyone who dreams of an after-hours museum visit (and has an internet connection) can do just that, at the Tate Britain. The nocturnal tour guides are a set of four robots, each outfitted with lights, video streaming technology, a Raspberry Pi computer, and an Arduino board, that’ll roam the galleries from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., GMT/UTC. Curious parties from anywhere in the world can log on to the Tate’s After Dark website, and either follow a virtual tour, or take control and steer one of the robots (pending a wait time).
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiAware, Automated Airliner Tracking On The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/25/piaware-automated-airliner-tracking-on-the-raspberry-pi/
For the sufficiently geeky aviation nerd there’s FlightAware, a website that tracks just about every airliner and most private planes currently in flight. The folks at FlightAware compile all the information with the help of a few thousand volunteers around the world that have a bit of hardware to listen to ADS-B transmissions and relay them to the FlightAware servers. Now you can do this with a Raspberry Pi
Setting everything up requires getting dump1090 running on the Pi, the only hardware required being an RTL-SDR USB TV tuner, a GPS module, and an antenna for 1090 MHz.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UniPi Is A Powerful Board That Can Control Your Smart Home
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/19/unipi-is-a-powerful-board-that-can-control-your-smart-home/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity
Created by a pair of Czech engineers, Adam Škorpík and Tomas Hora, the UniPi connects to a Raspberry Pi and includes eight relays for turning on and off appliances, lights, and HVAC systems. It also has digital and analog inputs for temperature control and a real-time clock that keeps the time even when the system goes down. It costs $149 and is compatible with the Raspberry Pi B and B+.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make Your Own Mac Pi For Some Desktop Nostalgia
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/28/make-your-own-mac-pi-for-some-desktop-nostalgia/
Do you miss your Mac Classic? Well if you’re looking for a fun little project, why not build yourself a Mini Mac Pi that emulates Mac OS 7?
It’s a fairly simple project that makes use of the Raspberry Pi B, a 320×240 2.8″ touchscreen LCD (the PiTFT), a lithium-ion battery, a buck-boost circuit and of course, a power switch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WiFi Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Camera
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/30/wifi-raspberry-pi-touchscreen-camera/
Adafruit has a tutorial on their site that shows how to fashion together a cloud-connected, point-and-shoot camera. The best part of this project is that it can be customized to the heart’s content, unlike traditional digital cameras or smartphones. The integrated touchscreen and open-source computing allows for Instagram-like filters that can be scrolled through easily.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY WiFi Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Camera
Make your own Cloud-connected point-and-shoot camera
https://learn.adafruit.com/diy-wifi-raspberry-pi-touch-cam/overview
This project explores the Adafruit PiTFT touchscreen and the Raspberry Pi camera board to create a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. One can optionally use WiFi and Dropbox (a cloud file storage and synchronization service) to automatically transfer photos to another computer for editing.
Inez says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
THP Semifinalist: Secure Your Internets with Web Security Everywhere
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/06/secure-your-internets-with-web-security-everywhere/
[Arcadia Labs] has created a great little device in Web Security Everywhere, a semifinalist in The Hackaday Prize. At the center of it all is UnJailPi, a Raspberry Pi device which can act as a secure router between a protected network and the unprotected internet. UnJailPi can create OpenVPN and Tor connections on the fly from its touch screen interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can An 8 Node Raspberry Pi Cluster Web Server Survive Hackaday?
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/05/can-an-8-node-raspberry-pi-cluster-web-server-survive-hackaday/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rackmount RasPi Leaves No Excuse to Lose Data
http://hackaday.com/2014/05/12/rackmount-raspi-leaves-no-excuse-to-lose-data/
On the software side of things, [Frank's] backup box uses bash shell scripts to get the job done. The Pi connects to his main server via VPN and then the bash scripts use rsync to actually collect the files. The system not only saves backups every night, but also keeps week old backups just in case. If you are really paranoid about your backups, try hooking up a custom battery backup solution to your Pi. If a Pi just isn’t doing it for you, you can always try one of many other methods.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HackerSpace Monitor Monitors Hackerspace Environment
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/09/hackerspace-monitor-monitors-hackerspace-environment/
What’s going on at the Hackerspace? If you can’t answer that, maybe your ‘space needs a HackerSpace Monitor. [Tayken] over at the Tokyo Hackerspace has come up with a way to remotely monitor all the stuff you’d want to know about the ‘space.
His project is based on a Raspberry Pi with a webcam connected to the Pi’s USB port by way of a hub. The webcam is set up to stream 2 frames per second, which is plenty to be able to judge the activity at the ‘space. A WiFi dongle is also plugged into the USB hub in order to gain internet access, send out the video and allow the ability to SSH into the Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HackerSpace Monitoring with Raspberry Pi
http://taylanayken.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/hackerspace-monitoring-with-raspberry-pi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sleepy Pi
http://spellfoundry.com/products/sleepy-pi/
Raspberry Pi add-on board for Smart Power Management and additional GPIO.
Do you know how most modern devices save power? They switch to a low power “sleep” mode whenever they’re not being used and wake only when they next need to do something. The Sleepy Pi replicates this type of behaviour on the RPi. It allows the RPi to shut itself down when it’s not being used to save power and wakes it up when it’s got work to do (get back to work!) either at timed intervals or when some real-world signal cries out for attention.
It’s Also An Arduino…and an IO Board too!
The Sleepy Pi packs an ATMega328P running at 8Mhz. Easily program this from the Raspberry Pi itself using the free tools
Tomi Engdahl says:
Safe and simple AC PWM Dimmer for arduino / Raspberry pi
http://www.instructables.com/id/safe-and-simple-AC-PWM-Dimmer-for-arduino-Raspberr/
This circuit shows that dimmers intended for use at mains voltage do not always have to contain a triac.
Here, a MOSFET (BUZ41A, 500 V/4.5A) in a diode bridge is used to control the voltage across an incandescent bulb with pulse-width modulation (PWM). The power supply voltage for driving the gate is supplied by the voltage across the MOSFET.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sweet Stepper of [Jeremy]‘s Rocks Out with its Box Out
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/18/sweet-stepper-of-jeremys-rocks-out-with-its-box-out/
Inspired by the floppy drive orchestras of others, [Jeremy] has built a Pi-driven MIDI music box with stepper motor resonators and outlined the build on hackaday.io.
Control for the motors comes from an Iteaduino Mega 2560. The music starts as a MIDI file, gets processed into a text file, and is played over serial by a Raspberry Pi. He’s added percussion using K’NEX instruments and 9g servos
Tomi Engdahl says:
THP Semifinalist: Farmbot
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/19/thp-semifinalist-farmbot/
The FarmBot team has been pretty busy with their CNC Farming and Gathering machine. The idea is to automate the farming process with precise deployment of tools: plows, seed injection, watering, sensors, etc. An Arduino with an added RAMPS handles the movement, and a Raspi provides internet connectivity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vector Laser Projector is a Lesson in Design Processes
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/20/vector-laser-projector-is-a-lesson-in-design-processes/
The driver board is a shield for a Raspberry Pi which drives the Galvanometers responsible for the X and Y movements of the mirror.