Voice of the Masses: What cool stuff are you doing with your Pi?
It seems that everyone and his dog has a Raspberry Pi now. In fact, many of us have a few of them doing various tasks. So as we gear up to record our next podcast, we want to hear from you: what funky things are you doing with your Pi(s)? Maybe you’ve been inspired by Ben’s tutorials in the magazine and made face-tracking dart-shooting robots, or perhaps you’ve hooked together 50 Pis into a giant Beowulf cluster to work out what’s going on over at Tabby’s Star.
Or maybe you don’t have a Pi at all, you don’t get what the fuss is all about, and you want to have a big rant about them! Whatever the case, let us know your thoughts in the comments below and we’ll read out the best in our next Linuxtastic FOSS-filled podcast.
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
I use one as recipe calculator in a bakery environment. As it doesn’t have a fan so flour can be vacuumed out occasionally. Its low power makes it cheaper to run too.
My older pi is for irc channels on irssi and a print server for the home network, still messing about with a newer more sophisticated pi as NAS (not yet working)
I have one connected to a weather station and uploading it to Wunderground & Twitter. Another taking photos of the sky which it uploads to Twitter every hour and that my server creates a timelapse video every night. A third one is used as a video baby monitor.
Have one running as a print server, maybe will used something more. Another pi zero is used a testing platform for usb mass storage (OTG) on some industrial machines, but i’m moving to beaglebone black, because it gives me more flexibility.
Collecting dust in a drawer.
When I get a chance I am going to try Amibian an Amiga type distribution for the pi.
Yes, similar thoughts – it’s a toss up between retropi and amibian
PS – don’t know if people have heard Ben Vost (last editor of Amiga Format taking over from Nick Veitch) interviewed on the retro gaming podcast – it’s worth a listen (and where I first heard about Amibian). http://www.theretrohour.com/amiga-format-magazine-the-inside-story-the-retro-hour-ep36/
I have too many. One was an ownCloud server based on your ealy tutorial, currently transferring to nextCloud, a couple in Robots, one in the PiWars 2014 winning robot (larger than A4 category)
One in a bird box streaming live pictures, one controlling RF sockets another displaying the temperature of the bird box with a sense hat.
Like I said too many, I always seem to be hunting for SD cards though.
Sorry, nothing. Lately I’m too busy trying to hit a golf ball with my various clubs!
by the way, can you increase the contrast on this site. Sometimes it is difficult to see the text boxes. They are currently a lighter shade of grey on grey. Only once you have found it does it light up with a red rectangle about it.
Currently just the one that’s acting as a temperature/humidity sensor in our office and pushing it out via PubNub and into SimpleDB and then rendering to a static/JS driven D3/C3 site hosted on Amazon S3.
I have several rpi from diffrent generations. media center, nas, iot monitoring station (temp,humidity etc) but my latest creation was a pi powered cake console https://twitter.com/azmodie/status/777831370336923648/
flatmates: what are you doinng ? proggraming my cake !!
My curiosity was dampened when after two successful boots, my B+ model never booted again. Never got to do anything with it.
I had planned to set it down in a dark corner and leave it to try and break my passwords following the password-cracking test in LV08.
Using several for a project at work. Developing an EPICS based control system for a digital 200 MHz low level radio frequency system for our 70 MeV negatively charged Hydrogen Ion Linear Accelerator. If it all works out, the raspberry pi could be an integral part of a key uk research facility. However we are seeing occasional boot problems, so we may have to move to a more suitable single board pc if it goes live – but one can dream!
Making a Pimpkin for Halloween.
I’m currently trying to attach a raspi zero with a camera to a toy parachute to throw them from the balcony.
The only thing that’s missing is a transparent, cheap and solid case so the raspi and camera can be reused.
The Pi has been indeed a very useful device for projects. I developed 1) An open source 3d Bio Matrix printer designed to print using cells and matrix composite inside a cavity with narrow opening. The goal has been to achieve modular organ development, and the project will hopefully be presented at a tissue engineering conference in San Diego this year.
2) Am developing a model for studying flatfish kinematics using lateral fins for propulsion rather than propellers. This round and flat underwater drone includes a large inductive coil to map a river or sea bed, hunt for treasure or black boxes.
3) An intelligent microscope stage…too boring to describe, but useful for scientists.
I guess there are more projects that will remain in the pipeline as there just is not enough time.
I’m interested in the intelligent microscope stage, does it help to focus, or does it prevent contact of the lens and the stage?
I guess something like that could also be a huge time saver in teaching (if the matching microscope is affordable for schools).
Ambition and capability run a divergent course for me. I want to do amazing things with my pi, but hate having to deal with the look of disappointment the pi gives me when I try and explain that I am a bit busy, and promise that I will make up for it sometime, and that then it will be FUN. When inanimate objects start to make you feel guilty, the back of drawer is the only place for them. I have not opened that drawer in months….
I have one monitoring my Growatt PV system via a serial/modbus interface. The code is written in Python and via the Flask web-page I can see when we are generating enough to run devices for free in the day.
Another RPi runs a CNC mill and one runs my central heating.
Most of the control-system products I manufacture now have a blend of RPi’s and Arduinos. Since size is seldom an issue, I stopped making custom Microchip-based systems two years ago.
keen to know more about the pi-powered mill!
I currently have three Pis. One is my RetroPie console, one works as our domestic file sharing and backup server, and the last one hosts my girlfriends low-traffic WordPress playground.
For making stuff I currently use Arduinos, but when I get my hands on a new rPi, I will probably add that to my maker tools as well. It’s very interesting to combine different micro controllers together and see them work together. I could for example use Arduinos for sensors and stuff, while the rPi would take care of distributing the data over the network and general interfacing.
I just wish I had a good old basement to use as a workshop.
We have a few around our chemistry research lab. One is hooked up to a barcode scanner and label printer so we can manage our chemical inventory. The other one is hooked up to a temperature probe that monitors the temp inside our battery testing enclosure.
I’ve got a few of them. One is running Kodi as a media center in the living room, another is configured as an OwnCloud server (thanks for the tutorial!), and I’m setting up a third – hopefully tonight – to act as a remote interface to an Emby instance running on my big ol’ server in the attic.
I’ve got a few as yet unspoken for, but have been getting interested in home automation: they may be destined for the garage or shed. And of course, I’ve wanted to mess about with robots for some time now…
Oh! I almost forgot – someday one will be an an Octoprint server for managing my 3D prints remotely.
Such a useful tool!
Is no one trying to make a smart fridge? Because that would be cool…
The smart fridge comes after I build a pie that blows raspberries and the smart oven to bake it in (that will be hot)
Presumably this is on top of all those people learning Python with the Raspberry Pi
Behind the television running kodi, mostly the exodus video plug in. …
Pi 1 b over clocked. Runs ok
I used one for a marriage present for a geek:
I modified a wooden wine bottle box for three bottles to have a pi inside with USB, HDMI and power going into a, from the outside, accessible middle room, attached a step motor to the pi which opened a latch on the inside when he won a number guessing game which started with the pi being powerd, so that he could access the money inside. It also played a video, when he won. There was a way to open it, without guessing the right number, but he didn’t find out. The fun part also was, that his wife guessed the right number which I crafted especially for him.
I use another one for making wine.
I have several tanks for mash fermentation for red wine and since on one tank a digital temperature sensor broke and on the other the specified time all-or-nothing relay, which controlled the mixing of the mash, broke I decided to replace both with a pi. The temperature now is measured, at all of the three tanks, via a simple 1-wire setup and the agitator is controlled via a solid state relay controlling its contactor. Being at it I also implemented controlling the heating, the screw to empty the tank and another spare 16 A plug socket by the pi and threw a web interface over it so that I can control everything from my phone.
It wasn’t a lot more expensive than a 1:1 replacement, but now I’m really flexible.
As a professional retiree, I have developed an interest in Linux distros through my Raspberry Pis. Having gifted my model B Kano computer and a model 2 to my grand nephews, I now only have 3 Rpis _ a model B and 2 model 3 (one of which Powers my Pi-Top laptop).
Please remember the original goal was Educational and that hasn’t changed. In my case the term “education” is still appropriate but in a narrower self-interested way.
Keeping an old brain active and occupying increased leisure time is my main use.
I have several Pi’s, definitely more than I will admit to my wife. Currently used as :-
Media players (OSMC), environmental monitoring using OWFS. Both a development and live Web servers. An OpenVPN server / reverse SSL proxy.
A Z-Wave controller for home automation. A centralised jump server for multiple hosts connecting back from remote locations using autossh. Plus at least 2 more for adhoc jobs.
Good job the wife doesn’t read this. 🙂