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.
1,692 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magic Mirror on the Wall, “Is Pi or ESP, Fairest of All?”
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/30/magic-mirror-on-the-wall-is-pi-or-esp-fairest-of-all/
“What’s the weather like, honey?” “I don’t know. Let me check the mirror.” The mirror?
Both [Dylan Pierce] and [Dani Eichorn] have mirror projects that display the weather. They took two different approaches which makes for an interesting comparison. [Dylan] uses a Rapsberry Pi with an actual monitor behind the mirror. [Dani] puts an OLED behind the mirror driven by a ESP8266. It appears there is more than one way to hack a mirror, or anything, which is what makes hacking fun.
ESP8266 WeatherStation with a Magic Mirror
http://blog.squix.ch/2015/12/esp8266-weatherstation-with-magic-mirror.html
A Raspberry Pi powered Magic Mirror
http://blog.dylanjpierce.com/raspberrypi/magicmirror/tutorial/2015/12/27/build-a-magic-mirror.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Czech Out Raspberry Pi Riding the Rails
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/czech-out-raspberry-pi-riding-the-rails/
If you were wandering around Prague this Christmas season you may have spotted a Raspberry Pi 2 controlled Christmas tree. But you had to look quick because it was on the back of a special tram car that lubricates the rails around the city to reduce noise. The colors on the tree were determined by a web site that allowed visitors to change the colors. The same system, with a few adjustments, controlled a tree in the entrance hall of Czech Technical University in Prague at Karlovo.
The adjustments weren’t trival. Power was a problem, for one. The electrical noise from the tram’s drive motors needed to be filtered by using a switching power supply. Cold temperatures might have created a frozen Pi so they added a heater. After all, everyone loves warm Pi. The LEDs on the tree were handled by a WS2811 addressable LED driver chip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Raspberry Pi Tidy Tide Tracker Predicts Propitious Promenades
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/a-raspberry-pi-tidy-tide-tracker-predicts-propitious-promenades/
The whims of the tides can make walking near the ocean a less than pleasant experience. A beautiful seascape one day may appear as a dismal, mucky, tidal flat the next. Frustrated over these weary walks, [Average Man] created a tidy tide tracker to predict propitious promenade periods.
A Raspberry Pi A+ pulls tide timing information off the web by scraping a web page using Python code. The time for the high tide, when the estuary will be full of water, is shown on a 4-digit 7-seg display. It’s all sandwiched between two smoked black panels to provide a neat case while still letting the LEDs show through.
Raspberry Pi High Tide Tracker
http://www.averagemanvsraspberrypi.com/2015/12/raspberry-pi-high-tide-tracker.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi + Wolfram Data Drop
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/04/raspberry-pi-wolfram-data-drop/
When you think of Mathematica and Wolfram, you probably think high-power number crunching. You might not think embedded systems. Wolfram runs on the Raspberry Pi, however, and there is a recent video (below) showing a Raspberry Pi, controlling I/O devices, and interacting with the Web using Wolfram data drop.
The second video, below, shows some older example projects including a simple home alarm with a PIR sensor. Not the kind of thing that Wolfram is known for, but fine as a “hello world” project. There is even a project that uses an Arduino for more I/O. Between the two videos, you can get a good idea of the sort of things you can accomplish using a Pi with the language.
There’s even IFTTT integration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ten Mile Raspberry Pi WiFi (with a Catch)
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/05/ten-mile-raspberry-pi-wifi-with-a-catch/
How would you like to have a WiFi connection that covers 10 miles? Or how about an even wider network made up of a mesh of multiple nodes? It is possible, but there is a catch: you probably need a ham radio license to do it (at least, you do in the United States).
What makes it possible is the realization that conventional WiFi channels 1-6 are inside an existing US ham band. That means (if you are a ham) you can elect to use FCC part 97 rules instead of part 15 that governs WiFi routers. That means you can use more power and–even more importantly–better antennas to get greater range.
Traditionally, hams have used custom firmware for Netgear routers or Ubiquiti hardware. However, [WZ0W] recently posted his experience using Raspberry Pi boards as mesh nodes.
If you aren’t licensed, you may still be able to use the mesh network firmware, but you’ll have to stick to the stock radios and antennas. If you are not in the US, your laws may be different
Let’s Talk About Mesh Networking
http://www.wz0w.com/raspberry-pi/lets-talk-about-mesh-networking/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Mirror Notices You and Turns On
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/14/smart-mirror-notices-you-and-turns-on/
Smart, technology filled bathrooms are inevitably coming, but until then, be the first in your group of friends to make your very own smart mirror!
Gaining popularity in recent months, it’s not that difficult to make a smart mirror. In fact, it’s really just an LCD monitor with a one-way mirror slapped on top. Similar to how Infinity Mirrors work.
The build makes use of an older LCD monitor [Tmonaco189] had laying about.
A Raspberry Pi is used to feed data to the screen, including weather, the calendar, and an RSS feed of Reddit. To save power, he’s added a motion sensor to the GPIO of the Pi, which means it’ll actually boot up when you walk into the room, and turn off when you leave — nice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Wind Measurement
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/16/raspberry-pi-wind-measurement/
A well organized approach to a project is a delight to see. [Pavel Gesyuk] takes just that approach with the experiments on his blog. Experiment 13 is a multi-part series using a Raspberry Pi as the heart of a weather station. [Pavel] is looking at wind speed and direction, and temperature measurement, plus solar power for the station. One of his videos, there are many
The anemometer and direction sensors are stock units wired to a Raspberry Pi A+ using an analog to digital daughter board. The data from the temperature sensor is acquired using I2C. During one part of the experiment he uses an EDIMAX WiFi adapter for collecting the data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Track Satellites with a 2-axis Antenna Positioner
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/20/track-satellites-with-a-2-axis-antenna-positioner/
Ham radio operators are curious beasts. They’ll go to great lengths to make that critical contact, and making sure their directional antennas are pointing the right way can be a big part of punching through. Of course there are commercial antenna rotators out there, but hams also like to build their own gear, like this Raspberry Pi-controlled 2-axis rotator.
PiRotator
RaspberryPi controlled antenna rotator
https://jkry.org/ouluhack/PiRotator
Goals:
Cheap common hardware (wormgears, nema steppers, rasberrypi, etc)
Intelligence on mast (controlbox includes rasberrypi, this enables many things, like SDR on mast)
All digital (digital rotary sensors, steppers, tcp/ip, etc)
network (only IO is network, controlling thru different apis(REST, legacy RS emulation api))
backward compatibility to legacy software, via software RS (ham radio deluxe, pstrotator, etc)
project is only for fun, and learning new stuff!
Current commercial az/el antenna rotators are really expensive(easily over 1500€ with controllers), and moreover technically most are from 90s (analog potentiometer sensors/control, no network, rs/lpt controllable, no web, no rest api, etc).I tried to take little bit different approach..
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mini rpi2 laptop
Small form factor laptop in the style of old HPC’s like the Jornada.
https://hackaday.io/project/9082-mini-rpi2-laptop
It currently consists of a rpi2 sbc with a 5 inch composite lcd, some 18650′s, adafruit powerboost 1000c, and a rii wireless mini keyboard.
In the process of teensifying (is that a thing? lol) a keyboard out of and old HP Jornada HPC. I also plan to use a PSP 1000 analog stick for mouse control, adafruit class d amplifier and some small speakers.
The housing is currently made of thin mdf from a clipboard. It is hot glued together with some small screws and nuts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Use Lidar with the Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/22/how-to-use-lidar-with-the-raspberry-pi/
The ability to inexpensively but accurately measure distance between an autonomous vehicle or robot and nearby objects is a challenging problem for hackers. Knowing the distance is key to obstacle avoidance. Running into something with a small robot may be a trivial problem but could be deadly with a big one like an autonomous vehicle.
At the competition, two entrants used scanning lidars which piqued my interest in them.
A lidar is a laser range measurement device.
You’re familiar with how basic radar and sonar works – send out a pulse and measure the time it takes to receive the return signal. The time divided by the speed of light or sound gives you the distance the signal traveled out and back. Divide that by two to get the distance to the object. That’s time of flight (ToF) measurement.
As you might suspect things get tricky given the speed of light.
. It’s difficult to measure less than a meter sending out just a pulse and timing the return signal because the signal returns in about 7 nanoseconds.
One technique around this is to continuously modulate the signal by amplitude or frequency. The phase difference between the transmitted and received signals is proportional to the distance to the object. A lidar using modulation can measure down to centimeters.
There are a number of commercial providers of ToF based scanning lidars but the price is a bit higher than the most hobbyist’s would spend. A relatively new entrant, PulsedLight, offered a single beam ToF lidar within the price range of hackers but their suppliers are all back ordered.
The scanning lidar allowed Neato Robotics to implement Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using the distance measurement data.
While looking for information on programming the GPIO with C++ I found the WiringPi library by [Gordon Henderson]. It not only supports raw GPIO programming but supports many Pi daughter boards.
The final piece I found in WiringPi is the ability to do hardware PWM on the one GPIO pin capable of it on the Pi.
Reading the serial input is simple, just reading characters, but the data itself, while straightforward, requires a little bit banging. There are 360 samples per revolution of the turret so the amount of data at 5 revolutions per second is massive. There are 90 packets each containing four data points. Each point is represented by four bytes of data: distance, signal strength, invalid distance bit, and invalid strength bit. In addition, each packet begins with a start byte, an index byte which is the packet number, and two bytes for the turret rotation speed. The packet ends with two checksum bytes.
This is just the start of working with the Neato lidar but a good one. The hardware works well and the basics of the software are in hand. I can get the data and see that it is valid. The WiringPi library is a good find for continuing in my efforts with the Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cricket Scoreboard is a Big Win for Novice Hackers
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/24/cricket-scoreboard-is-a-big-win-for-novice-hackers/
The game of cricket boggles most Americans in the same way our football perplexes the rest of the world. We won’t even pretend to understand what a “wicket” or an “over” is, but apparently it’s important enough to keep track of that so an English cricket club decided to build their own electronic scoreboard for their – pitch? Field? Help us out here.
This scoreboard build was undertaken by what team member [Ian] refers to as some “middle-aged blokes from Gloucestershire” with no previous electronics experience. That’s tough enough to deal with, but add to it virtually no budget, a huge physical size for the board, exposure to the elements, and a publicly visible project where failure would be embarrassingly obvious, and this was indeed an intimidating project to even consider. Yet despite the handicaps, they came up with a great rig, with a laser-cut acrylic cover for a professional look. A Raspberry Pi runs the LED segments and allows WiFi connections from a laptop or phone in the stands. They’ve even recently upgraded to solar power for the system.
Build Your Own Scoreboard
https://buildyourownscoreboard.wordpress.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
RPi WiFi
Fast RPi WiFi without USB
https://hackaday.io/project/8678-rpi-wifi
WiFi on a Raspberry Pi using the HAT connector and an ESP8266.
When the Raspberry Pi Zero was announced, a significant chunk of the hacker world dismissed it for having the same fatal flaw as the other Pis: only one USB host port for high speed I/O.
Network connectivity is a major reason that people base projects around a Pi or other embedded Linux board.
That’s unfortunate, because other embedded Linux boards in similar form factors are at least $50 (Intel Edison). These often are designed for commercial products, and so have hacker-unfriendly interconnects that need a breakout board that drives the cost up even further. What’s worse is that alternatives don’t have the same online support community that Raspberry Pi has fostered.
What the Zero desperately needs is WiFi that doesn’t involve the USB port.
SDIO started out as an extension of the SD spec to allow for cards that have functionality beyond flash storage. Some PDAs could be expanded to have WiFi or cameras through SDIO.
At the time of this writing, the rpi-4.2.y branch of the Raspberry Pi supports the SDIO interface on the HAT connector well.
This enables SDIO on the HAT connector, and asks it to poll for SDIO cards past the initial driver probe at boot time (more on this later).
In all the excitement over the Zero, I noticed a bunch of questions about using cheap ESP8266 modules as a WiFi bridge. Usually these threads were killed by someone by saying that the SPI interface would constrain the speed too much.
I remembered this blog post showing a decapped ESP8266, noting that in the corner is printed “ESP8089″. The post mentioned that ESP8089 is another Espressif part, a commodity SPI and SDIO to WiFi chip. That got me thinking that, if the ESP8089 and ESP8266 are the same die, then there is a good chance that an ESP8266 module could work as an SDIO WiFi adapter on the Pi.
So there’s a driver, and possibly a physical interface between the Pi and ESP8266, but what about firmware?
Tomi Engdahl says:
GrovePi+
The bridge between Raspberry Pi and the Grove family.
$23.97
http://store.hackaday.com/products/grovepiplus
Tomi Engdahl says:
ramanPi – Raman Spectrometer
https://hackaday.io/project/1279-ramanpi-raman-spectrometer
An open source 3D Printable Raman Spectrometer using a RaspberryPi and easy to find off the shelf components..
Welcome to the hackaday.io project page for the ramanPi! The ramanPi is a raman spectrometer that I decided to build back in April of 2014 because I needed one for another project and could not afford the tens of thousands of dollars a commercial product costs…and there are no DIY or open source systems in existence until now. I knew nothing about spectroscopy, let alone raman spectroscopy back then and everything here documents my learning process towards my goal…..A fully functional, and fairly high resolution raman spectrometer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mini rpi2 laptop
Small form factor laptop in the style of old HPC’s like the Jornada.
https://hackaday.io/project/9082-mini-rpi2-laptop
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pimped out 70’s Home Intercom System, Now with More Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/29/pimped-out-70s-home-intercom-system-now-with-more-pi/
If you own a house that was built in the 1970’s, you might still have the remnants of a home intercom system on the walls of each room. They were consider the end-all-be-all of “home automation” back in the day. Now, they look dated and out of place (but still kind of retro-cool at the same time). [Cpostier] decided that he wanted to keep his old intercom system, but give it an update with a Rasperry Pi and a 7 inch touch screen, and the results are totally groovy, man.
The original unit served two functions, as an intercom system, and also as a whole house music player.
Intercom Project
http://imgur.com/a/ycO2q
Rasperry Pi 7inch touch screen w/ Airplay and KODI running
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fingerprint Scanner for Laptop and Raspberry Pi (or Giving the Finger to Your Computer)
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/29/fingerprint-scanner-for-laptop-and-raspberry-pi-or-giving-the-finger-to-your-computer/
We’ve got two hacks in one from [Serge Rabyking] on fingerprint scanning. Just before leaving on a trip he bought a laptop on the cheap. He didn’t pay much attention to the features and was disappointed it didn’t have a fingerprint scanner. Working in Linux he uses sudo a lot and typing the password is a hassle. Previously he just swiped his finger on the scanner and execution continued.
a cheap replacement fingerprint scanner on hacker’s heaven, also known as eBay
Next he wonder if it would work with a Raspberry Pi. He installed the necessary fingerprint scanning software, ran the enrollment for a finger, and it, not terribly surprisingly, worked.
Cheap USB Fingerprint scanner for your Linux project
http://sergeplay.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/lenovo-42w7764-fingerprint-scanner.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
RPi WiFi
Fast RPi WiFi without USB
https://hackaday.io/project/8678-rpi-wifi
WiFi on a Raspberry Pi using the HAT connector and an ESP8266.
When the Raspberry Pi Zero was announced, a significant chunk of the hacker world dismissed it for having the same fatal flaw as the other Pis: only one USB host port for high speed I/O.
Network connectivity is a major reason that people base projects around a Pi or other embedded Linux board. The 2B and B+ both have onboard USB hubs providing 4 USB ports and an Ethernet interface, making it easy to connect to a wired network or add on a USB WiFi adapter. But the A+ and Zero do not have this luxury. You need an external hub to get the same functionality, which compromises the size advantage and makes for an unwieldy cable mess.
That’s unfortunate, because other embedded Linux boards in similar form factors are at least $50 (Intel Edison). These often are designed for commercial products, and so have hacker-unfriendly interconnects that need a breakout board that drives the cost up even further. What’s worse is that alternatives don’t have the same online support community that Raspberry Pi has fostered.
What the Zero desperately needs is WiFi that doesn’t involve the USB port.
SDIO started out as an extension of the SD spec to allow for cards that have functionality beyond flash storage. Some PDAs could be expanded to have WiFi or cameras through SDIO. Although smartphones killed the market for SDIO cards by integrating these common features, the bus still lives on as a bridge between SoCs and WiFi modules.
In all the excitement over the Zero, I noticed a bunch of questions about using cheap ESP8266 modules as a WiFi bridge.
I remembered this blog post showing a decapped ESP8266, noting that in the corner is printed “ESP8089″. The post mentioned that ESP8089 is another Espressif part, a commodity SPI and SDIO to WiFi chip. That got me thinking that, if the ESP8089 and ESP8266 are the same die, then there is a good chance that an ESP8266 module could work as an SDIO WiFi adapter on the Pi.
At the time of this writing, the rpi-4.2.y branch of the Raspberry Pi supports the SDIO interface on the HAT connector well. Simply build and install the kernel and edit /boot/config.txt
This enables SDIO on the HAT connector, and asks it to poll for SDIO cards past the initial driver probe at boot time
Cincin kawin says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi + Elastix
This is a IP PBX Phone Server
https://hackaday.io/project/9401-raspberry-pi-elastix
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spice up your Pi for IoT development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4441309/Spice-up-your-Pi-for-IoT-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160201&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160201&elq=48199414c3614221b155e0b546e6d14f&elqCampaignId=26773&elqaid=30614&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0fb40011cdc84f56b8dac86f97661c35
Developers seeking to enter the IoT market quickly discover that creating a nifty device is not enough. No matter how clever, the device is only one part of a larger system that includes such things as gateways, servers, analytics, web services, and even mobile apps. Developers without the resources to provide all these elements must find them elsewhere, which can make for integration challenges. Something new has entered the market, though, which will solve those challenges for you, especially if your device design is based on the Raspberry Pi.
Platforms that IoT developers can leverage to support their device designs are not new. Companies like ThingWorx, Google, and Apple along with consortia like the Allseen Alliance are offering platforms that they hope will attract users and build an ecosystem of interoperable devices around their platform as a common standard. But nearly all of the platforms available require the IoT device be custom designed and programmed to operate with that platform.
A company called myDevices offers an alternative. Its platform, released in October, is device-agnostic, supporting a wide variety of wireless technologies as well as standard data communications protocols such as CoAP, MQTT, and the REST API. The platform will adapt to the device rather than forcing the device to conform to it. It will also let devices using the platform talk with one another, serving as a translator.
Tomi Engdahl says:
piStudio
Portable recording studio.
https://hackaday.io/project/9530-pistudio
With this box i tend to bring back the old days of true portable studio. Inspired by my old tascam ministudio porta 02. yes old i know. it will be able not only to record but have a hdmi monitor to record edit onboard. instead of saving to cassettes it will store your files on external sata drive which is mounted on backside.
the back panel consists of 2 midi ports that will allow for sequencer recording like and old yamaha q25. not only that but with appropiate software also become a full sysex editor. it also has an fx loop to be able to attach external fx like boss digital delay. 4 xlr – 1/4 combo connectors for audio inputs optional ac power in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robo Car Via 3G
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/07/robo-car-via-3g/
[Emil Kalstø] has a pretty solid remote control car. We don’t mean a little car with a handheld remote you can drive around the neighborhood. [Emil’s] car has a camera and a cell phone so that it can go anywhere there’s 3G or 4G networking available.
The two batteries onboard will power the vehicle for over 20 hours of continuous use. The 30W motor is reduced with a chain drive to go about “walking speed.” There’s a Raspberry Pi with a Huawei 3G USB dongle onboard and [Emil] uses an XBox controller to do the steering from the warmth of his living room. Of course, a Pi can’t handle a big motor like that directly, so a Phidgets USB motor controller does the hard work. The software is written using Node.js.
Remote Controlled Car- Raspberry pi & Node.js
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa6yq3KtXdc
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tote Zero
Affordable quadruped robot powered by a Pi Zero
https://hackaday.io/project/9065-tote-zero
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBQ Thermometers Get Serious
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/08/bbq-thermometers-get-serious/
You can write with a fifty cent disposable pen. Or you can write with a $350 Montblanc. The words are the same, but many people will tell you there is something different about the Montblanc. Maybe that’s how [armin] feels about meat thermometers. His version uses a Raspberry Pi and has a lengthy feature list:
8 Channel data logging
Plotting
Webcam (USB or Raspicam)
Alarms via a local beeper, Web, WhatsApp, or e-mail
Temperature and fan control using a PID
LCD display
You can even use a Pi Zero for a light version.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pi-Powered Robot Plays Puzzle & Dragons
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/10/pi-powered-robot-plays-puzzle-dragons/
A YouTube user named [Junya Sakamoto] built a robot to play the game for him. It analyzes the board to come up with the best possible series of moves and then executes them using a Raspberry Pi. You can see what the robot is planning on the screen of a connected laptop. A couple of motors controlled with a Gertbot move a stylus up and down the screen and the phone itself back and forth.
Why play iPhone games yourself when you can build a robot to do it for you? [Video]
http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/09/iphone-game-playing-robot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
BorgCube ROV
Underwater robots!
https://hackaday.io/project/8343-borgcube-rov
I recently became interested in the world of ROVs – underwater robots! I’ve wanted to build a robot for some time, but I never had a really good use case. While I could simply build one that roamed around the house, I needed it to have a larger purpose in order to motivate me to put the time in. As it happens, I live in Berkeley, CA, so I have both the Pacific and the Bay to investigate – and their both really too cold to dive in.
I’ve never built a robot before, nor a craft designed to go underwater. There’s a lot to learn when it comes to propulsion, vision, guidance, waterproofing, electronics and software; but I like a challenge and the excuse to learn new things.
1 × Raspberry Pi Compute Module https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module/
6 × HS-5646WP Servo
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIPI DSI Display Shield/HDMI Adapter
https://hackaday.io/project/364-mipi-dsi-display-shieldhdmi-adapter
A controller for LCD/OLED screens with MIPI DSI interface. Arduino shield format, HDMI-to-DSI adapter & built-in framebuffer.
A simple controller for MIPI DSI displays, based on a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA.
MIPI DSI is a high speed packet-based interface for delivering video data to LCD/OLED displays. In a way it is similar to DisplayPort, with a more power-conscious (and thus complex) physical layer. DSI is mostly used in mobile devices (smartphones & tablets).
Features
Supports 3/4 lane MIPI DSI displays.
DSI controller supports resolutions of up to 1080×1920 at 60 Hz refresh rate.
Converts HDMI video to DSI – letting you connect any MIPI DSI screen to your PC, Raspi or similar devices. Conversion works up to 720p@60 Hz or 1080p@48 Hz.
Built-in framebuffer with simple graphics stack, allowing to interface small microcontrollers, such as Arduino through 8-bit parallel or SPI busses
Sub-$50 BOM, including 4-layer PCB (@100pcs).
Powered through mini USB connector.
Embedded 32-bit CPU, available for user applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiFold
https://hackaday.io/project/9498-pifold
PiZero+CustomPiratebox+AudioStreaming+PiFM in a wallet. Cash, Cache and Content. (optional Solar Charger)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scratch GPIO
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/scratch/gpio/README.md
The September 2015 release of Scratch for the Pi (included in the Raspbian Jessie release) introduces a new GPIO server to make driving LEDs, buzzers, HATS and other devices and components easier.
Before you can use the GPIO pins you must start the GPIO server. There are several ways to do this
Without any further setup you now have access to the basics of the GPIO system. This currently uses the Broadcast blocks.
the pins need configuring before you can meaningfully use them to do anything. We can set the direction of the pin (in, out, outputpwm) and for input pins the pull-up mode (up, down, none). Currently the pins are only configurable via broadcasts.
Pins set to be inputs are connected to the Scratch sensor variable system, and so they appear in the list of possible values in the sensor blocks
With these very simple commands you can build fairly complex gpio handling scripts.
We can also plug in Pi add-on cards such as the PiGlow, Pibrella, Explorer Hat etc. To set up a card we need to first inform the gpio server what card it is
Each card has its own set of commands layered on top of the basic gpio facilities described above.
Many cards can also make sensible use of the Scratch variable broadcast facility, whereby a suitably named variable is created and its value gets broadcast when it changes.
The Piface Digital card provides 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs, with the first 4 inputs having parallel switches and the first 2 outputs having 20v/5A relays.
Pibrella
This provides a nice big red button, three large LEDs, four digital inputs, four digital outputs and a loudly obnoxious buzzer.
Explorer HAT Pro
This card is a bit more of a challenge to drive since it has parts that are plain gpio connected and parts that are i2c connected.
Sense HAT (as used in the Astro Pi)
This foundation built card provides a range of unusual sensors and a big 8 by 8 array of rgb LEDs. The sensors measure
temperature
humidity
pressure
accelerometer/gyro
magnetometer/compass
mini-joystick actions left/right/up/down/return
PiLite
This card provides a simple array of while LEDs that can be addressed individually or treated as a scrolling text display, a bargraph or a vu meter. It works via the gpio serial port and presents some interesting challenges despite its apparent simplicity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Remote buttons over Ethernet cable
https://hackaday.io/project/8480-remote-buttons-over-ethernet-cable
Yet another easy, cheap and smart hack for a sort of remote, connected over Cat5 to a Pi or whatever with 2 GPIO.
It’s 4017 time !
I’ve always liked this decade counter that has so many uses… Here is one of them.
It synchronously scans a small keypad located tens (or hundreds ?) of meters away.
It is totally isolated for added safety.
It’s connected to a Raspberry Pi but this could be any other programamble digital system.
The presented version can accomodate 9 buttons
Cheap. A CD4017 or 74HC4017 costs about 1$, add some “dust” (diodes, resistors) and a small PCB.
Simple and compact: yes too
The keys are scanned at low speed, giving time to settle for all the electronics.
A polling routine is called at about 100Hz.
The pair of remotes seems to work at first power-up
I made a little script
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Plug and Play Smart Sensors
https://hackaday.io/project/2432-raspberry-pi-plug-and-play-smart-sensors
Control, manipulate, and extract data from things connected to the internet, or through a network structure.
A network of interchangeable sensor nodes, that can collect data in a variety of environments, and for a variety of purposes.Simply grab the sensors that you require, plug them into the available slots of the node, and turn the device on. Once turned on, the device automatically connects to the network, identifies the attached sensors, and begins data collection. With every node attached to the network, the network should then expand as each node will ideally be set up to repeat the wireless signal that originates at the Raspberry Pi server. The target cost for each node is under $100, which would make it very budget friendly.
All of the collected data will be stored in a database located on the central server. That data can then be gathered and
interpreted using a web-based interface. That interface will also have controls that send commands to controllable objects where applicable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bring your own PiZero: BYOP
Bring you own Pi Zero, docking onto the station, exchanging messages with other Pi
https://hackaday.io/project/9526-bring-your-own-pizero-byop
Tomi Engdahl says:
Controlling RGB LEDs With The Pi Zero
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/14/controlling-rgb-leds-with-the-pi-zero/
The Pi Zero is a great piece of hardware, even if you’re not designing another USB hub for it. [Marcel] wanted to control a few RGB LED strips from his phone, and while there are a lot of fancy ways you can do this, all it really takes is a Pi Zero and a few parts that are probably already banging around your parts drawers.
This isn’t a project to control individually addressable RGB LEDs such as NeoPixels, WS2812s, or APA102 LEDs. This is just a project to control RGB LEDs with five four connectors: red, green, blue, power, and or ground. These are the simplest RGB LEDs you can get, and sometimes they’re good enough and cheap enough to be the perfect solution to multi-colored blinkies in a project.
Control of the LEDs is accomplished through lighttpd. This does mean a USB WiFi dongle is required to control the LEDs over the Internet
Raspberry Pi Zero Ledstrip Controller
Raspberry Pi Zero Ledstrip Controller to control a RGB ledstrip via the browser of your phone or pc.
https://hackaday.io/project/9635-raspberry-pi-zero-ledstrip-controller
Tomi Engdahl says:
piStudio
Portable recording studio.
https://hackaday.io/project/9530-pistudio
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBQ WLAN Thermometer
8-channel (BBQ)-Thermometer hooked to your WLAN
https://hackaday.io/project/9515-bbq-wlan-thermometer
Based on a Raspberry Pi and a small PCB with ADC and some step-up electronics, this thermometer designed by and for the BBQ-community offers the ability of monitoring and logging 8 different temperatures at a time. Hooked up to your local WLAN, you have access to a webbased GUI to display and control all functions.
Functions are:
8 Channel Data-Logging
Display of Thermo-Plots
USB-Webcam-capability
Raspicam-capability
Setting of high/low-alarm-tresholds to trigger
a) beeper alarm local
b) webinterface-sound
c) email
d) WhatsAp-Message
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Kasei Initiative
Working to kick start the robot revolution. It is coming, and the Kasei Initiative will play an important role.
https://hackaday.io/project/6418-the-kasei-initiative
For the Hackaday Prize, my chosen problems to attempt to solve are a need for companionship by just about everybody and the expense of companion robots. The ultimate goal is, as the description says, to bring in a new age- an age where robots are intelligent and both humans and robots can live in harmony:
“There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
BREWthinger
JavaScript Powered Brewery (aka Gas Powered Stick)
https://hackaday.io/project/654-brewthinger
Automated brewery running on NodeJS.
This is a Node.JS implementation of BrewPi project. This module is designed to connect to an Arduino with a BrewPiShield running the official BrewPi AVR/Arduino code. This is ALPHA code. See official BrewPi repos for an out of the box solution.
https://github.com/tklun/brewpi-node
Tomi Engdahl says:
TecediBox
Control a HDMI switch with your Raspberry Pi and watch something interesting during TV ads
https://hackaday.io/project/8944-tecedibox
Tecedi Box help you to cope with those annoying TV ads by allowing you to easily play another content while they’re being displayed.
The goal is to allow you to easily switch between a main video input, like your set top box, and some other content of your choice, played by a Raspberry Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Port Tizen to RaspberryPiZero
built OS image, just need a device to boot it
https://hackaday.io/project/9649-port-tizen-to-raspberrypizero
Tomi Engdahl says:
TV Control With Hand Gestures
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/17/tv-control-with-hand-gestures/
[Frederick] has decided to dig the TV remote out from the stone age and updated it to use simple gestures for control. We’ve seen gesture control before, but this one is certainly the most elegant. He’s using a Raspberry Pi with a Skywriter HAT gesture recognition board. The diver is super easy to install and can be done in a single command line. The Skywriter hat interpreters the hand gesture and the Pi fires the appropriate signal via an IR sensor. This approach made the project fairly simple to put together, with surprisingly good results.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Breathing New Life Into An Old Key
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/21/breathing-new-life-into-an-old-key/
For most of us who have experimented with Morse code, the oldest key we are likely to have used will have been a piece of military surplus kit from the Second World War era. [Kyle Gabriel] however is a lucky man. His grandfather left him his key-on-board telegraph practice set, a vintage key and telegraph sounder arrangement used to learn Morse code in the days when the telegraph was king. Rather than keep the set merely as an heirloom, [Kyle] set about bringing it up to date by interfacing it to a Raspberry Pi and writing a Morse reader program.
Along the way [Kyle] had to contend with debouncing the switching signal from the key, considering an RC network before settling on a software debounce timer.
Bringing a Vintage Telegraph into the Digital Age
http://kylegabriel.com/projects/2016/02/morse-code-translator.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
CNC Scrapbooking with a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/25/cnc-scrapbooking-with-a-raspberry-pi/
It is perhaps a surprise that the widespread adoption of CNC machinery in the home has not come from 3D printing or desktop mills, but as a quiet revolution in the crafting industry. CNC cutters for plastic or card have been around for quite a while now, and while the prospect of cutwork greetings cards might not set all maker pulses racing these cutters do have significant untapped potential in other directions. Perhaps you have to own a carburetor whose gaskets have been unavailable since the 1960s to truly appreciate that.
[James Muraca] has a KNK Force, something of an object of desire in the world of desktop CNC cutters. The computer inside the Force is a Raspberry Pi, so of course [James] set about investigating its potential for running his own software. His progress so far is on GitHub, a web interface through which you can upload and cut an SVG file, but his plans are more ambitious. He hopes to turn his machine into a complete PCB manufacturing station, able to both cut the PCB, and with the addition of a vacuum attachment to pick and place components.
https://github.com/jmuraca/knkforce
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi-powered transmitters broadcast Syrian radio
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35690688
Raspberry Pi computers are being used to power “micro” radio transmitters in Syria.
The Pocket FMs, as they are called, were designed by a German organisation as a way of providing Syrians with independent radio.
The devices have a range of between 4 to 6km (2.5 to 3.75 miles), which is enough to cover an entire town.
At the heart of each is a Raspberry Pi, the credit card-sized single-board computers.
About two dozen have been built, and the designer says they are intended to be as easy to set up as a piece of flat-pack furniture.
The Pocket FMs are deployed in situations in which larger transmitters would be difficult to set up and operate.
The Pocket FMs broadcast a channel created by a network of nine stations based in the region called Syrnet.
The devices pick up a satellite feed of the channel, and rebroadcast it on a FM frequency, so people in Syria can listen on ordinary radios.
Eventually, the devices will be capable of picking up the Syrnet channel via wi-fi and mobile data. The channel is also available to listen to online, and via a mobile app.
The Pocket FMs operate in the areas not controlled by either President Bashar al-Assad’s regime or the so-called Islamic State militants.
Open source
One of the benefits of using Raspberry Pis is that it is relatively easy to add new components.
Mr Hochleichter’s latest design includes a GSM module, which allows the small transmitters to be controlled remotely by text message. The feature potentially could help the operator reduce the risk of capture.
Mr Hochleichter hopes ultimately to make the designs open source, meaning they can be shared without cost and enhanced by a wider community.
The project is funded by the German government and for Najat Abdulhaq their Berlin base is entirely apt.
“The media system in Syria under Assad is nearly a copy of the [former East Germany] GDR media system,” she remarks.
The project aims to support freedom of expression, but it is also about solidarity with people in crisis.
http://www.pocket-fm.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Star Trek Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/01/star-trek-pi/
Every time we yell out, “OK Google… navigate to Velvet Melvin’s” we feel like a Star Trek character. After all, you’ve never seen Captain Kirk (or Picard) using a keyboard. If you get that same feeling, and you have a Raspberry Pi project in mind, you might enjoy the Raspberry Pi LCARS interface.
You can see the results in the video below. The interface uses PyGame, and you can customize it with different skins if you don’t want a Star Trek look.
Star Trek LCARS interface for Raspberry Pi using Pygame
https://github.com/tobykurien/rpi_lcars
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swarm of Tiny Pirate Transmitters Gets the Message out in Syria
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/03/swarm-of-tiny-pirate-transmitters-gets-the-message-out-in-syria/
They say that the first casualty of war is the truth, and that’s probably only more the case in a civil war. When one side in a conflict controls the message, the other side is at a huge disadvantage. Technology can level the playing field, and in the case of the Syrian Civil War, a swarm of tiny Raspberry Pi transmitters is helping one side get their message out.
Built around a Raspberry Pi and a frequency-agile FM transmitter, a Pocket FM can take multiple audio feeds and transmit them out to a 5km radius. Small enough to be packed up and deployed quickly and able to be powered by batteries or solar panels, the pirate transmitters can be here one minute and gone the next, yielding a robust network resistant to takedown attempts.
Raspberry Pi-powered transmitters broadcast Syrian radio
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35690688
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connect Four Robot Uses Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/03/connect-four-robot-uses-raspberry-pi/
Most people play games for entertainment. Hackers build robots to play games for entertainment. That’s what [piandchips] did. He used a Raspberry Pi and a MeArm kit to build a Connect 4-playing robot. The robot–named 4-Bot–has to do two things: the first is it has to be able to manipulate the pieces. Secondly, it has to be able to see the board. The MeArm imbues 4-Bot with the manipulation ability, and a clever scanning system does the trick.
http://www.piandchips.co.uk/uncategorized/4-bot-a-raspberry-pi-connect-4-robot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Polyhedrone
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/04/polyhedrone/
[Brainsmoke] had a simple plan. Make a quadcopter with lots of addressable LEDs.
A Catalan solid makes a good choice for the homebrew polyhedron builder because its faces are all identical.
Having a finished polyhedron, the next thing was to hook up a Raspberry Pi and write some software. First in Python, then in Go.
The results are simply stunning.
Polyhedrone
Idea: make a quad copter with lots of addressable RGB LEDs
https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Polyhedrone
Tomi Engdahl says:
A-Hen-Ho
https://hackaday.io/project/8098-a-hen-ho
Automation of the hen house. Light, door, temperature tracking. Using Raspberry PI as main unit and Wi-Fi as connection-configuration link.
The distance from home approx 60 – 100m and he wants to manage everything from his home.
First of all the connection from home to the hen house will be done by a Wi-Fi. Configuration and supervising will be done from a convenient web-interface.
Raspberry Pi + Raspbian + NodeJS + Meteor/Angular/etc. (?)
To switch on-off the light, to open the hen house dor in right time I will need a RTC clock. The Raspberry Pi itself have neither RTC clock no BIOS chip with battery backup. So the RTC should be external
To open a door I will use a 12V motor with a reduction.
Protecting everything against dust, humidity, trash, chickens
is an important topic of the project. The device used to function in the hen house, which is not warmed, not really closed, have a loooot of trash in the air and everywhere. And working 365 * 24 with very rare checking and supervising means, that everything should be really safe.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiP: Raspberry Pi Portable Slate Computer
https://hackaday.io/project/6478-pip-raspberry-pi-portable-slate-computer
This is PiP, a portable raspberry pi computer. It runs off of batteries and can do anything a linux based pc can do and more!
I decided to undergo making a portable programming device. I wanted something that used as much of the Pi’s outputs and functions but with minimal interface.
The case is a little bigger than a DMG Gameboy, With a Raspberry Pi B+ board inside and has an adafruit 5″ resistive touch screen that runs on USB and connects through HDMI.