
Fun Things to do with a Raspberry Pi (2012) - rfreytag
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/desktops/25-fun-things-to-do-with-a-raspberry-pi-50009851/
======
reustle
I'm currently mounting two rPi boards to two external hard drives. I'll leave
one at home and one at work and run BitTorrent Sync on them to create my own
little distributed / decentralized Dropbox. Would a blog post when I'm done be
interesting?

~~~
omni
Shameless plug: I just did exactly this over the weekend and wrote about how
well it works here: [http://blog.travisthieman.com/ec2-for-23-cents-and-your-
own-...](http://blog.travisthieman.com/ec2-for-23-cents-and-your-own-cloud-
for-less/)

Short version: BTSync is awesome, ownCloud makes the Pi struggle pretty hard

~~~
kcorbitt
By the way, if you're looking at ownCloud check out Seafile as well. After
hearing about ownCloud's performance issues I decided to try Seafile instead
and I've had a very positive experience. I'm running it on a VPS in the cloud
but they have a release compiled for the Rasberry Pi as well.
[http://seafile.com/en/download/](http://seafile.com/en/download/)

~~~
omni
Thanks! I saw some references to it scattered about but was sort of turned off
by the team-centric presentation. Are you just using it for your own personal
stuff?

~~~
kcorbitt
Yeah, I'm mainly just using it for a personal backup/synchronization and it
works great for that. The team stuff is nice to have available too though. It
was trivial to set up a shared folder between myself and my girlfriend.

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gutsy
I really need to get myself a Raspberry Pi. It seems like me and my kids could
have a lot of fun with it.

I'm actually almost considering getting one, a cheap monitor/keyboard/mouse
and setting it up for the kids to use as their own computer...seems like it
could be a cheap investment to get them to learn how to use Linux.

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Stwerner
How would one go about creating a quick/cheap custom enclosure for their Pi
and a touchscreen? I have both, but I'm completely lost looking into 3d
printing for it, and most things I've found have been pretty expensive. Are
there any quick prototyping tools or materials I could use out there, or even
services/startups to get something made?

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networked
Another thing to do with a Raspberry Pi is to colocate it:
[http://raspberrycolocation.com/](http://raspberrycolocation.com/),
[https://www.edis.at/en/server/colocation/austria/raspberrypi...](https://www.edis.at/en/server/colocation/austria/raspberrypi/).

Caveat: the delivery time, at least with PC Extreme, is long (ETA = 90 days);
I've been waiting for my RasPi to come online since July. Also note that when
I signed up for colocation it was offered for free [1].

The CPU performance on the Pi will not compare favorably to even the humblest
x86-based VPS but I rather like the idea of getting to play with a dedicated
ARM server at a remote location.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946940)

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TinFoilThrow123
I use a Pi as an air-gapped system for stuff that I really want to be secure.
Master keypair was generated on the Pi (which has a hardware RNG in the SoC),
and the only way I get data on/off it is to sneakernet it. The small size of
the device makes physical security much easier as well.

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bnycum
If you are interested in the Pi also check out the BeagleBone. I love how easy
everything with the Pi was. I'm hoping to do more home automation with either
another Pi or a BeagleBone. As for now my Pi is controlling our detached
garage, and has done a nice job surviving a Louisiana summer.

Shameless plug: [http://itsbrent.net/2013/03/hacking-my-garage-with-a-
raspber...](http://itsbrent.net/2013/03/hacking-my-garage-with-a-raspberry-
pi/)

~~~
nwh
If you are interested in the BeagleBone also check out the Cubieboard. It's a
more powerful Pi, essentially. Dual core, 1GB of RAM, SATA.

[http://cubieboard.org/](http://cubieboard.org/)

~~~
jboynyc
Another nice option is the Hackberry.

[https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer...](https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board)

~~~
nwh
The Cubie eeks out the Hackberry in the latest revision, if you're interested
in CPU power. Allwinner A20 rather than A10.

~~~
bri3d
All of the Allwinner boards have mostly-closed Mali GPUs and closed but
partially reverse-engineered CedarX VPUs.

Outside of Android the Mali GPUs are a bit of a bear to get working at all,
much less use for anything useful.

For headless tasks I agree that Cubie/Hackberry are faster dollar-for-dollar
than the Pi, but the Pi's VideoCore GPU, while still blob-encumbered, at least
provides a documented interface with working drivers for both the
"traditional" X11 stack and Android, as well as a real OpenMAX video decoding
interface.

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stigi
I just recently setup a bit torrent sync server on my rPi. So nice to sync
with LAN speed as soon as I wake my MacBook as the data is already on the Pi.
\o/

~~~
kayoone
the rPI can hardly reach 100Mbits over LAN. Its nice and has its uses but i
wouldnt use it for file related stuff inside a network, just too slow.

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contingencies
_Wargames_ -style: reverse engineer oldschool RS422/RS485 multi-drop 2 or
4-wire command & control protocols for physical security / surveillance /
access control systems. Plug in a pi via [http://www.bb-elec.com/Products/USB-
Connectivity/USB-to-Seri...](http://www.bb-elec.com/Products/USB-
Connectivity/USB-to-Serial-Adapters/In-line-USB-to-Serial-Converters.aspx) to
an arbitrary cable (maybe with servo-automated sensing/tapping of cable cores
for speed/precision), and have it detect channels, passively map devices and
grant full control of the network. Jumpstart with
[http://wiki.wireshark.org/FieldbusProtocolFamily](http://wiki.wireshark.org/FieldbusProtocolFamily)
dissectors and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socketcan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socketcan)
library. Probably loads of firmware bugs on that era of devices...

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uio3
Might as well be titled "25 things to do with a computer", since very few are
anything to do with the Raspberry Pi itself.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
25 things to do with a low-cost ARM based computer that has seen widespread
community adoption doesn't really have the same ring to it.

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mentos
I got a raspberry pi to see if I could replace a noisy htpc with Raspbmc. It
worked a lot better than I anticipated but I found that I was sacrificing
speed for the 'cool' factor of running it on a Pi so I ended up going back to
a PC.

Still looking for a project to combine my Rift and Pi.

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ztnewman
I've been trying to find a good way to power my pi with a solar panel, but
haven't found many suitable options. Anyone?

~~~
simcop2387
Not sure what you consider a good way, but getting a decent sized panel, and
use it to charge a lead acid battery would be the way i'd expect. Then run the
pi off of a 12v usb adapter (usually find them for cars). That'll give you a
number of advantages, it'd let you have a battery to deal with cloudy periods
where you won't have enough juice to run the pi, and let you run for a while
after the sun goes down. if you then want to add hardware to let you shut off
when the panel voltage drops for too long it'd also be possible with just a
diode before the battery (also not that hard to get) or with a sense line on
the charging hardware you use.

take a look at stuff like [1], that should work fine for the pi, as long as
you aren't trying to power huge amounts more.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Instapark%C2%AE-Black-Mono-
crystalline...](http://www.amazon.com/Instapark%C2%AE-Black-Mono-crystalline-
Charge-
Controller/dp/B005LR9IOG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1379695831&sr=8-2&keywords=12v+solar+charger)

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cmyr
"Regardless of the ethics involved, try out this security penetration testing
project."

...

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chatman
Being able to run Windows 3.x sounds like the coolest among the list.

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rokusho
I am in the middle of constructing my own piMAME powered arcade cabinet. I've
wanted one for years and building it has been one of the most fun things I've
done.

~~~
SSilver2k2
As the maintainer of the PiMAME distro, Thanks! If you have any questions we
have an active forum at [http://pimame.org](http://pimame.org)

-Shea

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matmann2001
I used mine to make an ambient backlight for my TV. The rPi drives individual
LEDs in a strip by processing the video signal directly from my cable box.

~~~
peatmoss
This sounds like a really interesting project. Have you written it up
anywhere?

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JshWright
Some time soonish I plan on picking up a Pi and a GPS module that I can wire
in to the GPIO pins, and have a Stratum 1 NTP server on my LAN.

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tocomment
The link for number 9, the robotic arm seems to be down. Does anyone know
where I might find that story?

~~~
gtz58
It's called robotic arm edge. I'll let you duckduckgo it.

~~~
tocomment
Thanks but I am more interested in the writeup regarding how to connect it to
a raspberry pi, (and possibly how far it can throw a frisbee...)

~~~
tesseractive
I've read Instructables and such for modding it with potentiometers to give
control feedback on the movement, hooking it up to an Arduino for control,
things like that. I haven't personally seen a version of this for the Pi, but
the interesting part is getting it talking to a CPU controller at all, and it
ought to be a pretty short leap from an Arduino to a Pi.

It's definitely not plug and play if you want to do anything interesting with
it, though.

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cabbeer
Has anyone tried to setup ownclod on their pi? How is the performance?

~~~
sadris
Allegedly bad.

~~~
platz
folks talking about seafile in other thread...

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TobbenTM
Also: FM Radio transmitter. (Which will also be my next project) :)

~~~
codfrantic
I automatically read your name as 'TobbenFM' ^_^

------
antocv
The best thing I did with a Raspberry PI was to setup openvpn on it to connect
to my server where I have minidlna running and a lot of other services, then
give them to my friends and hook up to their Smart TVs and routers. Now all my
friends can view my music and family pictures on their TVs, with basically no
setup, just pushing buttons on the remote - the Raspberry Pis openvpn connects
the UPnP/DLNA at the openvpn server to anyone that is connected, and so my
friends can share their family pictures with each other in a very secure way -
no third party, its all going over the vpn and they can use a web-interface to
add pictures to the server directly, or let the rasppi mount their images on
their NAS for those who have that. This one was a bit tricky to setup, since
minidlna needed to index remote content.

