
Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi? - xylo
I have Raspberry Pi and I mainly use it for VPN and piHole. I’m curious if you have one, have you found it useful? What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?
======
gregsadetsky
There's a bus station across from my studio / coworking space. I can see
people waiting for the bus and doing either: 1) staring into the void 2)
looking at their watches 3) desperately glancing in the direction where the
bus is coming from.

I figured that it'd be nice to let people know when the bus is supposed to be
there. So, I installed a 28" display on a monitor stand, installed the stand
on my window frame, turned the monitor to face the bus station, and show the
up-to-date arrival time in a very big font (the buses have GPS; the Pi gets
the real time info from the local transit authority).

This is in Montreal. Some info here [0]. And a little video [1].

[0] [https://greg.technology/#bus](https://greg.technology/#bus) [1]
[https://youtu.be/pc16oPb5zW0](https://youtu.be/pc16oPb5zW0)

~~~
rockmeamedee
Big ups! I use this all the time in winter while waiting for the 55. I
definitely assumed you worked at Ubisoft across the street!

Btw, from some experience spending cold winters looking at it, it flickers a
lot by having so many screen changes, making it tiring to see the screen
change so much. L'AUTOBUS - SERA - LA - DANS - 5... - MINUTES - GREG . -
TECHNOLOGY. It would be easier on the eyes if it changed less often.

Thanks so much anyways!

~~~
gregsadetsky
Ha, small world :-)

Agreed on timing, it could be better. I'll consider skipping some of the words
+ make them appear slower. Thanks for the suggestion!

~~~
marci
BUS 55 - DANS - 5MIN ?

~~~
gregsadetsky
AUTOBUS - DANS - 5 - MINUTES

I think that makes sense, yeah. I would rather not flash other digits (55) as
that could be confusing for someone who sees that number go by (was that the
bus number or the number of minutes?)

Thank you!

~~~
StavrosK
You guys don't do minute notation (5')?

~~~
gregsadetsky
I don't think that it's as common to write or read

I'll be there in 5'

Also, since this is a sign seen from about 10-15 meters away, using an
apostrophe might lead to confusion (it might not be clear to read).

The aesthetics of the big flashing words are also intentional. Way, way back
in my brain there was definitely [0] playing while I was creating this. :-)

[0] * * * WARNING A lot of Flashing Lights! * * *
[https://www.yhchang.com/SAMSUNG_MEANS_TO_COME_V.html](https://www.yhchang.com/SAMSUNG_MEANS_TO_COME_V.html)

------
tylerjaywood
I have it set up to run a project where a subreddit has control over the
watering of a live plant in my apartment.

The pi runs a reddit bot that reads the votes, and can switch on a pump to
water. It also collects data about sunlight, moisture, temp and humidity to
help inform the decision about watering. Despite many people's preconceptions
about the goodness of the internet, I must admit that they do a wonderful job
caring for my plant!

website: [http://www.takecareofmyplant.com](http://www.takecareofmyplant.com)

subreddit w/ voting:
[http://old.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant](http://old.reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant)

~~~
iforgotpassword
> Despite many people's preconceptions about the goodness of the internet, I
> must admit that they do a wonderful job caring for my plant!

Maybe I should create a subreddit where people can control a bot that has
access to my bank accounts so they can manage my finances, invest some, etc.
;-)

~~~
pacoWebConsult
Didn't someone do this with Twitch Plays Stocks? Essentially gave them some
capital and let the chat decide what trades to make. They nuked the portfolio
within 24 hours.

~~~
colechristensen
On average (and very much more than just average) there is a negative
correlation between trading frequency and portfolio performance (you are not
an HFT firm, don't compare yourself to one).

Set up a system like that wrong, and it doesn't matter how smart the crowd is,
you're going to lose all your money. It would be interesting to play with the
parameters of the game and see how results changed. (how often trades are
made, max portfolio % per trade, voting mechanics, etc.)

~~~
imtringued
Sounds like the most optimal setup would be a single vote (1 vote = $1 spent
on a stock of your choice) at the start and then just wait 1 year for the
results.

~~~
jtolmar
You could put in a set amount per day (or week), choices weighted by the votes
since last time, and get some of the benefits of dollar cost averaging, plus
more reason for continued engagement.

Maybe introduce sales after it's been around for a year. (Though I'm not sure
which mechanism, DCA doesn't work in reverse.)

------
sparker72678
I have 13 in service right now:

\- Outdoor irrigation control via OpenSprinkler Pi:
[https://opensprinkler.com/product/opensprinkler-
pi/](https://opensprinkler.com/product/opensprinkler-pi/)

\- Z-Wave home automation via ZWay:
[https://z-wave.me/products/razberry/](https://z-wave.me/products/razberry/)

\- 2 Custom HAVC thermostats using:
[https://github.com/jeffmcfadden/PiThermostat](https://github.com/jeffmcfadden/PiThermostat)

\- An NTP server with GPS attached for a time source.

\- 2 for weather monitoring (one directly attached to sensors, one that
aggregates the data from a few sources and provides reporting)

\- A sort of centralized "workhorse" Pi that runs a lot of random cron jobs,
etc.

\- An Alexa gateway for home automation

\- An NES emulator

\- An infrared-remote source for turning on/off surround receiver, TV, etc.

\- Monitoring of HVAC temperatures/performance

\- An intranet server

Assuming I didn't forget anything.

~~~
m463
You are a kindred spirit. I have: 2 pi NTP servers - one running a GPS hat +
PPS wired up, one using a USB gps receiver. a "workhorse" pi - 2 wired ds18b20
temperature sensors, cron jobs, email generators, weather page generator,
connectivity monitor. One pi running piubos + nextcloud. One pi running as a
clock. One pi running as a wireless temperature receiver. a few floating pis
running media center or retropie or other things... just swap in the right USB
stick and run.

~~~
muratsu
Just curious, what kind of cron jobs are you running?

~~~
sparker72678
I just went to look at my crontab again. Some highlights (lowlights?):

\- Turning lights on/off around the house, because I found cron to be a more
reliable scheduling agent that the one built-into my Wave software when I
first set it up.

\- Testing network performance (ping times to various locations)

\- Fetching a mail account and processing the messages for an automation I
have setup for some things.

\- Updating online weather services with data from my weather station.

\- Kicking off data gathering/update jobs.

~~~
m463
You know, cron is simple... but so directly useful.

I moved some stuff out of cron into systemd and although it worked, it was
over-complicated in an infuriating way.

I realize systemd is useful, but the implementation is like trying to navigate
through a teenager's bedroom trying to find something.

------
peteforde
I started a company that constructed booths which used 70 accurately sync'd
Pis with custom PiCams (fitted with lenses) to take pictures of human
subjects, for turning them into avatars like this:

[https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pete-swagger-
walk-a55d807de1...](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pete-swagger-
walk-a55d807de14a4ba7bdb9977600e7c412)

At the beginning of the project, I'd barely powered up the Pis I had
collecting dust in my drawer. By the end, I was a legitimate domain expert in
several niches within niches of Pi dark arts. For example, since Pis do not
have hardware clocks, you have to rely on NTP. However, you need to take pains
to make sure that each Pi is getting the same amount of voltage or else they
will run at different speeds. If you want to power 70 Pis in a constrained
space, you need to devise a customized power distribution system with adequate
heat venting.

Due to the thin effect, voltage drops over distance, so the distance a Pi was
from the power would impact the voltage and therefore the speed. The major
breakthrough came when I realized that I could start with a high end power
supply outputting 14 volts and terminate each parallel line with a device
known as a UBEC. They are used primarily by drone enthusiasts to make
efficient use of battery packs.

A UBEC is designed to drop down a supply voltage to 5v without bleeding off
the excess voltage as heat. Since this could also describe a fuse, we felt
comfortable bypassing the Pi's MicroUSB power supply and attaching the UBEC's
pins directly to the top pins on the Pi's GPIO breakout.

That's just a tiny example of the hijinx. The Pi is an incredible tool if
you're patient and clever.

What a rollercoaster.

~~~
thesmok
What you call UBEC is just a switch mode DC-DC buck converter. They are used
everywhere in electronics, and you could probably save money buying general
puprose 5V buck converter modules instead of modules made specifically for RC.
Anyway, that's very interesting info about supply voltage affecting Raspberry
Pi speed and timekeeping, thanks!

~~~
Kadin
This is true, although UBECs are also packaged with some filtering caps, and
are in a nice heatshrinked package usually -- so I look at it the other way
around; packaged UBECs are so cheap, if you can make do with them, it's too
easy to just grab them off the shelf and move on with life rather than DIYing
it from components.

All depends how many of whatever you're building, I suppose.

~~~
peteforde
I did a quick search and wasn't able to find anything even close to the price
of the UBEC we used: [http://www.banggood.com/External-Brushless-BEC-
UBEC-3A-5V2-5...](http://www.banggood.com/External-Brushless-BEC-
UBEC-3A-5V2-5S-Receiver-Power-Supply-p-949258.html)

However, I cannot state enough that the price of this small component was
simply not where the costs accumulated on this project. We geeks have a nasty
tendency to over-optimize things that just don't matter in the big picture.
You totally nailed it when you mentioned that this device is a packaged (and
QA'd) product. The fact that it just slips right onto a Pi's GPIO pins without
requiring any further modification is what makes this such a win. If you have
to do anything to [70 units of] a component to make it work, you're blowing up
any miniscule price arbitrage anyhow.

------
jonaswi
I live in an apartment with quite strict fire-protection standards. Due to the
fact that I have a cat that absolutly loves to go outside, I needed to find a
solution for him to get outside without a catdoor trough my door.

So I installed a fire-protecion-approved door drive that is hooked to a
raspberry pi. Another raspberry pi then analyzes a video stream and detects my
cat. If my cat is in the frame for n amount of time, a message is sent to the
pi conntected to the door drive and the door opens up slightly for him to get
in.

~~~
bborud
Do you have a screengrab of your cat?

~~~
jonaswi
Here is a picture of him examining the tech behind his magic door
[https://i.imgur.com/81VgqaR.png](https://i.imgur.com/81VgqaR.png)

~~~
bborud
Now here's an experiment: can you trigger your door by printing out an image
of your cat? :-)

------
mlang23
As a braille user, I was always fond of "laptops" without a built-in display,
simply to save ssace, weight and power.

I found a braille display which features a small compartment with micro-USB
inside. Used a Pi Zero (these days 0w) to transform that braille display into
a full-features Linux laptop. I documented the first version here:
[https://blind.guru/brlpi.html](https://blind.guru/brlpi.html)

~~~
benj111
Cool.

You make reference to fonts. I assume this isn't font in the traditional
sense, ie the look (feel?) of a character.

~~~
mlang23
Nope, I actually do refer to fonts as you know them. Long story short, prior
to linux kernel 4.19 and brltty 6.0, only those characters that are mapped to
a glyph in the currently loaded console font can be backtranslated to the
actual codepoint. So to be able to read unicode braille (0x2800-0x28FF) I
needed to load a braille font in addition to the standard latin glyph.

This dependency on the loaded font has been removed with linux 4.19 and brltty
6.0. Now, there is a new device (/dev/vcsu) which can be used to read the
unicode codepoints of characters on the console, without having to go through
the loaded font.

~~~
benj111
Interesting.

I assume its for differing reasons? You would want an X to always be an X and
what feels most like an X to you, and not be worried about whether the X is
Ariel or Times New Roman.

Does it extend further to do italics and such?

I had naively thought the screen would do all the heavy lifting in this
situation, feed it text, and it converts it to braille.

------
DrAwdeOccarim
I have an old Raspberry Pi 1 that runs headless raspbian with a set of cheap
speakers plugged into it and an old usb wifi adaptor. It has only one purpose:
to play a wav file of a telephone ringing for one minute. My spouse does not
ever have the ringer on her cell phone. So when I am out and I need her to
look at her phone, I VPN in to my home network, ssh into the pi using Terminus
on my iphone, and 'aplay' the wav file.

The real reason we ever wanted to get a landline was because of this issue, so
instead of wasting money I just used spare parts to make an alert system I can
activate remotely. I can also use the 'say' command for text-to-speech, but
that's not really effective. The old school phone ringer wav is perfect.

~~~
m0nty
> I VPN in to my home network, ssh into the pi using Terminus on my iphone,
> and 'aplay' the wav file

Once, when I was working away from home, someone unplugged the phone at home
so I couldn't phone in. After becoming very frustrated, I SSH'd into my home
server, and from there into the Mac Mini we used as a media station. Then:

\- checked they were watching something using `ps`.

\- killed that process so I had their attention.

\- `say 'this is dad, I'm inside the computer.'`

\- `say 'I want to phone you but you have unplugged the phone.'`

\- `say 'plug it back in'`

Worked :)

~~~
INTPenis
Haha this reminded me of the time I lost my phone. I suspected it was left at
work so I ssh'd into my Mac at work, started recording audio, dialed up my
phone and voilá. It was there and I had peace of mind until tomorrow.

~~~
lostlogin
Turning on FaceTime remotely to see what’s in front of the computer has saved
me a few times, and made me wish that my screen was angled differently many
more.

~~~
INTPenis
Mine is always in clamshell mode with external monitor. Feels more ergonomic
that way.

------
lloydpick
2 Pis for dealing with ADS-B (airplane data), one for 1090Mhz, the other for
978Mhz. I could run that on the same one, but seemed easier to just split them
up given some of the software is a bit picky with device IDs. The 978Mhz is
much quieter than the 1090Mhz, so I also run a private SpyServer
([https://github.com/lloydpick/docker-
spyserver](https://github.com/lloydpick/docker-spyserver)) for listening to
radio transmissions.

1 Raspberry Pi for a running a very stupid sitcom sound thing. Using a camera
it tries to recognise who you are, then play a random sound assigned to you
out of a little speaker. Think of like the cheering/clapping when a guest or
celebrity enters the room in a sitcom tv show, and replace out the clapping
with whatever sound you want.

~~~
mindcrime
What do you use for receiving the radio traffice, something like an RTL-SDR,
or something else?

~~~
lloydpick
For the ASD-B traffic I use the FlightAware USB dongles -
[https://flightaware.com/adsb/prostick/](https://flightaware.com/adsb/prostick/)

And for the general radio, I use the RTL-SDR Blog USB dongle -
[https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-
Telesc...](https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-
Telescopic/dp/B011HVUEME)

------
robreilly
I'm Dr. Torq and have a Raspberry Pi in my Steampunk conference badge. Use it
during my tech talks. I walk into the room, power down the badge, plug in the
HDMI, power up the badge and run my slides with a nano-keyboard/mousepad and
LibreOffice. Works great. When I'm walking around a show, the badge displays a
little promotional video on it's 3.5" touch-screen. Runs on a big cell phone
power pack, in my pocket. See my gadgets and hacker articles at
[https://thenewstack.io/author/rob-reilly/](https://thenewstack.io/author/rob-
reilly/).

~~~
MrZongle2
Wow! That's a heck of a rabbit hole I fell into there. Lots of cool stuff
there.

------
thecodemonkey
1x Raspberry Pi 3 installed in my car within the internal network as a bastion
box and to run software that let's my interact with the entertainment system

1x Raspberry Pi 3 running Home Assistant with a Z-Wave USB Dongle (Home
Automation)

1x Raspberry Pi 3 running OctoPrint (Host/remote-control for 3D Printer)

1x Raspberry Pi 3 running FullPageOS (Full-screen Chromium in kiosk mode)
displaying a server statusboard in our home office

Next project: 1x Raspberry Pi Zero W to run Unifi Controller

I have a couple of original Model B+ sitting around unused right now - just
not powerful enough for any of the above projects.

(Update: Formatting)

~~~
MisterTea
> Next project: 1x Raspberry Pi Zero W to run Unifi Controller

Ugh, have fun with the dependency issues. An easy alternative is to run a
Unifi docker image. Currently running it from a Debian VM when needed but
looking to move it to an alpine vmm on my OpenBSD APU2. The Linux image is the
same as the cloud key so you can roll your own cloud key and use the unifi
app.

Here is the image I use though there are others:
[https://hub.docker.com/r/jacobalberty/unifi/](https://hub.docker.com/r/jacobalberty/unifi/)

~~~
jimnotgym
I found it easier to just buy the cloud key...

~~~
lostlogin
I’ve never owned a cloud key, but the docker path is really quite painless and
makes migrations nice too.

------
toolboc
I use a Raspberry Pi to stream PlayStation 2 backups over SMB by networking
the onboard Ethernet port of the Pi to allow access to a Samba Share service
running on the Pi. This allows for seamless playback of games with heavy Full
Motion Video sequences as the Ethernet transmission is faster than the max
throughput of the USB2.0 ports provided on the PlayStation 2. It -also
supports auto mounting and sharing of external drives to allow for seamless
drive swapping if you have a large library.

Using the same technique, games can also be streamed to PlayStation 3 and
original Xbox.

I added some additional support for Xlink Kai so that you can play LAN enabled
games over the Pi’s WiFi connection by plugging a compatible game console into
the Ethernet port of the Pi or by connecting to an access point that is auto
created when a secondary WiFi dongle is attached to the Pi.

I learned that there are usually a hundred or so people in South America who
play Halo 2 using Xlink Kai and this makes it very easy to connect to them for
lag free multiplayer on original hardware. This feature also works on Nintendo
Switch and PSP with a bit of extra work.

The project is open source and [available as a flashable SD image on
Github]([https://github.com/toolboc/psx-pi-
smbshare](https://github.com/toolboc/psx-pi-smbshare)).

Youtuber VersatileNinja recently published a detailed video on [how to get
started with the
project]([https://youtu.be/Ilx5NYoUkNA](https://youtu.be/Ilx5NYoUkNA)) if
anyone is interested in taking it for a spin.

~~~
idonotknowwhy
How fast is streaming cut-scene heavy games like MGS4 to the PS3 using this
setup?

Also, for the PS2, how does it compare with HDDLoader and an internal HDD.
Relevant for games like Fatal Frame, where you have to open doors a lot, and
on the DVD, it takes like 5-10 seconds, but on the HDD, it takes <1 second.

I didn't know we could steam to the Xbox OG, sounds pretty useful compared
with the 1hr process to open it up and upgrade the HDD...

~~~
toolboc
In my tests using iftop, speed on PS3 seems to top out around 60 MB/s which is
slower than HDD but should be sufficient for most games.

On PS2, the speed to access SMB is also slower than HDD at around 6 MB/s,
however, this is nearly 6x the speed of the USB. Although it is slower than
HDD access, it allows for playback of most games without stuttering.

Good point on calling attention to the OG Xbox, as I should have been more
specific there. OG Xbox games can only be played back via HDD or Disc due to a
limitation in the system itself, however, a number of emulators support SMB
paths for playing backups.

------
ChuckMcM
I have several

* Pie-hole and runs Nagios to collect information about things going on inside the network.

* One running a PiDP-11 (pdp 11/70 emulator) as well as providing MOP service to boot my DEC terminal multiplexor (it provides the boot image when the mux comes up)

* One is a stratum-1 time server using an Adafruit GPS module with PPS output. This because I got tired of both the reflection attacks and trying to manage ntp access from inside the house to outside.

* One runs RasPBX and talks to the VOIP phone that is my home "business" line.

* One sits on my electronics workbench and runs OpenOCD and allows BlackMagic Probes to export GDB as a service over the network. That lets me debug from anywhere without burning a USB port or adding additional software.

* One runs a very simple time series database and is the collector for IOT type devices that are sending various bits of information (energy use, temp, humidity, particulate levels, etc)

* One drives a display which has a dashboard of various things that the others are doing (like Nagios alerts, data trends etc) This one is a candidate for replacement as the 4K monitor would be nice here.

* One runs the waveforms live software from Digilent and hooks to an Analog Discovery 2 on my workbench. (scope, logic analyzer, etc)

EDIT: And its important to know that I boot them using the network and run
them off NFS from a NAS box, the idea being that when they break I can easily
swap the CPU part with a new one.

~~~
vardump
> This one is a candidate for replacement as the 4K monitor would be nice
> here.

You might be able to run 4k display with an old RPi at about 8-10 Hz.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The Pi is memory bandwidth limited as it is, that would probably kill it
completely. Even the RPi2 was really only responsive enough with a 720p
display.

~~~
vardump
Maybe you could even try 4K at 6 Hz. That should take less screen refresh
bandwidth than 1280x720 @60Hz.

It might work fine. You can't know unless you try.

Partial screen updates might look weird, though.

------
Aromasin
I have a (basically non-existent) side business selling LED strips and RPi
lighting controllers for surfboards! If you've seem some viral videos with
guys surfing around at night, they were probably using my gear :-)

Briefly put, I use the Glediator and Jinx! control software on an RPi, which
communicates with an Arduino, which drives the LEDs. I put them in a
permanently sealed box, water proof it as much as I possibly can, then cut
some IP68 RGB LED strips to size and strap them to the rails of the board. I
can remotely access the RPi via Wi-Fi to change lighting schemes, and there's
a wireless charging coil inside the box which I can use to charge the
batteries, so I never have to open it up after waterproofing. It's basically
bomb-proof, and simple enough that I can teach a surf bum how to use it in
about half and hour.

Start thinking of the RPi as more of a powerful microcontroller and suddenly a
world of opportunities open up. I did my dissertation on it! Titled 'Home
Automation and Monitoring using a Raspberry Pi', I basically used an RPi as a
master node to control a bunch of Arduino slave nodes, using I2C protocol.
With just two wires and an Pi, I run about 20 Arduino's all over my house,
doing everything from feeding my fish, to monitoring air quality, to starting
my coffee maker. I can access it remotely via Wi-Fi too, so I can do things
like water my plants while I'm away. Aiming for a full Wallace and Grommet
home in the near future.

Raspberry Pi's are awesome.

~~~
petercooper
Is it this?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqgLaMc9IVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqgLaMc9IVA)

~~~
Aromasin
No, but very similar! I made mine as a product you could attach to any board,
as opposed to the strips being embedded and shaped into the board like the one
in this video (which normally cost thousands to buy...) A few of my friends
rode them at a contest in France though [1]

Alas, at the moment it's just a kick-starter pipe dream I'll never have the
time to put into production.

[1][https://www.adventuresportsnetwork.com/sport/surf/night-
surf...](https://www.adventuresportsnetwork.com/sport/surf/night-surfing-
contest-france-surfers-rode-led-boards/)

~~~
ryanolsonx
Those look way cool!

------
scottlamb
A security camera NVR. (Help wanted! I'm developing it here:
[https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-
nvr](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr) I'm proud of the design but
it's still far from a polished system that does everything a reasonable person
would expect. Lots of opportunities to extend it if you're looking for a fun
Rust + Javascript project.) A Raspberry Pi 2 will run a working setup; the new
Raspberry Pi 4 should be a lot more pleasant in terms of being able to
recompile it in a reasonable time, transfer video segments quickly, etc. I
think the biggest missing piece is a real-time clock. Faster flash, builtin
SATA, and a builtin NPU would also be great of course but not realistic for
$35.

A home theater control system. The Pi uses HDMI-CEC, my Samsung TV's EXLINK
(their protocol over RS-232), Roku's HTTP interface, etc. and an Android app
is the frontend. I wanted to make this into a nice polished thing other people
could use but have given up on the idea for now. The thing is that media
components are super finicky, many things need special support written just
for them, and you really have to extensively tweak them to see how they
function as a whole. (eg does your TV turn off your stereo receiver when it
turns off itself. The answer varies based on the model and settings of both
components.) HDMI-CEC doesn't live up to its potential in this regard.

[edit: fixed hyperlink]

~~~
aloer
Moonfire NVR looks like an amazing project that I can learn a lot from for an
entirely different project with streams and stuff that I’m interested in and
have zero experience with!

Also great that it’s written in rust

Is there any way to test it without rpi/camera?

If I understand the readme correctly, you store frames individually (as
jpegs?) on disk and construct flexible mp4 streams on the fly. Naturally I
would have assumed that this would be inefficient so I’m wondering if I got
this right, not very familiar with stream/video/codec tech

~~~
scottlamb
Thanks!

> Is there any way to test it without rpi/camera?

Without a Raspberry Pi, yes. It should run on any Unix-like OS. I've tested
Linux/arm32, Linux/x86-64, and macOS/x86-64. (For the last, install ffmpeg via
homebrew first.)

Without an IP camera...hmm, there are probably some public RTSP live streams
somewhere. Not sure offhand.

> If I understand the readme correctly, you store frames individually (as
> jpegs?) on disk and construct flexible mp4 streams on the fly. Naturally I
> would have assumed that this would be inefficient so I’m wondering if I got
> this right, not very familiar with stream/video/codec tech

No, I store the video stream in the compressed form the camera gave it to me.
Currently that's H.264; it wouldn't be hard to add H.265 support as well. I
break it apart into roughly one-minute segments at convenient locations. The
schema design doc talks about that here:
[https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-
nvr/blob/master/design...](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-
nvr/blob/master/design/schema.md)

.mp4 serving will aggregate those together (maybe clipping the start and end
segment) to give you a .mp4 segment for any time range of interest. It comes
up with a mp4::File struct which knows what video segments to serve and maps
byte locations to parts of the .mp4 container format. I don't have a good doc
about how this works other than the source code right now.
[https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-
nvr/blob/master/src/mp...](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-
nvr/blob/master/src/mp4.rs) [edit: and you probably won't be successful in
understanding it without having a pdf of the ISO/IEC 14496-12 specification
open next to it.] Here's some debug output for generating a five-minute video
segment: [https://pastebin.com/Wzfz7BF7](https://pastebin.com/Wzfz7BF7)

Storing individual frames as jpegs would be inefficient I agree in all sorts
of ways: recording CPU (you have to decode the H.264 and re-encode it as
JPEGs), disk space, disk seeks, playback bandwidth, browser CPU, etc. My
understanding is this is how Zoneminder currently works. I imagine it worked
better with the cameras Zoneminder was originally designed for: low-
resolution, low-qps webcams that didn't do their own H.264 encoding.

~~~
aloer
Thanks a lot, I had only seen the guide/schema document

What I’m interested in is primarily flexible mixing of different streams so
I’ll definitely have a look here

------
quartz
The coffee machine in our office is controlled by blockchain NFTs and a
Raspberry Pi:

Once authenticated, an owner of the NFT can select their coffee type on their
phone which then signals the Raspberry Pi to make whatever coffee type was
selected by jumping the contacts that used to be pressed by the machine's
buttons (which have been removed).

It's a cool gimmick, fun to show off to visitors, gives us a nice record of
who is making coffee (since each NFT's owner is unique and trackable), limits
users to those with the NFT without us having to build usernames/passwords,
and is also how I make my coffee each afternoon.

~~~
amelius
> gives us a nice record of who is making coffee

Is that allowed by GDPR?

~~~
coolspot
If you don't serve cookies it is okay.

------
strags
I discovered that my 17-month old son loves to mess with stereo controls. So I
bought a few rotary encoders and neo-pixel rings - build a wooden enclosure
with a plastic faceplate, and wrote some code to generate fancy light and
audio effects when he turns/clicks the knobs. He loves it.

~~~
ryanmercer
Tread carefully, you're creating a young Look Mum No Computer!
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafxR2HWJRmMfSdyZXvZMTw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafxR2HWJRmMfSdyZXvZMTw)

~~~
msoucy
Well now that I've seen the Furby Organ I'm not going to sleep tonight...

~~~
ryanmercer
Watch the one where he makes some of them nekkid, it's more recent. THAT is
terrifying.

------
sequoia
I run a plex media server on my 3b+. The server is on the wall below my router
(attached via ethernet), a 2TB HDD sits next to the server. I put movies & TV
for my kids on the server, then they can watch on one of two TVs in the house
via Roku. It's good for getting them off trashy Netflix movies & making
classics (or what I consider classics at least) available to them.

I chose this configuration rather than running plex in the cloud because a)
don't want to pay monthly forever for something I use a few times a week; b)
less wasting power and c) this at least theoretically can work during an
internet outage (though plex authentication may make this difficult). I
configured the HDD to spin down after 20 seconds of no r/w, so the whole thing
draws very little power while idling (or so I assume).

The major limitation of this setup is that the pi cannot handle video
transcoding. As long as I transcode to something the Roku supports natively
this isn't an issue: transcode once (on my laptop), put it on the Pi, play
whenever. I have yet to script this process but that's my next step in the
project.

It will probably be a year before I realize any cost savings (a friend pays
CAD20/mo for a hosted setup which also handles on-the-fly transcoding), but,
well, it's a simple server and I just wanted to do it myself, gosh darn it!

~~~
treelovinhippie
What Plex install guide did you use? Few months ago I tried to install Plex to
a pi already running Pihole but couldn't get it to work.

~~~
ric2b
You can run plex via docker, if that's ok with you. But it needs network mode
"host"

------
gwynn
College student here with a part-time data entry job. I have automated nearly
all of it using Python, Selenium, and a few nasty bash scripts called by
periodic cronjobs. Recently purchased a 3b+ for the task so that I can travel
without worrying about AirBnB wifi speeds. If I need anything I can just SSH
or VNC into it from a coffee shop. It just sits next to my router and blinks
all day doing my job for me! Best $35 I have ever spent.

~~~
dougmwne
That's great! The business world is chock full of these situations where non-
technical people create a process that could be automated but isn't,
eventually leading to an entry level person (or several) who's entire job is
to do things like copy-paste, clicky-click or OCR. I think the key step to
automating these tasks is to have the ability to both recognize the
opportunity for automation and code a solution. There could be a fantastic
amount of money in building things like this on the regular.

~~~
xtomus
There's a whole industry dedicated to this task with some major players
involved: RPA.

------
davidb_
I've got 5. I only actively use 3 of them.

1\. Media player connected to projector running RasPlex - this software is
outdated enough and buffers on some high bitrate content that I should buy a
replacement device, but it still works well enough. I tried upgrading to a
newer raspi and wasted an hour trying to get it to run, then gave up. So, I
still use my old one. It still gets used daily and works well enough (only
issue is the buffering on occasion).

2\. RetroPie - I rarely game, but it's cool to be able to turn this on and
have a library of all the games I played (and those I never had) from
childhood.

3\. I use the third one as a networked LED marquee controller (HUB75 panels)
with this software: [https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-
matrix](https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix)

The other 2 I just have sitting on my desk and occasionally use for small dev
projects or to test out some new project I read about on here, hackaday, etc.

An ongoing project that I haven't made much progress with is an automated
turret that squirts squirrels with water. I made something similar in college
(a "paintball gun" turret with openCV blob detection/tracking) that had decent
performance. Now that openCV on rpi can outperform my old college laptop, I
want to setup the pi to detect squirrels, track them, and keep them away from
a bird feeder/plants in my backyard.

~~~
ncarroll
Would that turret will work for pigeons landing on my balcony? Or better yet,
to protect my air space by squirting them on a fly by? That'd be some sweet
fun. :-)

~~~
mft_
This makes me sad.

Pigeons get a bad time, but they're lovely birds of you spend some time
observing and maybe even interacting with them. We had an obviously-paired
couple visit our balcony most days for a couple of years.

Please don't be (thoughtlessly?) mean to them.

~~~
sersi
I like Pigeons and don't mind them except when they visit my balcony at 7am in
the morning and wake me up (we only have single pane windows and no way to
change it since we're renting).

~~~
Tempest1981
I keep some earplugs nearby for this situation. The birds can be persistent.

------
glaslong
So many things!

1\. Home Assistant for tying together all the various brands of smart home
devices [https://www.home-assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)

2\. OctoPrint for managing a 3D printer (also has a home assistant
integration) [https://octoprint.org/](https://octoprint.org/)

3\. Magic Mirror that shows me news, weather, commute time estimate, etc
[https://magicmirror.builders/](https://magicmirror.builders/)

4\. PiHole for blocking all ads on my home network [https://pi-
hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

5\. The brains of a toy i hacked apart for a friend's robot fight
[https://www.facebook.com/RobotRiotCompetition/](https://www.facebook.com/RobotRiotCompetition/)

6\. PyPortal Twitter feed on my desk
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/4116](https://www.adafruit.com/product/4116)

7\. Server for various weekend web projects

------
zantana
I was bullish when I got my first Pi to run Home Assistant (before hass.io),
but got discouraged when the sd card failures were gas-lighting me by silently
reverting my code changes. That and the lack of hardware clock hampering some
of the diagnostic tools I usually use, kept me sticking with VMs on a NUC and
a fanless Celeron for Kodi for my main compute uses.

In time I have gotten more Pis, but mainly for hardware aided projects such as
the Pidp/8:
[https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-8](https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-8)
The rejuvenated Nabaztag: [https://www.ulule.com/le-retour-du-
nabaztag/](https://www.ulule.com/le-retour-du-nabaztag/) The seasonal Xmas
tree hat: [https://thepihut.com/products/3d-xmas-tree-for-raspberry-
pi](https://thepihut.com/products/3d-xmas-tree-for-raspberry-pi) And a Mycroft
Mark I: [https://mycroft.ai/mark1/](https://mycroft.ai/mark1/) which is Pi
based inside and the only one these projects which is always powered on.

The 4 seems like it may finally have the horsepower to make me try to give it
a go again and possibly replace my various x86 pucks as they age out.

~~~
avh02
oh jeez the SD card story just gave me flashbacks.

I changed networks (uni to home) and the RPi running pihole would constantly
keep my uni DNS settings after a restart.

Took me a good few hours to figure it out given that I thought the DNS
settings were getting copied in from elsewhere on startup. I think i finally
figured it out after i re-installed rapsbian from scratch and to my horror was
booted in to the old system.

PSA: Bad SD card can make you feel crazy.

~~~
wil421
The SD card was failing to write? It would have blown my mind if I reinstalled
raspbian and the old config popped up.

I’ll have to keep this in mind.

~~~
asveikau
I had an SD card once that would not fail to write (i.e. kernel does not show
write errors) but when you read back it gets the old data. Tried it on
multiple operating systems with the same behavior.

It was a more expensive SD card because I see more issues with cheap ones.

But it seems to me that SD cards suck at all price brackets. Maybe even some
of the expensive ones are counterfeit?

~~~
mark-r
> Maybe even some of the expensive ones are counterfeit?

You get a lot more money counterfeiting the expensive ones than the cheap
ones.

------
rcarmo
I've done digital signage, controlled servos, used them as cameras, the works.

Right now I have:

\- A 5-node Pi 2 cluster running k3s.io ([https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-
cluster](https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster)), and a separate Pi 2 I use
as a Docker build box and local Docker registry.

\- A Pi 3B+ as a "lab" desktop computer with an USB oscilloscope and FTDI
cables to flash ESP8266 and Arduinos

\- A Lakka.tv arcade/MAME box for the kids with a PS3 controller (no room for
a proper PiCade, we just use the TV(

\- A Pi 3A+ with a mic array for playing around with Google Assistant

\- A Pi Zero W taped to the inside of my electricity meter trying to estimate
power consumption (we have a spinning disk mechanical meter)

\- Another Pi Zero W that I use to demo Azure IoT solutions

\- An ODROID U2 (Could be a Pi) running HomeKit and Node-Red for home
automation, as well as a bastion container (all dockerized).

Edit: forgot about the 3B hooked up to my 3D printer running OctoPi

And the list goes on. I have many older Series Bs lying around, and once used
one to revive a dead synth whose MIDI keyboard still worked (I set up timidity
and a sound font on it and it became the kids' piano). I also ran a Plex
server on one until it became obvious that I needed to think about transcoding
(but it worked fine for music).

You can do a _lot_ with Raspberry Pis, and I fully expect to get a beefy Pi 4
to use as a lab computer.

I just hope they also beef up the Zero at some point (power envelope will be a
problem, but a Zero with Pi 2 specs would be great).

~~~
1-6
What SW do you use for digital signage?

~~~
rcarmo
The first one I did (back in the original Pi era) was this:

[https://github.com/rcarmo/digital-signage-
client](https://github.com/rcarmo/digital-signage-client)

We then iterated upon that over the years, tried Android boxes, etc.

------
agentultra
My most recent use has been teaching game development. I have kids and their
friends are often around the house. A couple of them asked if I knew how to
program games and I've been teaching them using Pico-8.

Many of these kids don't have computers at home so as a reward for finishing
their first project I'm making them a home console with some RPi's I have
laying about and Pico8.

~~~
omgmog
That's great! Do you have an enclosure design for the home consoles, perhaps a
physical pico-8 style enclosure?

------
guyromm
A client that I'm consulting was being ripped off by a local IT provider with
pricing for on-premises servers & MS software. I proceeded to rent cheaper
equivalent machines off-site. The IT provider claimed the hardware firewall
(Fortigate) was not configurable for site-to-site to the new machines directly
(could be, not an expert on those). Therefore, I ended up purchasing several
Raspberries and configuring them as OpenVPN routers that opened up the office
LAN to said machines. Quite satisfying, as it allowed to break the client out
of the proprietry software/hardware/vendor chain at a rather small expense.

~~~
the_angry_angel
You can absolutely configure IPSec tunnels on Fortinet.

Can I ask, do you perform updates and maintenance on these boxes? How do they
perform in terms of throughput with openvpn?

~~~
e12e
I'd be more interested if wireguard is an option, and how it performs. Since
they're already on linux/oss.

~~~
the_angry_angel
IPSec is pretty much the standard interop still - pretty much everything talks
it Cisco, Juniper, pfSense, Fortinet, etc. You name it I’d be surprised if it
didn’t have support.

I’d love to see wireguard implemented in the networking world, but I think it
may take some time to get there :/

------
2sk21
Using several Raspberry Pis to monitor CO2 levels in my house. Each Raspberry
Pi has a CO2 sensor - wrote a little Python script to retrieve data from
sensor and upload it to a server Which is also a Raspberry Pi.

~~~
jdsnape
What sensor did you use? All the ones I’ve seen tend to be pretty expensive

~~~
2sk21
Yes - the sensors are a bit expensive at about US$ 90 apiece but as I
explained in another comment, I think that it has paid for itself

------
missjellyfish
At one point I stuffed 40 of them into a rack mount and built a cluster to use
for teaching at my university. Never gotten any publication out because it‘s
fairly uninteresting from an academic point of view, but as a teaching tool to
learn ARM assembler or parallel programming / how to execute stuff on
supercomputers / OpenMPI it’s an invaluable tool.

Recently there have been some odroid c2 added to the cluster, so it‘s not only
RPis anymore.

More info:
[https://www.caps.in.tum.de/en/himmuc/](https://www.caps.in.tum.de/en/himmuc/)

Some Beautyshots at my Instagram:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BcA1QdFgWuk/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BcA1QdFgWuk/)

~~~
princekolt
Really cool! I feel this is the kind of project I have no use for, but would
love doing just for the sake of assembling computer parts together haha

------
hlfshell
I've made some interesting projects over the years - only a writeup on a few
of these, and some are in pieces and in various states of disrepair after
moving so much.

Some write ups on larger projects:

1\. I used a raspberry pi to coordinate the firing of multiple cameras, and
then had the pi upload to a cloud service that would stitch them together to
an "infinite zoom" super selfie.
[https://medium.com/@thekeithchester/gigasnap-](https://medium.com/@thekeithchester/gigasnap-)
a-prototyping-story-efed72099d32

2\. I created a library that made it dead simple for a raspberry pi to
communicate to arduinos, and used that to control a _lot_ of hardware
projects, like little robots. [https://medium.com/@thekeithchester/serial-
synapse-94a114aa2...](https://medium.com/@thekeithchester/serial-
synapse-94a114aa271e)

3\. Raspberry Pi's controlled the heartbeat detection (controlled lights and
music of your booth) and conductive paint controller (I built it and still
don't understand the meaning) for this art piece.
[https://vimeo.com/207047769](https://vimeo.com/207047769)

4\. I had a video / text message doorbell a couple of apartments ago.
[https://github.com/hlfshell/doorbell](https://github.com/hlfshell/doorbell)

5\. Used one as an MQTT hub for numerous IoT projects. I created
[https://github.com/hlfshell/mqtt-scheduler](https://github.com/hlfshell/mqtt-
scheduler) to schedule MQTT jobs for things like the arduino powered garden
controller (lights + water pumps) I built for my wife.
[https://github.com/hlfshell/garden-relay](https://github.com/hlfshell/garden-
relay)

6\. This never got off the ground, but when Pokemon Go had first launched and
was super popular, I wrote a slackbot that would alert everyone in the office
when pokemon (outside of the super common Rattatas and Pidgeots) was nearby. I
was repurposing that code to make a portable Pokemon radar that would jump a
false account around the area around you, thus hunting down pokemon for you.
[https://github.com/hlfshell/pokemon-
tracker](https://github.com/hlfshell/pokemon-tracker) It never got far as the
game got super stale quick.

~~~
lloydpick
Disney now have exactly what you described in your first project as a photo
opportunity at the Magic Kingdom.

[https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/05/enjoy-new-
dis...](https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/05/enjoy-new-disney-
photopass-experiences-at-walt-disney-world-resort/)

~~~
hlfshell
Nice! Thanks for the link. Our goal was to hit a cool shot a mile away on a
target in the middle of a giant concert for a "I was there!" memento shot.
Good to see it in practice somewhere.

Unfortunately the sales team didn't understand it, and what sales team doesn't
understand sales team doesn't sell.

...I'm very happily in another company that gets tech - but man I wish we
could have sold that project. The effect was really cool when we had it
working fine.

------
djhworld
I have 3 running right now

1x Raspberry Pi model B (from 2012!) - runs a reverse proxy to things in my
local network, and runs a dynamic DNS service. It's showing its age as its
ARMv6 and I guess at some point updates won't be as frequent so will
eventually have to retire it, but it works fine for now.

1x Pi model 3 - runs various services, inc. GOGS a private git server, ZNC, a
service to control my TV, a service to control my 'smart plug' lamp through a
private API, a private docker registry, a voicemail system connected to Twilio

1x Pi model 3 - running Pi-Hole and wireguard

I love all of them very dearly and looking forward to reading this thread!

~~~
smkelly
Do you have any more information or a write up on what you're doing with
Twilio and voicemail? That sounds sort of interesting.

~~~
chrismeller
You can actually do voicemail within Twilio for free using their TwiML Bins
and Functions, you don’t need any extra hardware to maintain.

Just did this for a couple of numbers I set up with SIP. The docs were...
confusing and inaccurate but I finally got it to work.

------
oulipo
Hi!

If you are interested in a 100% offline and private-by-design Voice AI, you
should take a look at what we are building at
[https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai), it is 100% free for Makers

This allows you to do a 100% private Home Assistant, or add voice control to
any of your projects :)

It works for english, french, german, japanese, spanish, italian, and more
coming, and runs on a Raspberry Pi 3 (and iOS, Android, Linux)

You can take a look at our blog to see how to get started
[https://blog.snips.ai](https://blog.snips.ai)

We would love to publish on it what you are building with it!

~~~
jaboutboul
This would have been more interesting had you highlighted some of the projects
your community built and are showcased on aforementioned blog.

------
koolba
Coincidentally there’s another story on the front page about using a Raspberry
Pi to hack NASA:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264774)

~~~
slim
thats not a coincidence. That's a well coordinated product launch with a good
PR agency doing it's job

~~~
pbhjpbhj
A PR agency that hacks NASA to boost your product launch, sign me up! ;o)

------
Quequau
I have a few Raspberry Pi boards and since I've seen folks doing stuff similar
to what mostly do I thought I comment on something I hadn't seen yet.

I struggle with tinnitus distress and Ménière's. One of my coping strategies
is to continuously play some sort of background sound in the areas I occupy.

I have a first gen RPi with a set of USB powered speakers in my bedroom that
plays long form background soundscapes I get from YouTube on loop. This is the
lowest tech I could muster. YouTube-DL is a command line tool that fetches
content from places like YouTube and recodes it. I use mpg123 to play the
resulting audio file on loop... and because I'm already using ssh for all
sorts of other things as go about my day this workflow is basically completely
integrated into my normal day-to-day activities.

When I first started doing this I changed the audio track on a fairly regular
basis. Sometime to suit my mood, other times for the weather. These days it's
more of a seasonal thing.

It works great. It's proven to be really reliable and it was really, really
cheap.

~~~
mad_tortoise
As someone newly with tinnitus, and with fading hope that it will go away at
some point, I've been playing around with ideas of doing something like this.
I was thinking of using frequencies to cancel each other out, but I think this
might work much better.

~~~
Quequau
I don't think that it's possible to use certain frequencies to 'cancel out'
the perception of tinnitus because for the over whelming majority of folks
dealing tinnitus the noise isn't a real sound.

~~~
blunte
Even an imagined sound has a frequency (and probably?) a phase.

It might be possible to generate a tone at the same frequency and shift the
phase until it's 180 degrees out of phase with the imagined sound. Perhaps the
brain would do the math and cancel the imagined sound?

This can't really be automated since there's no way to measure the imagined
sound, but it might be possible to make a little box with knobs - pitch,
phase, and volume - that would all one to tune a cancellation frequency.

~~~
Quequau
I am very active in a lot of online tinnitus forums. If that worked it would
have been shown to _years_ ago because it gets tried over and over and over
and over and over.

Seems like it's a common idea that gets stuck in technically oriented folks
heads and they're compelled to some how force it to work.

It doesn't work.

------
kageneko
I'm building a CarPi. I'm using a bluetooth OBD-II adapter and Python-OBD to
monitor my car's diagnostics and record them. I'm planning on adding a GPS
adapter and probably a gyroscope/accelerometer so I can track location and
motion at the same time.

It's mostly just for fun.

Maybe one day I'll add some kind of analysis to it. It might be interesting to
track location, motion, and car status in order to predict mileage or if the
engine light will turn on.

~~~
NickBusey
Please open source this.

~~~
gchokov
Please do

------
ordinaryperson
Four things:

1\. Pihole to ad block ads (useful for phone browsing) [https://pi-
hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

2\. Custom Weather conditions dashboard, using Dark Sky's API

I'd love to replace the weather dashboard with one of my integrated work /
personal calendars so I could see what meetings I have each day but work won't
expose that data, claims it's a security risk.

3\. Custom NYC subway dashboard, showing me estimated train arrivals for
trains at the 2 closest stations.

The MTA has free apps which also show estimated train arrivals but only for
one station at a time. Also, the MTA's train estimation methodology isn't as
accurate as it could be.

4\. Retro Pie, to play NES and SNES games
[https://retropie.org.uk/](https://retropie.org.uk/)

~~~
aoeuidiue
Have you experienced any issues using PiHole? I would imagine some apps etc
would go to lengths to prevent their use. But if it works I'll set one up for
my partner who plays way too many spammy games.

~~~
ordinaryperson
Two areas where I've seen problems.

One, sometimes I want to browse/buy things via Google Shopping (or some other
shopping interface) but the Pi-Hole blocks it.

Two, sometimes for work I will run a docker-compose script that say, downloads
a copy of Puppeteer. For whatever reason the domain seems to be on Pi-Hole's
blacklist.

Granted I could probably whitelist the domains but that seems like a hassle.
It has the ability to disable blocking for periods (like 5 minutes or an hour)
but that doesn't seem to solve the above problems.

Other than that, it works great. It probably won't affect a regular internet
user. But occasionally you can run into problems.

~~~
nprateem
Maybe you could create multiple wifi networks, one that uses pi-hole and one
that doesn't.

------
Klathmon
I use them as controllers/monitors for remotely managing a 3d printer farm. At
about $40 total extra per printer for the pi and associated hardware, and an
open source utility called "octoprint", i'm able to remotely upload, monitor,
cancel/pause, and have a camera feed to each printer. They also give some
additional nice-to-haves by allowing me to upgrade the printer firmware
remotely, and get very accurate print completion estimation times.

------
elihu
I'm using one as part of a midi controller project:

[http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/jik/keyboard.html](http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/jik/keyboard.html)

The controller has 156 pressure sensitive keys. The raspberry Pi runs a
program that reads from a bank of 20 8-channel ADCs all wired up to a SPI bus
(it runs at 2mhz, and I'm able to get about 90 samples per second), and then
generates MIDI commands that are sent over a USB-MIDI adapter.

I could use a microcontroller for this, but it's kind of convenient to be able
to plug other USB-MIDI devices into it and have it work, and to be able to run
a Linux-based synthesizer locally if I want. (I've been planning on using a
Teensy for the next version.)

~~~
oddsockmachine
Thanks for sharing this, it's great to see your process.

I'm working on something vaguely related, a grid-based synth-
controller/sequencer with a bunch of i2c shift registers and laser cut
hardware. I've been thinking about building a pressure-sensitive hex-layout
keyboard next, you've given me a bunch of ideas and inspiration.

~~~
elihu
Thanks. Pressure sensing is actually pretty simple and cheap, unless you have
a really large number of inputs (like I have). I was planning to switch to a
matrix layout in the next version to reduce the number of ADC chips I need,
but then I'll have to figure out how to mitigate ghosting.

I haven't used any of Sensitronic's producs, but they do have a lot of good
information on their site about the various ways to use force-sensitive
resistors.

------
bjoerns
I've built a mobile airpollution sensor together with a few other parents and
their kids at my 8-year old son's primary school in London. Air pollution is a
big topic as the school is right next to a busy road, a lot of children are
suffering from asthma and Islington has been pretty useless in
collecting/publishing data. So we've started taking things in our own hands
and built a handful of raspberry pi based monitors in class rooms, the
playground and children take it with them on their school run. geo-tagged data
is automatically uploaded to little influxdb/grafana based web service wheneve
the pi has a wifi connection. Makes it an interesting project for kids to look
and interpret charts and stuff as well. Currently we're measuring PM2.5/PM10,
temp and humidity only, haven't had the time yet to look into NOx sensors
yet...

[https://github.com/bstiel/airpollutionpi](https://github.com/bstiel/airpollutionpi)

------
joemi
My work has a really old phone system which I became the admin of. I
discovered it had an audio input for Music-On-Hold, so I set up a spare RPi
Zero that I had as a music player so that we'd have hold music. Low effort but
wonderful improvement for work. Every now and then I go back and tinker with
it to improve it a bit. (Next step is to make it controllable via a web
interface.)

I have a RPi 3B+ that I use for some emulation, though I hardly ever play with
it. Setting it up was plenty interesting, though.

And I have a Zero and a Zero W that I use for random tinkering/testing, both
semi-permanently attached to a breadboard for ease of use.

(I've got a big list of projects I'd like to try or develop, but the above are
the only things I've done so far.)

~~~
youeeeeeediot
Did you also acquire an ASCAP/BMI license for the music-on-hold? A lot of
people are unaware that is classified as a public performance of the music and
requires a license. Unless you are playing royalty-free music, in which case
you are fine.

~~~
joemi
I purposefully sought out royalty-free music. As the person who set it up, I
did not want to risk being culpable for anything. (When it was first set up,
my boss kept requesting that I add various catchy songs he heard on the radio
to it, and I kept having to explain it's not legal.)

~~~
knd775
I use the hold music that zendesk made. I think it's pretty neat. I doubt
anyone really loves it, but no one seems to dislike it.

------
cameron_b
I have a pair of Pi Zero Ws set up as timelapse cameras that I keep in the
garden - Cucumber vines and flowers opening is pretty interesting at 1 frame
per minute

I recently did a project with a pair of RPi 3b+ and cellular modems as
construction cameras.

I set up RetroPie on a 3b+, but it wasn't enough for the N64 games my wife and
I wanted to play the 4 could change that

Currently my security cameras are recorded using Orchid VMS on an Odroid XU4 (
Cloudshell with 2x 4T SATA)

Its a great little tool for learning Bash, and groking your systems - testing
portability? - without invoking AWS resources.

~~~
jwong_
What do you use for the camera? I have some plants I'd like to monitor but the
cameras I'd use always ended up dying due to the heat.

~~~
cameron_b
one is the latest Pi camera, I also got one of the m12 mount cameras that use
the same interface. I have a wide angle lens that has some distortion, but its
a nice look for some things. I use a little box that I glued a tripod mount
to, keeps the rain out.

------
ccapo
* I made a Raspberry Pi Zero W version of this baby monitor ([https://kamranicus.com/guides/raspberry-pi-3-baby-monitor](https://kamranicus.com/guides/raspberry-pi-3-baby-monitor))

* I am using a Raspberry Pi Zero W + Arduino Pro Mini, with a GPS, Sensors, Camera and Radio for a High Altitude Balloon (HAB) project ([https://bitbucket.org/ccapo/habpi/src/master](https://bitbucket.org/ccapo/habpi/src/master)), launch pending. A friend is also launching a similar project ([https://bitbucket.org/peterkingsbury/neopi/src/master/](https://bitbucket.org/peterkingsbury/neopi/src/master/))

* I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 for RetroPie

* I have a Raspberry Pi 3+ for development purposes, mainly the HAB project since developing on a Raspberry Pi Zero is quite slow

------
celnardur
I'm in a college club that uses Pis to run football playing robots. The Pi
basically translates instructions from a Bluetooth PS4 controller into
commands for a motor driver. We currently 4 college clubs in the league and we
play a couple of scrimmages and a championship every year. The robots take big
hits in the games(these bots can go faster than we can run) and we've found
the Arduino to be the most durable and reliable platform as well as being the
most customizable. Here is our club Website:
[https://www3.nd.edu/~rfc/](https://www3.nd.edu/~rfc/) Here is a little video
about the club: [https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/nbc-sports-
intramural-...](https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/nbc-sports-intramural-
football)

------
rubberyCycle
I use it to automate my weed garden in my closet. It turns on and off the LED
lights everyday and waters my plants with a pump based on the moisture level
of the soil. I measure the moisture level through a moisture sensor. Weed is
fun.

~~~
nullbyte
This is why NASA needs to get rid of their esoteric drug screening practices.
Our space program needs more stoners!

------
tghw
I have a bunch doing different things:

One is running our sprinklers with OpenSprinklerPi
[https://opensprinkler.com/product/opensprinkler-
pi/](https://opensprinkler.com/product/opensprinkler-pi/)

One is running VolumeIO to splay music on the speakers in our house as a
Spotify Connect device [https://volumio.org/](https://volumio.org/)

One controls our whole house humidifier via a relay and a combination of
weather and thermostat information.

One has been turned into a precision/TSD/regularity rally computer for my
vintage car.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regularity_rally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regularity_rally)

One runs my 3D printer using OctoPrint
[https://octoprint.org/download/](https://octoprint.org/download/)

And I use one as a race car telemetry system using a 9-dof sensor and a GPS
module (with brake, throttle, and steering inputs to come).

For most of these projects, they're complete overkill in terms of hardware,
but with integrated wifi and bluetooth, and a host of GPIO pins, they make
developing projects like this dead simple. And at $35, the amount of time they
save is well worth it over bare metal hardware.

------
el_benhameen
I love and hate this question! I've always been curious what others do with
them, but I just convinced myself not to buy a 4 and I'm sure this thread will
give me reason to reconsider.

-1x Raspberry Pi Zero W in my garage running my drip irrigation (a relay board connects it to standard 24V irrigation solenoids)

-1x Raspberry Pi 3 B+ in my office running a dynamic dns script and sitting behind a forwarded port for easy sshing. I have also used this to play with pihole and Apache Guacamole, plus whatever other networking stuff sounds interesting

-1x Raspberry Pi Zero W hopping between my garage and car running a program that collects and displays OBDII and GPS data

-Nx of most other Pi revisions collecting dust in my closets and storage areas. They're cheap enough that I've compulsively over-purchased them over the years...

~~~
myhay
>>1x Raspberry Pi Zero W hopping between my garage and car running a program
that collects and displays OBDII and GPS data

This is what I also want for my car. I am planning to collect the GPS and car
data and answer the eternal question I have .. Which road to work is more
efficient in time and gas. :)

~~~
knd775
Why do you seem to be shadowbanned with two comments? Your first comment was
dead before I vouched for it, too.

~~~
myhay
To be honest I don't know... I'm usually just reading on HN, nothing else...

------
tnasemelward
I started a company that constructed booths which used 70 accurately sync'd
Pis with custom PiCams (fitted with lenses) to take pictures of human
subjects, for turning them into avatars like this:
[https://maintenancearistonalex.blogspot.com/2019/06/blog-
pos...](https://maintenancearistonalex.blogspot.com/2019/06/blog-post.html)

At the beginning of the project, I'd barely powered up the Pis I had
collecting dust in my drawer. By the end, I was a legitimate domain expert in
several niches within niches of Pi dark arts. For example, since Pis do not
have hardware clocks, you have to rely on NTP. However, you need to take pains
to make sure that each Pi is getting the same amount of voltage or else they
will run at different speeds. If you want to power 70 Pis in a constrained
space, you need to devise a customized power distribution system with adequate
heat venting.

[https://indesitmaintenance.blogspot.com/2019/06/blog-
post.ht...](https://indesitmaintenance.blogspot.com/2019/06/blog-post.html)

Due to the thin effect, voltage drops over distance, so the distance a Pi was
from the power would impact the voltage and therefore the speed. The major
breakthrough came when I realized that I could start with a high end power
supply outputting 14 volts and terminate each parallel line with a device
known as a UBEC. They are used primarily by drone enthusiasts to make
efficient use of battery packs.

A UBEC is designed to drop down a supply voltage to 5v without bleeding off
the excess voltage as heat. Since this could also describe a fuse, we felt
comfortable bypassing the Pi's MicroUSB power supply and attaching the UBEC's
pins directly to the top pins on the Pi's GPIO breakout.

That's just a tiny example of the hijinx. The Pi is an incredible tool if
you're patient and clever.

What a rollercoaster.

------
anfractuosity
[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-
christmas-...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-christmas-
tree/) \- A little project I created to 'paint' my Christmas tree lights.

[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/diy-inline-
refractome...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/diy-inline-
refractometer/) \- I'm currently working on an inline refractometer using a pi
zero to capture the output and attempt to convert to a digital reading.

[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/wildlife-
camera/](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/wildlife-camera/) \- I've also
got a pi zero setup in an IP68 case, with waterproof USB cable, to capture
wildlife in the garden.

This uses a simple script using picamera, to detect motion and record video,
which I then just rsync to my laptop. I tried to use a PIR sensor, but alas
the casing seemed to block IR. I'm planning on using a doppler radar sensor
instead at some point.

------
dpcan
Ours ran various things in our escape rooms:

1) I ran a browser in kiosk mode with a mouse that was used with some custom
software on a computer in the room.

2) We had it connected to a remote keypad that opened a magnetic lock, popping
a drawer open, when the sequence was correctly entered.

3) We had one connected to a magnetic sensor that would open another cabinet
when items were placed correctly.

4) I ran the clocks and hint systems in the rooms from RPi's as well, which
allowed me to run mini web servers on them that I would access from the
control room to mess with the time if the game called for it, or to send hints
in to the rooms, or to trigger sounds or videos.

5) Finally, we ran our lobby slideshow system with one, and also played our
orientation videos on them.

Yes, we could have used Arduino for some of these, but I always liked RPi's
because I could SSH into them to do the resets or to trigger the doors
remotely if needed from my computer at the control center.

~~~
hosteur
I'm currently working on developing an escape room environment using RPis as
well. I would love to hear details about how you set yours up. Any way to get
in touch?

------
vitomd
A security camera outdoors (connected to another webcam outdoor), when there
is motion it will send a request to another indoor raspberry (node server)
connected to a speaker and will play the sound of an angry dog. The system is
working fine for more than a year without breaks. Raspberry is robust.

~~~
sdfin
Interesting. Would you recommend some brand of security cameras that work well
for this kind of projects. Where I live the more popular brands are Dahua and
Hikvision. Maybe I have to look for a certain communication protocol, rather
than for a special brand.

~~~
vitomd
In my case the security camera is also a raspberry pi with the camera module
(it could have night vision), connected with a webcam logitech c170 (really
cheap) and the motion software to detect movement ([https://github.com/Motion-
Project](https://github.com/Motion-Project)).

~~~
erklik
If its a raspberry pi with a camer amodule, then why is there a need for the
webcam? Sorry if I am misunderstanding.

~~~
vitomd
To have 2 cameras. 1 the raspberry pi camera, the other the usb webcam.

------
gatesphere
I had one of the original 2012 Model B's (with the 256MB RAM) serving as a
simple web server for years. I just recently retired it in favor of a VM.

Other than that, I have:

\- A RetroPie attached to my living room TV

\- A Zynthian ([http://zynthian.org/](http://zynthian.org/))

\- A PiDP-11
([https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11](https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11))

In the past, I've played around with them, making:

\- A touch-screen enabled stand-alone SunVox synth

\- A home audio server attached to my stereo

\- An experiment to read MIDI files from floppy disks, also attached to the
stereo

I have a couple spares laying around waiting for use cases... but I'm not
really antsy to get to them. I'd love to build an OTTO
([https://github.com/topisani/OTTO](https://github.com/topisani/OTTO)) when
it's ready for prime time. I'm also considering building some sort of portable
RetroPie.

------
barryfandango
Squeakernet FLP is not a cat feeder, it's a feline lifestyle platform. Current
features are largely focused on kibble deployment though.

[https://github.com/buzzcola/squeakernet/](https://github.com/buzzcola/squeakernet/)

~~~
elitistphoenix
You look like the author of this? Could we get some more info on the scale and
dispenser please?

~~~
barryfandango
Yes, I'm the author. Happy to share.

The dispenser is a "dry food/cereal dispenser" like the kind you would see at
a hotel breakfast bar. They can be found on amazon in various configurations.
(e.g.
[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dry+food+dispenser&ref=nb_sb_noss...](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dry+food+dispenser&ref=nb_sb_noss_2)).
A continuous-rotation servo is attached to the crank, allowing the Raspberry
Pi to turn the crank to dispense food.

The scale is a cheap kitchen scale (also amazon, I think mine cost $9.) These
scales contain a device called a Load Cell. I cut the four wires to the load
cell (bypassing all the other electronics in the scale) and ran them to an
HX711 chip, which can be had for a few dollars. If you google "raspbery pi
hx711" you can see the people's instructions on how to make a Pi scale for
various reasons (weighing people, luggage, etc.)

So the scale, the dispenser, the servo, and Pi Zero are put together with a
few pieces of wood. Most of the work has been getting the software side
working.

Hope this helps!

------
WhompingWindows
I'm totally naive with Raspberry Pi..can someone comment on the following
project: Is it possible to put a glass eye behind a portrait of a one-eyed
pirate and make its eye move around/follow whoever enters the room? A friend
has a glass eye but nothing to do with it.

~~~
amingilani
Lemme think. A camera that observes the room from the portrait, anyone that
walks in is a dot on a plane, and it points the eye at the point on the plane.
Should be doable. Yes, the Pi should handle that fairly easily.

The part that you'll have to figure out is making the eye ball rotate. There
are GPIO pins on the Pi, so you can get the commands out, but you'll need to
build the eyeball component yourself.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Probably not. Servocity has x-y gimbal controllers. If you can find one small
enough, it could control the eye.

------
RubberShoes
I run a grid of about 250 Pi 2 and 3s across several offices and datacenters.
They are the backbone of our graphics playback system (i.e. slates) and low
latent IPTV system. Users can subscribe to any channel necessary without
expensive re-encoding or RF antenna systems. I absolutely love them and 4k60
HEVC is a huge upgrade for the 4!

~~~
elcomet
Wouldn't it be less expensive and simpler to buy a few real servers ?

~~~
RubberShoes
Not at all. $35 for a pi and $200 for HDMI>SDI converter is significantly
cheaper than any media server with that many broadcast outputs.

For IPTV - each TV needs a decoder. Hard to beat $35 per set. Plus running our
own stack means we can tune for latency unlike an app on Roku/ATV

------
Rebelgecko
Use a small software defined radio to listen to ADS-B messages (real time
airplane telemetry— even with a crappy $10 USB SDR dongle I can sometimes see
planes that are 100+ miles away)

Host my website (if I ever got any actual traffic it might be a problem, but
since 99% of the traffic is me it's ok)

Various web scraping/archival tasks

~~~
KingFelix
I have been working on my own hosting as well and I wonder where the tipping
point is, and if it's in regard to multiple users at once, or just consistent
website hits?

~~~
Rebelgecko
For my use case (almost entirely static content), I think the bottleneck is SD
card IO. I can handle at least a dozen hits per second no problem though

------
amingilani
I used it to monitor ADSL device status[0], also created a DIY timecapsule for
MacOS[1] — these were all in the past, though.

Currently the Pi is on my roof, connected to an SDR. I sometimes run
rtl_server on it, and listen around. Although it's been a hassle, since I have
to run upstairs and disconnect it everytime there's a storm. Also, listening
to the device over WiFi means I get really laggy control over my SDR. I'm
planning on replacing the Pi with something better powered.

[0]:
[https://github.com/amingilani/scruffy](https://github.com/amingilani/scruffy)

[1]:
[https://github.com/amingilani/chronopill](https://github.com/amingilani/chronopill)

~~~
valent1ne
You could probably automate cutting the power with a relay switch also
connected to the pi. Just scrape weather data, and if you expect the storm,
trigger the switch.

~~~
amingilani
I'm actually more concerned about lightning strikes hitting the antenna,
frying the Pi, traveling down the Ethernet cable and frying my router. I'm
still a ham in training but I've been told that it's best practice to
disconnect the antenna and isolate it from your setup. Some hams as far as
placing their connectors in glass jars.

I don't want to use a relay on the antenna cable because 1) it'll pick up RF
interference, and 2) if a direct strike hits it, there'll be enough energy to
jump the gap in the relay anyways.

I might figure out a more permanent solid-state solution in the future though.
Like I said, still learning :)

~~~
wrycoder
Ground the antenna.

~~~
amingilani
That is easier said than done, unfortunately. I live in a developing country.
My house does home have a home grinding rod.

------
secure
I control my home automation:
[https://github.com/stapelberg/hmgo](https://github.com/stapelberg/hmgo) for
sensors and valve drives, [https://github.com/stapelberg/zkj-nas-
tools/tree/master/avr-...](https://github.com/stapelberg/zkj-nas-
tools/tree/master/avr-x1100w) controls multimedia devices,
[https://github.com/stapelberg/zkj-nas-
tools/tree/master/dorn...](https://github.com/stapelberg/zkj-nas-
tools/tree/master/dornr%C3%B6schen) orchestrates backups.

I run one as an appliance hooked up to my document scanner which places the
documents on Google Drive:
[https://github.com/stapelberg/scan2drive](https://github.com/stapelberg/scan2drive)

I run two more for automatically testing new releases of
[https://gokrazy.org/](https://gokrazy.org/)

All of this is implemented in Go on top of
[https://gokrazy.org/](https://gokrazy.org/), without any Linux distribution
in the mix :).

------
supernova87a
I don't have a project yet -- but one I'm really interested in is having a
Raspberry Pi run and store historical data from an air quality (particle)
measurement sensor. I'm hoping to measure how the air quality outside my home
(near a freeway) changes during the day and night with traffic, and also how
the indoor air quality is impacted.

It outputs UART 9600 baud data ([https://sensing.honeywell.com/honeywell-
sensing-particulate-...](https://sensing.honeywell.com/honeywell-sensing-
particulate-hpm-series-datasheet-32322550)).

Does anyone have a good link to some simple guides / advice on how to run such
devices using a RPi?

Thanks!

~~~
weaksauce
Uart is just serial, you’d connect it to your serial pins on the pi and read
serial from Linux like normal. Data is whatever the protocol Honeywell is
using. Could be any range of things sent in a predictable pattern. Could be
timestamp,temp,air quality,status, and then some kind of delimiter like
newline or eor. Note the pi devices use 3.3 volts instead of 5 so you have to
make sure Honeywell is not sending too much voltage as a logical high. There’s
probably an easy way to convert it though using a voltage devider.

How much do those sensors cost?

~~~
klodolph
Minor clarification: UART is “just serial” but when people say “serial” they
usually mean RS-232 or RS-422, and these don’t use 0V / 5V like you would for
5V logic. They use anywhere from 3-25V signals, with positive voltages for
zeroes and negative voltages for ones. Your PC, if it has a serial port on it,
probably sends around +/\- 13V (this is typical, IIRC).

So don’t hook up 5V logic parts to a serial interface. If you look at RS-232
interface chips they have integrated charge pumps and external capacitors to
generate the Tx voltages from Vcc.

------
mindcrime
I have one set up with the RetroPi distribution, that I carry around with me,
along with two USB game-pad controllers, so I can engage in retro-gaming
wherever I'm at (assuming there's an HDMI display available).

I'm also dabbling with embedding one in the gutted out shell of an old boom-
box, and making it a portable Alexa-like "smart speaker" of sorts. Looking at
using something like Mycroft[1] or something of that ilk.

But outside of running Mycroft or whatever, I want to load this thing down
with sensors (microphone, webcam, GPS, SDR, accelerometer, temperature,
humidity, ultrasonic, infrared, whatever I can) and stream the data to a
server where I can do more intensive AI related work. The idea is that this
thing is the front-end to experimenting with "embodied AI" and having an AI
"thing" that can really sense and experience it's environment.

This whole thing is very incipient, but I'm looking at seeing what I can do
with something like OpenCOG, or SOAR or ACT-R, coupled with various ML
techniques, to give this thing some level of smarts.

[1]: [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

------
Perceptes
I have several of them:

* 1 original model that runs pi-hole for the household

* 1 RPi 3 running RetroPie for emulating classic video games

* 1 RPi 3 connected to an official RPi touch screen display that runs a Home Assistant UI

* 4 RPI 3s running as a Kubernetes cluster, mostly just for the fun of setting it up, but I have a few odd jobs that run on them, such as chat bots

I don't have a picture of the cluster all hooked up, but this is what it looks
like without any cables attached:
[https://twitter.com/jimmycuadra/status/846935997619200000](https://twitter.com/jimmycuadra/status/846935997619200000)

~~~
diehunde
How difficult was to setup the cluster using kubeadmin? did you run into too
many issues because memory, cpu, etc?

~~~
Perceptes
It's been a while so the details are not fresh in my mind, but it wasn't the
easiest thing in the world. I think most of my trouble came from the general
lack of polish on Kubernetes (from a cluster operator's perspective) than from
the specifics of the Raspberry Pi. One thing I remember clearly is that
kubeadm has completely failed to upgrade k8s from one minor version to the
next every time I've tried it. I always end up just saving my k8s resources,
blowing away the cluster, creating a new one, and resubmitting the resources
to the new cluster.

------
thedjinn
I built a guitar stomp box using a Raspberry Pi Zero to trigger samples with a
foot switch. Runs on 9 volts and has a very bright OLED display so I can still
see what it's doing when I'm playing in a dark venue.

~~~
unforswearing
I have been thinking about doing something similar -- would love to hear more
about this if possible!

~~~
thedjinn
It's basically a Pi, a buck regulator, a tiny COB USB audio interface and an
SSD1306-based 128x32 display. Removed all connectors and replaced them with
soldered wires so it packs neatly into a tiny box.

The software is all custom and written in C, using Jack for low latency audio
and my own driver for the display (Adafruit makes a Python driver but it eats
half of your CPU and is not optimized for i2c bandwidth or high framerates).

------
youeeeeeediot
Running piAware for flight tracking

[https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/](https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/)

~~~
sucrose
Is there a benefit to personally tracking flights instead of querying 3rd
parties?

~~~
matthewmcg
Most of the services (FlightAware, Flight Radar 24, ADSB Exchange) get much of
their data from volunteer-operated receivers. If you feed your own data to
these networks, you get several benefits including multilateration capability
(computed location for planes that don't send their own GPS location data) and
free business accounts on FlightAware and Flight Radar 24.

------
chriscareycode
It's an addiction, I have 17 and a Pi4 on order

1 - (pi) pi - temperature sensor

2 - (pi) woody - garage door opener - custom web interface

3 - (pi2) white - Unicorn hat blinking lights

4 - (pi2) pi2b - OpenVPN server, pihole DNS

5 - RetroPi - Games (Pi 3)

6 - bigwood - Freeswitch phone system, Nagios4 (Pi 2 Model B v1.1)

7 - (pi) unicorn #2 - unicorn hat blinking lights

8 - pi2 motion - motion sensor, camera, blink(1) light- blink shows red or
orange when motion is sensed and takes photos

9 - Slack Bot - (at work)

10 - zero (on desk at home)

11 - green3 - camera - garage wide angle (old cam)

12 - infra - camera front door

13 - infra2 - camera garage wide angle

14 - infra3 - camera front door far view

15 - zerow-cam with infrared usb adapter displaying cameras on tv - change
cameras with remote control

16 - zerow-cam1 - camera back yard

17 - zerow-cam2 - camera back yard

18 - Pi4 4GB is backordered but I found a Pi4 2GB which I hope will serve well
as a file/backup server. Hoping to utilize the USB3 to get better I/O to a
couple external disks.

Running Bitwarden on a VM right now but will probably move this to a Pi4 in
the near future

I have all of these connected to a custom command-and-control web interface
(socket.io) where I can send commands, perform updates, monitor load average,
version, uptime - and can reboot if needed

------
fizzledbits
I used an ESP8266 and not the Pi for this, but a really really great m/c
project is a wireless fan controller for a smoker or kamado (big green egg-
style) grill.

I made mine from scratch as an learning exercise, but here’s a similar project
using the Pi: [https://github.com/michmike/Raspberry-
PI-Q](https://github.com/michmike/Raspberry-PI-Q) It’s

We use it to make, for example, this recipe (with some modifications of our
own) on a regular basis with a minimum of effort, and it is one of the most
breathtakingly delicious things I’ve ever tasted, let alone cooked myself. We
follow his instructions but hold to 180-190 deg until the meat reaches about
138, basting a few times with a honey+whiskey+thyme glaze; also be sure to use
a fatty salmon, like (in my experience) farmed atlantic, not sockeye.

[https://youtu.be/1zT8QBMEML8](https://youtu.be/1zT8QBMEML8)

------
sjs382
I have 4 running at home as servers:

\- an OctoPi server, which allows me to manage my 3d printer remotely.

\- a VPN

\- a Plex Server, serving media to my TVs and phone. I just ordered the new
4GB Pi4 to replace this one. I’l probably re-purpose it as an OctoPi-like box
for managing a CNC.

\- a seldom-used retro gaming box, that’s actually been mostly by a hacked
Playstation Classic

~~~
_zachs
Would you mind going into your Plex server setup a bit? I tried using a Pi
before but could barely get it to trasncode anything, and playback was
miserable. Now I'm using a Kimsufi server, but I'd prefer to have a locally
running server (that isn't my main PC) as my Plex media server

~~~
sjs382
If you have total control of the media files and the clients, you can avoid
transcoding altogether.

Everything on my server plays on all of my clients without transcoding. From
what I understand, an “Atomic Pi” is inexpensive and can handle a few
transcodes at once, if that’s a requirement of yours.

------
RobertRoberts
Media player connected to tv. (Kodi or Elec, I can't recall which)

What I found really neat about this is that if you use the HDMI connection,
there is some automated setup/control that allows my tv remote to control the
PI. (through the HDMI connection)

But also, the smart phone app for Kodi remote control added a new layer of
interaction with the media player that is just sort of unique and unexpected.
(everything worked so easily)

~~~
colechristensen
The remote control tech is CEC.

[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control)

~~~
RobertRoberts
Thanks, forgot what it was, and didn't have time to dig around in the docs
where I first ran into it.

The fact that this is not widely advertised as a feature is surprising. It
made remote control automatic instead of having to hack something together.

------
glenscott1
I installed the Pi-hole ad blocker ([https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-
hole.net/)) on a Raspberry Pi Zero, and have it as my DNS server on my home
network. It has improved general browsing speed tremendously.

------
sbouma
A few years ago some of my coworkers used a Raspberry Pi to instrument our
work foosball table. They had badge readers so all the players could badge in,
and IR sensors for autoscoring. They found some open-source foosball
leaderboard software that they ran on the Raspberry Pi as well, so we had an
auto-scoring, auto-ranking foosball table. Best Raspberry Pi project I've ever
seen :)

------
photoangell
I have several, I use them for multiroom audio with snapcast (mostly with USB
DACs although one has a DAC hat. Some have temp and humidity sensors, one has
the rpi cam. One has a always on vpn connection and transmission running. For
a while I used one with a Parsec client and cloud gaming. However, I use a
Odroid XU4 for all the big stuff (home assistant, NAS, nodered, mopidy, etc.)

------
olixr
At the moment I am using a few pi to control my garden systems. I just built
an open source system ([https://mudpi.app](https://mudpi.app)) to help manage
the sensors and relays. Actually gearing up for a launch soon.

Being able to regulate my watering and control it from my phone as been
awesome. The whole thing emits events with sensors on redis so its open for
systems to hook on top of it. Pi was the ideal choice to keep inital costs
low. The amount of power you get for the price is pretty sweet.

The other pi is running the same code moderating lights on a basement shelf of
plants too.

The last pi I am using retro pi to play some old school roms.

------
fsargent
My wife and I went to Paris, and in our AirBnB there was a fantastic little
radio. We'd turn it on and listen to Radio FIP and just leave it going. I had
forgotten the pleasure of listening to what was on, rather than picking, or
worse, skipping songs. I hooked up my raspberry Pi to a small LED header with
directional buttons on it. Each button was a different french radio station's
m3u stream, output to speakers. It perfectly simulated the radio. I want to
put in a delay where it would be time synched with California so the theme is
more aligned (slow night time music at lunch is noticeable).

------
llamataboot
1) PiHole

2) Wired one into a rotary phone to make a weird steampunky smarthouse
controller (Dial '0' to turn off all downstairs lights and music, etc)

3) Various LED controls for fun, and Christmas

4) Always experimenting with MycroftAI to stay away from Alexa

~~~
Gabriel_Martin
2 sounds amazing

~~~
llamataboot
Thanks!

A first version of the code is on github:
[https://github.com/estiens/confessional_booth](https://github.com/estiens/confessional_booth)

It was originally part of a confessional booth taken to Burning Man in 2015.
Since then it has evolved and become part of my smart home stuff.

I was intimidated when I started as it was my first "hardware" project, but
the rotary phone part was pretty easy! Just a little switch that turns on and
off the number of times of the number dialed basically.

It actually has a (new) microphone wired into the mouthpiece and it uses the
receiver original speaker ired to the pi sound output.

(At the time I knew nothing about Linux so I think getting pulseaudio working
correctly took as long as everything else!)

Those aren't working currently, but eventually I plan to integrate both the
rotary dials and voice recognition and "scenes"

So like, dial "721" for light control. Voice: "And what are we doing with the
lights today..." Me: "Make the outside light purple" and it is done.

I have custom voice recongition for things like that working with Mycroft, so
it will just be a matter of joining the two projects!

~~~
llamataboot
As a bonus, since it was originally designed to work in the desert without a
screen, it can do things via a weird analog interface. For example, if I press
the hangup button 10 times in a row and then dial a number, I can get a report
of how much memory is left on the device, etc.

------
cronix
Some use them to get into NASA, so, pretty useful.

> The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) this week
> confirmed that its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been hacked. An audit
> document from the U.S. Office of the Inspector General was published by NASA
> this week. It reveals that an unauthorized Raspberry Pi computer connected
> to the JPL servers was targeted by hackers, who then moved laterally further
> into the NASA network.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264774)

------
Notorious_BLT
1\. PiHole (seems popular in this thread)

2\. OctoPrint for my printer (with a touchscreen because I hate using the
knob-based interface on the printer when I'm leveling the bed or doing
maintenance)

3\. Sitting on my desk because my Terraria server was freezing when saving the
world file. Might set it up for emulation in the living room

------
jon-wood
There's a thousand or so of them scattered around Europe which were the
foundation of the company I work at, acting as IoT hubs to communicate with
devices designed to alert insurance customers of floods, intrusion, and fire
in their homes. We hadn't ever really planned to get into building our own
hubs, but the RPi ecosystem meant that when we were forced into that corner on
short notice (thanks Smartthings for shutting down app approvals at the last
minute) we were able to go from zero to working product in a matter of weeks!

~~~
personjerry
the things network?

------
localhost
I use a RPi Zero W to run DakBoard:
[https://dakboard.com/site](https://dakboard.com/site) which my family uses to
organize our life.

I'm planning on adding another Pi as a Pi Hole device as an experiment in
parental controls via low TTL values to provide scheduled access to specific
DNS names. For example, my kid gets distracted beyond all that is reasonable
by Discord and I'd like to let him use Discord, but only at specific times.
Anyone with an interest in this, please let me know!

~~~
codealchemy7
You can probably run it on the same Pi Zero using screen? Am not sure if it
will have enough juice to run both though.

------
scottlocklin
Stratum-1 time server using a GPS module; was a pain in the neck to set up;
reminded me of the old days, compiling kernels on a 386, or building things on
Ultrix. Served its purpose for a trading project though.

I should probably do something else with it as its been gathering dust for
years now.

~~~
algaeontoast
Could you maybe go into more detail on your "trading project"? Very
interested!

------
evancordell
I run OSMC[0] which is really just raspbian + kodi + updates.

Because it's just debian, I also run homeassistant in a docker container
started with systemd.

I like this because:

\- OSMC ensures it boots into kodi and keeps kodi up to date

\- systemd/docker makes it very easy to manage my homeassistant config by
scp'ing a new image over to the pi.

Nothing out of the ordinary given the other responses here, but thought I'd
share because it's been an especially stable setup for me.

[0]: [https://kodi.wiki/view/OSMC](https://kodi.wiki/view/OSMC)

------
ultrasounder
In the process of moving our Hardware Test infrastructure(Think Selenium for
testing hardware)over from Windows SBC based solutions to a R-Pi-Zero based
solutions. Applications range from driving stepper motors, sensors and
generating pass/fail results. The inital investment is in porting all the code
written for Windows to embedded linux but the investment pays off in the long
run in cost minimized by moving away from a Windows desktop. Will do a write
up of how i achieved it once i have some concrete results.

------
la_barba
I'm using mine as a kitchen computer to lookup stuff online. Not exactly a Pi,
but I used a adafruit feather to detect vibrations. I used it for landscape
photography with a super telephoto lens where I wanted to be able to detect
vibrations before firing off a bracketed shot.

------
sirLoaf
I created a toilet bot for our office. We only have one toilet, which caused a
lot of people to walk to the toilet to check if it's free. I connected the
Raspi with GPIO door controller and created a python script which makes use of
the UCWA library from skype for business and hooked it to a blynclight (status
indicator). Now ever coworker can add a specific contact to his Skype for
Business favorites and will immediately see if the toilet is free or occupied.

------
tomxor
Turned a Pi 1 into a DHCP server at work to replace failed windows server.

Got a Pi Zero at home, but only used it to play with GPIO and i2c, i like to
poke around in drivers to get more insight into how different hardware
interfaces and protocols work over these interfaces.

------
epmaybe
I'm using a Raspberry Pi (Gen 1, Model B I think) to run a smart mirror. It
pulls up my daily commute, news headlines, weather, and calendar. I take no
credit for the software
([https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror](https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror))

I also had one connected to my Motorola LapDock back in 2012 to run a portable
raspbian laptop. It worked surprisingly well.

~~~
drieddust
This is a cool project I was completely unaware of.

------
NamTaf
I've got a 3b+ and a 1b, and whilst only the 3b is in use currently, I have
plans for the other.

The 3b runs libreelec for a tv in my bedroom. I found my 1b to be too slow for
this, but the 3b+ does admirably.

The 1b, I hope to repurpose into a couple of services:

1) a pihole for my home network

2) a Wireguard VPN for connecting my phone back to my home network.

This is all sort of waiting on me getting usable internet, because my 700kbps
upload currently sort of makes it pointless. However, I'd like to do this once
I have better internet so I can use my phone as if I'm on my home network.
This will provide me with several benefits:

1) I will be able to stream media when travelling for work

2) My phone will benefit from the pihole even when out and about

3) I will be able to control my home network as if at home

4) It will provide another endpoint for hurdling the GFW when I work in China

I hope to start all of this next year, once I move house or when I finally
receive a proper internet connection rolled out to my place. If the 1b is too
weak for those services, then I will probably repurpose it into some sort of
automation system for watering plants, since once again due to work travel I
routinely have to lug them over to relatives' houses whenever I'm away for a
week or more.

------
Centrino
I'm a ham radio operator and I run a WSPR beacon using a RPi, a TAPR-QRPi
shield, the WsprryPi software and a random wire antenna. The RPi generates an
HF signal on GPIO_4 at around 14 MHz (20 meter short wave band), the TAPR-QRPi
shield filters out the harmonics and amplifies the carrier to around 200
milliwatts. Using a 12 feet wire on my balcony I get automated reception
reports from 300 to 2800 miles away.

------
kefabean
1) barcode scanner to put products in my online supermarket’s shopping cart

2) security cam to do facial recognition and drop me an email

3) general purpose remote control website/api for turning things on/off such
as tv, amp, dac (typical things that need hw integration: ir blaster, 433mhz
sockets, 12v trigger voltage etc). Recently discovered APIs integrate quite
nicely with Apple’s iOS ‘Shortcuts’ app for poor man’s voice control!

------
undersuit
I have a RPi2 running as an NFS server. I have a RPi0W with a camera streaming
video to said NFS server. I have a RPi1(256MB) in the bathroom streaming music
from the aforementioned NFS server. I have a RPi0 attached to the USB port of
my router running PiHole.

And then I have a shelf of other Pis doing nothing, but you know, one day I
will finish all those projects...

------
bArray
Our Raspberry Pi 3 B is the core processing unit for our humanoid robotics
platform [1]. This is in the context of the RoboCup competition [2]. With it
we run:

* Vision - A custom CNN using YOLO [3], where we are able to process a 256x256 (input is scaled) at 10fps to detect bounding boxes for balls and goal posts

* Localization - Kalman filter (mainly currently used for tracking rotation)

* Networking - Game controller (referee) [4], team communication [5] and a debug interface [6]

* Behaviour - A hybrid state machine

* Walking - Inverse kinematic walk with a balance system [7]

Feel free to ask questions. We plan to open source everything (everything) in
a month to two months.

[1] [https://humanoid.science/](https://humanoid.science/)

[2] [https://www.robocup.org/](https://www.robocup.org/)

[3] [https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/](https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/)

[4] [https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-
TC/GameController](https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-TC/GameController)

[5] [https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-
TC/mitecom](https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-TC/mitecom)

[6]
[https://github.com/hellerf/EmbeddableWebServer](https://github.com/hellerf/EmbeddableWebServer)

[7] [https://github.com/Rhoban/IKWalk](https://github.com/Rhoban/IKWalk)

EDIT: Bullet points on different lines

~~~
gchokov
A+ for effort

------
MarcScott
I work for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in the Education team.

We're always on the look out for new ideas and projects to turn into learning
resources.

If anyone would like to share their code, wiring diagrams and setup processes,
then please feel free to email me.

marc@raspberrypi.org

~~~
MrsPeaches
Thanks for sharing your details!

We are working on an educational charge controller for students in sub-Saharan
Africa.

We are currently using an Arduino but I think the Raspberry Pi would be a goot
fit as well.

You can read more details on our website:
[https://localelectricity.org/](https://localelectricity.org/)

I'll drop you an email with more details.

------
aib
An instrument/sculpture thing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZswBIsfhVpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZswBIsfhVpg)

------
zlalanne
I have one hooked up to my TV on an HDMI port to display all my home
surveillance cameras in a grid. Works with any cameras that support RTSP.

[https://selfhostedhome.com/raspberry-pi-video-
surveillance-m...](https://selfhostedhome.com/raspberry-pi-video-surveillance-
monitor/)

------
codetiger
I used my Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to control all Fish tank equipments remotely. We
live in a city (Chennai, India) and my family usually goes to our native for 2
months every year during summer vacation. During these times, it find it very
difficult to manage the equipments.

The Raspberry Pi controls 2 Lights, 2 Filter pumps, Cooler, Fish feeder, and
CO2 cylinder. Am planning to attach a camera and some sensors to the system as
well.

Right now, all these components are controlled by simple scheduling, but am
planning to extend the control through a server in future.

The Pi is connected to a 8-Relay board and is attached to a extension power
board. So this setup can control just any equipment.

Source Code:
[https://github.com/codetiger/AquariumControl](https://github.com/codetiger/AquariumControl)

~~~
TimeOutBoss
I always wanted an aquarium and this was the sole reason I never got one,
thanks I'll look into it.

Can you tell what are your equipements and whats the setup like? (sorry, if
already mentioned in github I can't open at work)

~~~
codetiger
The config file in GitHub already has the schedule for each component.

Equipements: 1\. Lights 2 (One for plants and another colour LED light that
came by default with the tank) 2\. Filters 2 (One Canister filter and another
top filter) 3\. Cooler 4\. CO2 cylinder 5\. Fish feeder (Built myself)

Currently, some equipment are always ON but planning to allowing to control
remotely in future for triggering automated maintenance routine.

The Pi is controlling an power extension box using a 8 relay module.

------
codingdave
I just set up pi-hole on one this weekend. It was my first time trying a
Raspberry Pi, and I loved it. With the news about the latest version and the
improved specs, I'm considering setting up a couple to replace my kids'
computers, which are all old and under-powered.

------
coverclock
I do embedded, real-time and distributed product development for clients in
the commercial, enterprise, aviation, defense, and big science domains. I
probably own two dozen Pis of various vintages (and just ordered one of the
new Pi 4 models). It's my go-to platform for prototyping, especially for ARM-
based systems. I keep one on my LAN just to regression and unit test software
that I otherwise developed on an Intel platform. I've also used Pis in devices
that are more-or-less permanently deployed, like an NTP server that uses a
GPS-disciplined chip-scale cesium atomic clock as its oscillator, and a home-
built WWVB clock. I'm currently using three Pis in a Differential GNSS system
I'm prototyping.

------
mr_mitm
I use one with an extra wifi card as a wireless router. I'm living in hotels a
lot and sometimes I find their wifi too restrictive. The built-in wifi card
connects to the hotel wifi and the external wifi card acts as an access point
to which all my other devices connect to. This way I only need to pass the
captive portal once (and only pay for one device ...) and I can enable a VPN
to my home router in case I want to use Netflix or Amazon Prime in a foreign
country.

Another raspberry pi I turned into a listening device to analyze and modify
traffic. I call it Lauschgerät: [https://github.com/SySS-
Research/Lauschgeraet](https://github.com/SySS-Research/Lauschgeraet)

------
steve_b
I use it do Anki on my bike ride to/from work. Wrote some scripts in Python.
They take my deck, convert it to speech using IBM Watson’s TTS. Then i made a
small PCB with 4 buttons that is fixed to the handle bar. That way I can
interact with the program.

------
ryandrake
Mine is running in my attic, hooked up to three antennas on my roof:

1\. A GPS antenna which provides an accurate “stratum 0” time source. The pi
runs ntpd and provides time for all devices on my network.

2\. A home built ADS-B antenna for receiving position reports from local
aircraft and airliners. Interfaces to the pi with a USB SDR. Pi runs dump1090
to provide a web visualization of local air traffic. I also feed FlightAware
with this info.

3\. A home built VHF antenna for listening to airband transmissions. Second
SDR. Pi runs scanner software and an IceCast server for clients on my network
to connect and listen.

The pi also has a temperature sensor that logs once a minute so I can plot my
attic’s temperature and I can have it alert me if it gets too hot.

------
Fradow
At one point, I figured I wanted some lighting for my bar, which consists of
about 70 bottles on shelves (about 1.2m wide and 2m height).

But a simple on/off is not good enough. Instead, I went with individually
addressable LEDs (NeoPixels strips to be exact), and developped my own back-
end to manage those LEDs, with a simple front-end.

So far, it supports lighting bottles individually, by category (rum, vodka
etc...) and some simple animations across the whole bar.

It's a nice ambient lighting, and it serves as a show-off for guests.

Plus the whole thing runs on a second-hand computer power-supply. The Pi runs
on the power-supply power-on line so that when no LED is on, the main power-
supply is shutdown to reduce electricity consumption.

~~~
fisle
That sounds super cool, I'd love to see some pictures if you have any!

------
senotrusov
I use Raspberry Pi 2 to synchronize files across my ubuntu/macos/windows
machines, backup them into the encrypted backup and then upload that backup
offsite.

I use syncthing to synchronize files. It's fast, stable, cost me nothing and
the only limit I have is the size of my disks.

Syncthing is decentralized, that means that two machines have to be powered on
at the same time to be able to perform sync. Raspberry Pi allows me to have
that always-on machine at home which is small, quiet and unnoticeable in my
electricity bill. Syncthing works across internet bypassing NAT thanks to the
community-ran relays (I also run one of them). I could take my laptop
everywhere and file changes will still reach my Raspberry Pi.

I hook up an external Seagate USB HDD and it runs just fine without an extra
power source. Syncthing keeps up-to-date copy of all my files on that external
HDD.

I use borg-backup to take hourly snapshots of my files. Those snapshots are
encrypted and I upload them offsite without any worries that some cloud
provider could possibly read them. I use rclone for that, it can interface
with a number of cloud providers out there. It just take your files and one-
way sync them into the cloud.

The setup of rclone and borg-backup is not particularly complicated but still
requires some time. Directories, encryption keys, periodic jobs have to be
configured. I abstracted all that into one script which is a bit opinionated
but works for me. That script can be run on Linux on on MacOS. I used my Mac
for that before Raspberry Pi. It uses system or launchd to run periodic jobs
[https://github.com/senotrusov/backup-
script](https://github.com/senotrusov/backup-script)

I installed Ubuntu server on that Raspberry Pi to have familiar environment.

Sadly Raspberry Pi lacks secure boot and have no internal TPM functionality.
My external HDD is encrypted but I can't trust Raspberry Pi to hold the
encryption key. In rare event of reboot I have to ssh in and manually enter
the LUKS key.

This setup is still prone to an evil maid attack as someone could replace or
modify the SD card to log that key. That scenario is highly unlikely as I am
no particular interest to anyone. What is slightly more realistic is that
someone could brake into my house to steal stuff. For that my data is secure
as the key is lost the moment you power off the Raspberry Pi.

Overall I'm pretty happy with that setup. My Raspberry Pi slowly blinks with
it onboard red LED to indicate that all that services run well and alarms me
with fast blinks if something is not right.

------
mvip
I got a bunch of them running Screenly
([https://www.screenly.io](https://www.screenly.io)), so I'd say that's a good
use :)

Also, I'm using PiHole and Home Assistant.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Screenly.

------
ohazi
I use one as a hub/gateway for untrusted IoT devices.

It hosts a separate, isolated wifi network via hostaod/dnsmasq. Clients aren't
given routes to the primary network or the broader internet - they should only
see the Pi and other clients (I'd eventually like to restrict access to other
clients as well, but haven't played with that yet).

Access to the devices is via a web server running on the Pi that relays
commands and responses. Right now it's a page full of hard-coded buttons and
indicators, but I eventually want to turn it into a flexible firewall-like
system to make it easier to add/configure/remove clients and rules.

------
georgeecollins
I got an AdaFruit servo hat and I use it to drive my hexapod. I used to use a
Propeller and then an Arduino. My next project is to integration some vision
recognition into my robot. I am planning on using a Jetson Nano for the vision
part, but I believe switching to a Pi for the robot was a helpful
precondition. I haven't decided if I will just use the Nano to control the
robot or use it as a visual co-processor with the Pi.

Old video of my hexapod below. Still works great though, because it is really
sturdy.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=121DuXM5tYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=121DuXM5tYE)

------
gus_
I've been always fascinated with sunrises and sunsets, so I built a picam to
take timelapses:

[https://hackaday.io/project/28694-yet-another-raspberry-
pica...](https://hackaday.io/project/28694-yet-another-raspberry-
picam/details)

youtube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkH0MTHo-
LlxOL_W_3Qeq9Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkH0MTHo-LlxOL_W_3Qeq9Q)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/bentretea_picam/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bentretea_picam/)

------
PenguinCoder
I have a pi3 setup as a garage door opener. It's wired to two, 4 channel
relays (only use two relays), one for each garage door. A simple php page that
can be accessed and a big icon 'lressed', triggers the gpio to switch the
relay. This opens or closes the door. I set this up because I got tired of
replacing batteries in a garage door opener. This way,I just open the web page
on my phone and open the door. I also setup a few android Tasker jobs to
register when my phone connects to home wifi, and is also connected to my
vehicle Bluetooth. When that registers, it automatically opens the garage
door.

------
luckylion
Two things, working on more. VPN router and a doorbell to desktop-
notifications box. I like listening to music on noise cancelling headphones
sometimes when I work. I wouldn't hear the doorbell in that case, so I have a
pi with a mic that sits close to the doorbell. If the noise level goes past a
certain threshold for a few samples, it sends a command to my workstation
where a script sits and triggers a desktop notification. Works pretty well
with very few false positives and all "I might miss the package delivery guy"
anxiety is gone while I enjoy music.

------
rjmunro
We use it as a front end to our Church's AV system. It runs a GUI written in
Python with PySide that controls our cameras, hyperdeck recorder and vision
mixer.

It also controls the power switches for the system, and the blinds.

------
jsight
I use one running OpenWRT as a router. Its an old 3B, so it barely keeps up
now that our internet has been updated to 100Mbps. It will soon be replaced,
possibly with a pi 4. Of course, it also runs some other things.

I have OpenVPN running on it as well as a little nginx instance that I can use
for reverse proxying if need be.

And the wifi turned out to be surprisingly solid as a (slow) access point, so
I have sometimes used it as a Internet of Things Access Point with routing
rules to keep all of those devices off the internet.

Its a surprisingly powerful little network box even with its significant
limitations.

~~~
yumraj
Don't you need two Ethernet ports to use it as a router?

Are you using USB as the other Ethernet port?

~~~
jsight
Yes, you do need two and it does significantly limit throughput since both the
internal and external Ethernet adapters are routed through the same USB bus.
The 3B seems to top out at about 90Mbps. I'm not sure what the throughput on a
3B+ would have been, but I'm sure it would have been much lower than its
maximum of ~270Mbps.

Having said that, much of the US is restricted to <100Mbps internet and there
are some nice advantages to having a relatively powerful little computer
running right at the edge.

------
h4waii
1x Raspberry Pi 3B+ running OctoPrint, velcro-attached to my printer.

2x Raspberry Pi 2B running OSMC (with Kodi) for streaming from NAS to office
TV and living room TV.

1x Raspberry Pi Zero W running OSMC (with Kodi) for streaming from NAS to
bedroom TV.

Provided HEVC H265 decoding works as it should, I suspect I will eventually
upgrade all 3 of these to Model 4. They're great for a media center -- low
power, small, and provide a local-only player for TVs I don't want to connect
to any network.

Also have 2 OG B+ models that sit in a drawer unused, since they don't have
enough power for the above tasks.

------
sandreas
I use a Raspberry PI Zero / 3 together with a phat dac for a bluetooth audio
receiver / Airplay in my car:

Auto-Installer: [https://github.com/BaReinhard/Super-Simple-Raspberry-Pi-
Audi...](https://github.com/BaReinhard/Super-Simple-Raspberry-Pi-Audio-
Receiver-Install)

PhatDac (hardware): [https://www.amazon.com/Pimoroni-24-bit-192KHz-Sound-
Raspberr...](https://www.amazon.com/Pimoroni-24-bit-192KHz-Sound-
Raspberry/dp/B019U9VC9E/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=phat+dac&qid=1561436473&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

Alternative (hardware): [https://www.amazon.com/Audio-AUDIO-Raspberry-Better-
quality/...](https://www.amazon.com/Audio-AUDIO-Raspberry-Better-
quality/dp/B00MDW602K/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=phat+dac&qid=1561436555&s=gateway&sr=8-2)

It can be controlled via buttons over bluez / dbus via infrared remote and
buttons:

Button Shim (hardware): [https://www.amazon.com/Pimoroni-PIM301-Button-
Shim/dp/B07HCP...](https://www.amazon.com/Pimoroni-PIM301-Button-
Shim/dp/B07HCPC8MP/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=pimoroni+button+slim&qid=1561436627&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

Bluez API:
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/bluetooth/bluez.git/tree/doc/...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/bluetooth/bluez.git/tree/doc/media-
api.txt)

DBUS control script: [https://github.com/sandreas/raspberry-bluetooth-
receiver/blo...](https://github.com/sandreas/raspberry-bluetooth-
receiver/blob/master/scripts/btapi.sh)

Unfortunately it is not possible to set playback position via dbus (see
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50190477/bluez-and-
dbus-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50190477/bluez-and-dbus-set-
track-playback-position-jump-to-position)), so rewind 30 seconds is not
possible atm.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
I don't know anything about Bluetooth. Does bluez always mount devices on
/org/bluez/hci0/dev_${DEVICE_NAME} ?

~~~
sandreas
Depending on your device... But for me it works with every audio capable
device i tried (iPod nano, iPhone SE, Android Moto G7)

------
RedNifre
I used a Raspberry Pi to solve the problem that the trash can in front of the
building where I lived was often overflowing when I tried to take out the
trash:

I connected a 20x4 character LCD to the Pi and put it next to the bathroom
mirror. The display displays some useful info: \- Estimated garbage can levels
(interpolated based on the trash calendar) \- weather forecast \-
cryptocurrency prices

So when I notice that the trash can level is low I can take out the trash
without troubles.

(These days I use my Pis for more simple things like RetroPie+Kodi and PiHole)

------
withinrafael
I use an older Pi with a USB DAC to bring in audio and data from my radio
scanners, for a slow-moving side project. Goal is to mux the audio with time
sensitive radio metadata, like talk group and location (surprisingly difficult
given messy state of formats, containers and playback options) and deliver
this to clients on the network for easy listening and other processing (e.g.
speech-to-text, mapping, etc.). Learned a bunch of gstreamer in the past half
year, hoping to pick this all back up with the Pi4.

------
chidea
Many hospitals in S.Korea adopted my rpi based system. It is a network
organized, synchronized, distributed video signage with weather/news web feeds
and touch screen based vision acuity tester integrations. The major key factor
in it is a framebuffer driver by pure python which is open sourced by myself
through Github.
[https://github.com/chidea/FBpyGIF](https://github.com/chidea/FBpyGIF)

Recent haul-over includes ESP8266 based remote power management.

------
elagost
I used mine as a NAS for a while with an external USB HDD and a samba share.
It was also set up to be a VPN and pi-hole. I have a pi zero that I use to
flash coreboot on laptops.

My PS3 isn't doing so hot as a media server client for my NAS's movie library
- the network connection is poor, the interface is fiddly, and it can't load
subtitles embedded in files. I was going to buy a pi3 to replace it as a media
server client and hook up an external DVD player, but now I'll be getting a pi
4!

~~~
KingFelix
Check out ROckPro64, I just set mine up. Running plex with an internal HDD on
a PCIex4, 6 core processor and 4gb ram. Using Dietpi, I am interested in
checking out the Pi 4 as well, but looks like it might be a few months until
its available

------
bitlax
1\. simple server for backup and git repos

2\. xbmc for videos on main tv

3\. retropie (I had fun with this for about a week but haven't used it lately)

4\. pihole for blocking ads and time-wasting sites

5\. various small projects: security camera, motorized window shade, etc.

I run Home Assistant on my desktop to communicate with a few of the other
devices in the house but I might move that over to a Pi so I don't have to
worry about restarts and performance. I'm thinking about consolidating this
setup somewhat but I'm waiting for my next move.

------
ge96
I have three always on

One Pi3B+ connected to anemometer and single solar cell, uploads up to 60 secs
of analog data reading every minute by CRON, then has other CROn stuff for
emailing

One Pi Zero for home security camera attached to motion sensor/rapid shutter
mode, uploads to S3 bucket

One Pi zero for reading HN news out loud in the morning by Amazon Polly,
tracking solar cells on window, and then more scheduling stuff

I have another one powered by USB, I intend to use it as "swappable dev stacks
by sd card" through USB SSH

------
swsieber
I'm working on turning it into a IR emitter to control some stuff that I have
that lack remotes. I have another I've loaded snips onto an will be
experimenting with soon - I'm currently using a PlayStation eye for the
experimentation, but will have to get a better microphone/speaker. I wish I
could hack a dot/echo/etc. and use their microphone/speaker, but meh, I'll
take what I can get.

Also, the IR pi will probably drive some ambient light as well.

~~~
shock
> I'm working on turning it into a IR emitter to control some stuff that I
> have that lack remotes

That's really neat. Please share some details – I was planning on buying a
Broadlink IR/RF device for that purpose.

------
speleding
I hooked up the raspberry pi to an old monitor I hung over the kitchen table.
It boots up shortly before dinner time for an hour and then displays "Find my
Friends" on Chromium in kiosk mode. (Inspired bij the Weasly family clock from
Harry Potter).

It's a fixture I couldn't live without anymore. When family members travel you
still feel connected. It has a tiny ruby script to rotate through pages,
during breakfast it displays the kids' upcoming class schedule.

------
NortySpock
I've got a RPi 2 running PiHole and a SAMBA server for a bit of in-home file-
swapping convenience. ("Just throw it on the server and I'll pull it from
there!")

Currently my problem is that samba will fail to write files greater than
around 100+ MB uploaded to the server. (Writing to a USB drive). It still
handles multi-gigabyte downloads ok.

I've been able to work around it with SFTP uploading, so it's just a minor
annoyance, but I wish I knew what was going on.

~~~
KingFelix
I have mentioned this is a few comments, check out the RockPro64, its got 6
core processor 4gb ram, and runs Dietpi. It has a PCIe port, you can install 2
sata drives. I just installed an SSD and it's awesome so far.

[https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/](https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/)

80 bucks for the 4GB, includes all the stuff on the new pi though. Interested
to see how the pi4 stacks up

------
phiresky
We hacked together an automatic door opening system controllable via
smartphone that notifies you on ringing and sends a video, then opens the
doors on button press with a Lego contraption [1].

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/bwdv36/a_smar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/bwdv36/a_smartphone_door_control_system_hacked_together/)

------
advertising
We used a few to power kiosk touch screens and other commercial display
applications using network broadcast video.

Made a seven screen display each with their own pi that sync’d individual
videos running on each to create some video art pieces.

Also made a bullet time rig with 15 pi’s and each with their own webcam. There
was a guy who did this already with lots of documentation but using his own
pi-interface hardware he created. We did it without the pi controllers.

------
linuxguy2
I use it to take up space in my drawer of useless electronic stuff because I
can never find a combination of power supply and SD card that doesn't
eventually end up corrupt and unbootable.

~~~
arbitrage
You could try not buying cheap components. Storing it in a drawer probably
doesn't help either.

~~~
icebraining
My drawers have been pretty good on my electronics. Where do you store them?

------
gvalkov
A device that waits for the SSID of my Olympus WiFi-enabled camera to show up
and then sync all new photos:

[https://github.com/gvalkov/olympus-photosync-
server](https://github.com/gvalkov/olympus-photosync-server)
[https://github.com/gvalkov/olympus-
photosync](https://github.com/gvalkov/olympus-photosync)

~~~
gchokov
That's cool!

------
ruuki
I pulled a prank at the office with my RPi.

I built a very simple circuit to listen to 5V pin of HDMI and I hid RPi and
the circuit under the desk of a colleague after work and turned off video
output of RPi. Colleague's laptop -HDMI> RPi -HDMI> external display. when the
colleague comes to work and turn on the laptop, my RPi turned on its video
output and external display showed the website I made for the occasion.

------
anonu
Some projects:

Easy Setup (Download and Run):

\- ADS-B decoder and transmitter to FlightAware

\- PiHole

Required More Coding:

\- PhotoBooth: Python script that monitored a special Gmail account and sent
attached images to a photo printer (Canon Selphy)

\- Upload to Dropbox: ScanSnap sheet-fed scanner, listened to scanner button
response, created PDFs, copied to DropBox

\- Data Collection Engine:

1\. Collected data from local sensors (temperature and humidity) in nursery.

2\. Collected periodic data from public APIs (NYC CitiBike)

3\. Captured time lapse images from nursery every 2 minutes.

------
lucb1e
I will use my first one to power a hard drive that I leave with family or
friends. They'll have a small box (mind the inclusion of an external hard
drive, still a relatively small box) with my off site back up, and I could
host the same for them.

This is after a failed plan to use it for Android TV (my girlfriend made the
mistake of picking a WebOS TV and I made the mistake of thinking it wouldn't
be so bad). The old one was just a little too slow and only did full HD
(honestly, it's fine, but if you have a 4k TV it feels kinda silly). Now that
the pi4 has a bunch more power and can do 4K at 60Hz, there is another chance
for this!

I'm also toying with the idea of using it for sensors. Battery powered air
quality sensor to see along my walking route (there is a narrow, busy car
passage that I'm curious about), or maybe measuring things like electricity or
heater usage in realtime. Having a graph showing you when it gets used a lot
might help identify some easy wins, since walking to the basement to check the
meter is a little cumbersome. But those are just ideas.

~~~
cameron_b
Regarding your mutual backup idea, I love this and I've wondered why this
hasn't taken off as a Thing in response to how many of us are untrusting and
DIYers in this era of cheap storage and bandwidth.

~~~
lucb1e
Indeed! I'm not sure why I don't already have three hard drives from friends,
it's 10x cheaper than S3 or Backblaze B2 or any such thing. I've had this idea
for years, but seeing that someone else built exactly this[1] while also
having time for it soon gave the idea another push.

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/7rjcdn/home_ma...](https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/7rjcdn/home_made_non_gmo_cruelty_free_offsite_backup/)

------
alvern
I've bought every board that comes out since the 2B. Most of them get gifted
to relatives as Kodi boxes. The three I currently use are a 3B that runs the
[0] LivPi CO2 and environment monitor, a zero W that has a noIR camera
pointing at my plants under lights, and a 2B+ that runs piHole.

I recommend the odroid [1] XU4 (desktop) or [2] HC1 (nas) if you have anything
that requires constant read writes. Pi SD cards do go bad over time unless you
set it to run the OS from memory. Odroid made a smarter choice going with eMMC
early on. The con of odroid is you have to hack everything that was already
done on a pi to work.

[0] [http://www.livpi.com/](http://www.livpi.com/)

[1] [https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special-
price/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special-price/)

[2] [https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc1-home-cloud-
one/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc1-home-cloud-one/)

------
lxe
I’m running a series of spaghetti-code scripts to trigger the lawn sprinkler
when a camera detects motion, and notify me with a gif using pushover.

~~~
marcuskaz
You kids get out of my yard!!

------
__lm__
My Raspberry Pi 3 works as a CUPS print server connected to a laser printer,
as a pi-hole DNS server to filter ads, and as a ssh entry point (with dynamic
DNS). I would use a Pi zero, but Ghostscript is not too happy when printing
large documents on a single-core processor with 512 MB of ram. I still have to
find the time to set-up a backup server on it (and decide which software to
use).

------
noamelf
I connected it to "dumb" computer speakers at my office and made it into a
Bluetooth sink so that everyone can use it to play music

~~~
captainmurvel
Any good guide on how to do this? I tried this a couple of years ago but got
stuck in that I always had to pair my handset every time I wanted to use it.

------
alanbernstein
I have 5 or more in my house, some bought, some inherited. One of them runs
pi-hole. I'm in the middle of setting up octopi for a new 3d printer on
another one. Two of the others are pi zeros (no wireless), no plan for those
any time soon. I also have one of the older models, RCA video output instead
of HDMI. I'm not sure I'll ever find a use for that one.

------
corporealshift
I build an RC (with the goal of making it autonomous) car. I got as far as
giving it edge detection:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-o8Uzi5o1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-o8Uzi5o1k)
but haven't continued the project. It's a great platform for exploring
controlling hardware and prototyping ideas!

------
ebrewste
A bunch: \- Ubiquiti network controller, Pi Hole \- Temperature controller to
knit an ancient hydronic in floor heater and a new-ish mini split together to
act in unison. Pings local national weather stations to get more accurate data
than I care to replicate at my home. \- Octoprint for my 3d printer \- 4x for
a hobby project stitching together video from multiple cameras

------
JackFr
Sits on a shelf and uses the NYC MTA NextBus API and flashes a LED when a bus
is 4 minutes away from the stop closest to my apartment.

------
dibarra21
I have several RPI... I have one that controls the roof of my remote astro
observatory, using some level converters drives relays to control two
whinchs... When I have to open the roof I launch a python script. I have also
another controlling the supplies of the mount, telescope, camera, focuser...
These pi's are really realiable (I use Raspian, no X)

------
codebudo
I'm using an RPi as the main compute module for an Autonomous Radio Controlled
Car. It's similar to a Donkey Car, but not using ROS (at the moment). Project
is documented here: [https://medium.com/@mikkelwilson/autonomous-rc-car-
part-0-6e...](https://medium.com/@mikkelwilson/autonomous-rc-car-
part-0-6e341de2a52d) (This is not a commercial project; just for fun)

I'm very interested to see how OpenCV 4 and YOLOv3 object detection will run
on the new RPi. At the current trajectory I will have to upgrade to a Jetson
Nano to get hardware acceleration (CUDA), but resorting to specialty hardware
seems like cheating.

They also make a great prototyping platform for IoT projects. I've built
802.11.4 (Zigbee) mesh radio networks for passing small messages across
neighborhood distances.

Previously I used an RPi to run an Airplay Bridge to my Sonos speakers. This
has since been supplanted by AirPlay 2, which Sonos supports.

------
fps_doug
I'm still using an old 1B (512MB version) for Kodi, almost on a daily basis.
Playing back stuff from an NFS share. I'm limited to 1080p but that's still
fine with me, I'd need a TV upgrade first anyways.

It's showing its age though, and I had to hack up some stuff to use it
properly:

I'm controlling Kodi via Yatse (Android app), and mostly just use the file
mode to browse Movies and TV shows. I have them sorted and named properly
anyways so that's not that much of an inconvenience to me. Using the fancy
views that show artwork and IMDB metadata is still working but a little to
slow.

But even in plain "file mode" Yatse was a little to slow and sometimes timing
out when listing directories with 200+ items. This is where the hacky stuff
comes to play: I built a simple proxy that intercepts the requests from Yatse
and modifies them, namely, when Yatse is listing a directory it sets some
field in the JSON that says "media type video" for example, when browsing for
videos (forgot what the key is called exactly; currently at work). So I simply
strip that key entirely from the request, and now listings take 1-2 seconds
for large directories.

While I was at it I also started to intercept links to youtube videos and
instead call youtube-dl to download them first and then have Kodi play them
back via NFS. This way I get 1080p instead of just 720p and also have a
history of everything I watched on YouTube, in case I can't find it anymore,
or it gets deleted etc. It's pretty brittle since it doesn't properly track
state or prevent you from triggering a second download while the first one is
still active, also if you request a 50min video it will take a while until
playback actually starts, since it needs to download it fully first. But at
least it recognizes if a video has already been downloaded and just starts
playback instantly. Turning this into a proper project is on my TODO list, but
that list is mighty long.

------
TigerAd
I have it set up to run a project where a subreddit has control over the
watering of a live plant in my apartment. The pi runs a reddit bot that reads
the votes, and can switch on a pump to water. It also collects data about
sunlight, moisture, temp and humidity to help inform the decision about
watering. Despite many people's preconceptions about the goodness of the
internet, I must admit that they do a wonderful job caring for my plant!

website:
[https://www.idealzanussiservice.com](https://www.idealzanussiservice.com)

subreddit w/ voting:
[https://www.idealzanussiservice.com/blog/%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%A7%...](https://www.idealzanussiservice.com/blog/%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B2%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%88%D8%B3%D9%89-%D9%81%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%A9)

------
axegon
Truth be told I have 5 or 6 raspberries. In all seriousness I think I'm
actively using 3:

* A rpi zero running several scripts(hooked to slack, telegram and a private mattermost server) to monitor the health of some production services at work from home(in case the network at work goes down and all the services there fail to notify the right people). Has never happened but having it makes sleep at night a tad better.

* Rpi 3 b for some throwaway code/testing/place to store stuff at home and using it as an access server to access my home network.

* Rpi 2 b pretty much glued to my parents' router so I can access the network at their place every time there's one of those "My computer is telling me something, what do I do?". I'm sure most of you are aware that those messages are surely gonna cause the end of the universe and need to be resolved as soon as possible and could not possibly wait 2 hours.

------
nonsens3
I stream live video (no audio) and watch how my dog chills at home while I am
at work :) Sometimes I catch him on the sofa!

------
capnnemo
I'm using a raspberry pi as a low latency server to organize and provide a
bridge between esp8266's that are running LP flame effects for Capn Nemos
Flaming Carnival. You know, for the kids! I've open sourced various aspects,
and though it's all a bit disorganized as it is primarily me that uses it, you
can find codey bits at
[https://github.com/burntech](https://github.com/burntech), and cool pictures
and links at
[http://capnnemosflamingcarnival.org](http://capnnemosflamingcarnival.org).
Yeah, it's kind of a Burning Man thing. But long term, I hope the tech can
serve as a small fast network that controls potentially timing critical things
(eg shutting off fire reliably, music-controlled effects, and etc.).

------
alistproducer2
I have two. The main reason I love them is I can leave them on all the time
using very little power. Our would be surprised how much u can supercharge
your home network by having always-on Linux boxes on it.

One runs nextcloud and serves as a nas. I use freeddns to give my nextcloud
instance a legit URL for free. I use letsencrypt to host my cloud over https,
again for free. The other runs emulationstation, deluge (torrent) which only
runs when the box is connected to a VPN running on a vps, and serves up my
movies and shows via minidlna.

I've also got some cool chron jobs that backup important stuff ((encrypted of
course) to Google cloud and do some other things. I also serve up a keepass
password database via webdav and do some neat stuff regarding keeping my
keyfile separate fr my internet facing box but I won't get into exactly how
that works.

------
pknopf
I use it as a test camera source.

[https://github.com/pauldotknopf/raspberry-pi-camera-
source/r...](https://github.com/pauldotknopf/raspberry-pi-camera-
source/releases/tag/2.0)

I can't wait for my Pi 4 to get in so that I can have a test 4k60 source.

~~~
datagram
I do the same thing with game footage to test my capture cards.

------
glup
Controller and logger (temperature, humidity, time lapse photos) for making
tempeh (90F oven).

[https://github.com/smeylan/tempeh/blob/master/tempehrature.p...](https://github.com/smeylan/tempeh/blob/master/tempehrature.py)

------
sdfjkl
It used to run kplex to bridge NMEA data (wind speed, depth soundings, boat
speed, etc.) from our SeaTalk network to TCP/IP. Now a GL-AR300M does the job
though, along with all the Wifi/GSM routing, saving one computer and power
(when running strictly off solar and batteries, this matters).

~~~
chris-metcalf
Have you by any chance documented how you did this, or could you link me to
where you learned how to set this up? This is actually one of the projects I
puttered on for a long time with one of my RPis (NMEA-2000 to SignalK) but
abandoned because I had too many moving parts.

~~~
sdfjkl
Been meaning to blog about it, but not got around to it yet. Essentially it's
just a (bunch of) USB-serial converters and the Seatalk data is converted by a
Raymarine E85001. If you have N2k, you need a different converter, e.g.
Actisense or better yet, a translator to NMEA0183, which is the de-facto
standard for NMEA over TCP/IP.

~~~
chris-metcalf
Yup, I've got an ActiSense NGT-1 that outputs NMEA 2000 PGNs on USB Serial
that I can decode with CanBoat: [https://github.com/chrismetcalf/canboat-
ansible](https://github.com/chrismetcalf/canboat-ansible)

You can tell by the age of the repo that I got a bit distracted... the
distraction just turned two years old.

------
abhinuvpitale
I have a pi with a small display that keeps generating inspiring/funny quotes
from various books that I have read.

[https://github.com/abhinuvpitale/goodreads-quotes-
raspberry-...](https://github.com/abhinuvpitale/goodreads-quotes-raspberry-pi)

------
carry_bit
Media center & TV PC. I have a 4 TB external hard drive connected to it (and
swap on it). Using a custom compiled kernel with zswap support, browsing the
web isn't that bad with the 1GB of RAM on the 3B.

I've also hooked up an RTL-SDR to it and ran rtl-tcp instead of needing to run
a long USB cord.

------
LarryMade2
The best use I have so far is for a local TV station have the Pi using a LAMP
stack to:

a) a Pubic Service Announcement slideshow it autoboots into chrome and hooks
in composite NTSC. Can be remotely managed, etc.

b) It also serves the station's website which previews the slideshow in a
frame, or has a page showing all the slides.

Experience: very resilient just cycle power when problems... but learned the
SD card is way too sensitive for power cycling - so now has an external HDD
for better recovery.

Plan to work on one for data collection/receipt for a local recycler, that one
will likely use Python with a touchscreen to collect signatures.

This is a big disruption to the POS/terminal market as it gives a very
powerful/flexible platform that can be developed/deployed inexpensively, and
parts can be sourced easily when HW problems occur.

------
tomweingarten
My favorite use is in a photo booth I set up. It controls two cameras (webcam
for preview, DSLR for the actual photo -- hopefully the RPi 4 will be me
enough bandwidth to drop to just the DSLR), outputs to a printer, and drives a
monitor. And the whole thing fits in a nice little suitcase.

------
tomrandle
At Geckoboard we have a Pi hooked up to a thermal receipt printer so that
remote participants can print off their retrospective cards through Slack:
[https://medium.com/geckoboard-under-the-hood/building-a-
slac...](https://medium.com/geckoboard-under-the-hood/building-a-slack-
printer-for-remote-retrospectives-8de0282e5791)

(We've upgraded it a bit since that post! - We also use it to ping a Slack
channel for when it's standup).

We also use Pis to run some of our dashboards:
[https://support.geckoboard.com/hc/en-
us/articles/36002392437...](https://support.geckoboard.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360023924372-Set-up-Geckoboard-on-a-Raspberry-Pi)

------
geerlingguy
I play around with K8s on ARM: [http://pidramble.com](http://pidramble.com)

It's been a fun hobby project over the past 6 years, and I also do some other
things like home environment (temp, PM2.5, etc.) monitoring.

I also have a few Pi Zero W's strapped to USB batteries I use for impromptu
time-lapses, using a little set of scripts here:
[https://github.com/geerlingguy/pi-
timelapse](https://github.com/geerlingguy/pi-timelapse)

I love being able to tinker with software/hardware easily... The Arduino and
FPGA's require a deeper investment, and I like how I can do everything I want
in Python on a Pi, for more hobbyist projects that don't have more
power/processing constraints.

~~~
rcarmo
Have a look at k3s.io. I love it.

------
maplewizard
I use it to build a cloud backup system. My files in the computer will
automatically sync to Raspberry Pi.

~~~
keehun
What software do you use for your setup?

------
harrylepotter
Use it to bring Android Auto to my old car stereo:

[https://medium.com/@bendavey/bringing-android-auto-to-
audi-n...](https://medium.com/@bendavey/bringing-android-auto-to-audi-
navigation-plus-rns-e-using-a-raspberry-pi-3d7d3bd97d7a)

------
kweks
We have over 2000 deployed over Europe in locksmiths, providing a form of key
service to the public. Challenges include not DDoSIng our APIs, getting a
correct configuration to not nuke SD cards, and ensure that a bad firmware
push doesn't knock the network offline.

~~~
kalev
Any links? I’d love to know more.

~~~
kweks
Sure ! [https://parklink.asia/](https://parklink.asia/)
[https://rebadge.eu/](https://rebadge.eu/)

We've got a custom PCB which controls the touchscreen and prehipherals (LF and
HF RFID readers), placed in a custom, tough ABS case (locksmiths are full of
metal filings, which don't play nicely with electronics...)

------
vmlinuz
Short answer: I've got one sitting behind the TV in my parents' kitchen,
running ssh and openvpn for proxy/vpn purposes, but mostly working as an
automated BBC TV downloader, scripted to download a list of shows every night,
at different qualities (e.g. don't need high frame rate for quiz shows), rsync
them to my server at home outside the UK, and send me a PushBullet message to
tell me what will be available to watch over breakfast. Works beautifully!

I'm very tempted to get a 4 and pair it with a lower-specced NAS for home
server purposes - I don't think even the Pi 4 has quite the I/O to be a great
storage server by itself, but that combo is probably more fun and flexible
than just a NAS alone...

------
dheera
Make little fun robots like this Pixar lamp:
[https://hackaday.com/2019/05/25/little-lamp-to-learn-
longer-...](https://hackaday.com/2019/05/25/little-lamp-to-learn-longer-
leaps/)

------
beanjammin
1 - Kids' desktop (Raspi3) 2 - Kodi (Raspi2) 3 - LAN print/automated backup
server (Raspi1)

I've order a 4GB Raspi4 to upgrade the kids' desktop and 1 GB Raspi4 to
upgrade the automated backup server (Gb ethernet + USB3!). Kodi will get the
old kids' desktop.

~~~
yashwanthcp
Hi can you share more details on the kids desktop setup? What applications do
you use?

------
jlarocco
I played with mine for a few weeks and got bored with it. It's on my desk here
somewhere, possibly still running.

I setup a headless Linux distro and tested out the ARM port of SBCL. Not
surprising, really, but I was able to setup Emacs, Slime, and SBCL and develop
Lisp over SSH pretty comfortably.

I ended up writing a Common Lisp binding to WiringPI [0], and then another
package which used it to read data from a GPS module [1]. I didn't really have
a plan, just seemed interesting.

I haven't done much with it since then.

[0] [https://github.com/jl2/wpi](https://github.com/jl2/wpi)

[1] [https://github.com/jl2/pigps](https://github.com/jl2/pigps)

------
Udo
_Home automation_ : it's an offline system I wrote myself to tie together all
the different systems where I would normally need separate (always online)
controller for each. That includes several soldered-to-GPIO-pins remote
controls, and a HomeMatic and a ZWave radio module, although the latter is
still controlled by the Z-Way software and I'm just using their API for those
devices. It's a Raspberry Pi of the first generation, I'll probably replace
the hardware soon.

 _Audio_ : I'm also using one RPi2 with an attached hard disk as a music
player for pen&paper roleplaying sessions, and I have 3 Pis distributed around
the house acting as Wifi-enabled Airplay receivers attached to off-the-shelf
powered speakers.

 _Retro gaming_ : I built one RPi2 into an empty Amiga 500 case, it runs an
Amiga emulator with many emulated game floppy disks onboard. Fun fact, the
Amiga 500 keyboard sends its key strokes over a serial interface, so it's
relatively easy to attach it to modern devices.

 _3D printing_ / _IP cameras_ : I have drifted towards the Orange Pi hardware
recently, mainly because they have a dirt-cheap headless module that costs
about 10€. These are extremely useful for all kinds of automation tasks. For
example, I'm using them with the Octoprint open source project to control 3D
printers. Those headless Orange Pi Zeros are also fantastic as IP cameras,
which has become necessary recently because consumer IP cameras that do _not_
send all your data to China have become rare and expensive.

 _Attendance and access control_ : I'm currently considering throwing out our
shitty proprietary attendance and access management system at work, in favor
of some simple custom-built Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi-powered panels. I have a
prototype ready but haven't had time yet to make more.

 _Lab control_ : I have an RPi3 attached via serial interface to a chemical
analytics device at work, which required reverse engineering the proprietary
protocol between the device and its shitty Win32 software. This allowed us to
throw out a legacy Windows PC that needed to phone home all the time.

------
lyagusha
Tor relay with Display-O-Tron Hat to visualize the tx/rx speeds.

Wardriving rig with GPS puck that runs kismet, airbash, and bettercap to steal
PMKIDs and also 4-way handshakes from nearby networks for offline cracking and
data visualization. Also has UPS supply for backup power.

An aborted project to make a Hindustani raga time-of-day player, based on a Pi
Zero W with a 128GB SD card, that would stream a continuous loop of music
appropriate to the specific time of day (8 distinct periods), via a network
interface such as Plex. But it was too complicated.

I've also used an RPi3 as a node in
[https://github.com/lennartkoopmann/nzyme](https://github.com/lennartkoopmann/nzyme).

------
geddy
I just use one as a Plex server. Can't beat the cost of running it, which is
roughly $6/year worth of electricity if I remember correctly. Previously I was
running my Plex server on my gaming rig which cost a relative fortune to have
running 24/7.

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Do you otherwise not leave your gaming rig on? Me and all of my roommates
leave our desktops on... they draw about 50-60W so abbout 1.5kWh a day which
is less than 15c a day each. Perhaps your conflating the extra cost of the GPU
activity incured what actively transcoding files? Which the Pi really can't do
so Plex ends up just being a dumb DLNA server.

------
mhandley
One runs CUPS and is my printserver for an ancient but very reliable HP
laserprinter.

One is our Internet radio in the kitchen.

One Pi 3 with a PiNoir infrared camera is used in a home-made camera trap for
recording the local wildlife.

Two Pi Zero Ws are used in my son's high altitude balloon cosmic ray high
school experiment, recording video, and reporting GPS altitude and Muon count
rates via 50bits/sec RTTY.

One is used in a beetbox I built for a BBC TV show. Not this one, but pretty
similar: [https://newatlas.com/beetbox-vegetables-musical-
instrument/2...](https://newatlas.com/beetbox-vegetables-musical-
instrument/25462/)

Then there's assorted robots, but none of those are currently operational.

------
ridaj
* Security camera with motion detection, which uploads clips to my personal Google Drive.

* Always-on, ssh-authenticated gateway to my LAN. I used it while traveling to tunnel through and remotely control my desktop computer which had some credentials I didn't have with me.

~~~
beachwood23
How have you set up your security camera? I'm looking to do this myself!

~~~
ridaj
Used "Motion" for monitoring and capturing interesting video clips:

[https://motion-project.github.io/](https://motion-project.github.io/)

...combined with rclone to copy those to Google Drive:

[https://rclone.org/](https://rclone.org/)

------
kawfey
I have a few.

1) PiHole. I'm upgrading this to a RasPi4 and seeing if I can also merge 2) 5)
and 6) into it.

2) NAS/VPN/Media Server/Hass.io

3) RTL-SDR for ADS-B Receiver feeding to numerous data warehouses
(Flightaware, ADS-B Exchange, PlaneFinder, etc)

4) Connected to RTL-SDR and running rtltcp for generic HF/VHF/UHF radio
receiving which was previously part of a SATNOGS automatic cubesat/Amsat/ISS
receiver build I've not completed yet.

5) Debian desktop on my workbench

6) A Pi Zero W running a ZNC IRC bouncer

7) Experimenting with remote ham radio control but linux-based ham radio
software is still a bit too frustrating, so this isn't an active project.

8) Two extra RasPis and three PiZeroW's just lying around because Microcenter
always has them for ridiculously low prices.

------
girvo
I'm using it to build a modern take on a "word processor", a hardware keyboard
+ microprocessor that only writes text to its onboard memory.

My current roadblock is getting a relatively high resolution rather wide
aspect ratio screen. Hard to find, it seems.

------
boyband6666
I'm giving my son a classical education with it. Using Retropi

Every now and then we play "Daddy's games", so he has NES megadrive, and MAME
(PacMan mainly). As he starts to master those, I'll add the next generation to
it. If we've played some of the same games, hopefully it gives us some form of
common framework, and him an interest in how he could code something similar
i.e. a gateway in to computers. If he decides he doesn't like it, that's fine
too.

So far it's goign well - we set off on the adventure 6 months ago when he was
4. I'll also get another microUSB card and try trhe same with my daughter when
she's a bit older (currently she's 2).

------
ykl
Low-cost Aarch64 development machine! I run Aarch64 Fedora on a Pi 3B+ for
porting personal projects to Aarch64 and for testing. When mainstream desktop
ARM arrives (ARM Macs perhaps?), I’d like to be ready in case I have to make a
switch from x86-64.

------
dredmorbius
Nothing yet, though I'm looking at possible projects.

The router and modem both run OpenWRT, which addresses any number of basic
sins one might hope for, including adblocking, firewalling, and media server.

I am looking for options to provide streamed media over existing audio
equipment in the flat. This might be applied to a media library (DLNA audio
and video), podcasts, Internet radio, and borrowed items from libraries
(local, online).

There's a set of devices which offer to talk to local audio equipment, much of
which costs as much, and often several times more than, a RaPi. Seems that a
full SoC system might be the better option, particularly if WiFi and Bluetooth
are built in.

------
cameron_b
For those of you commenting about the mechanics and pitfalls, I've found that
a Pi3B+ with the 7" screen and a keyboard/trackpad is a wonderful tool for
provisioning new cards. I do headless system configuration on that, then swap
to the Zero or whatever it'll actually use. Since the BSPs for every board are
tiny, there's no reason to limit yourself to something that can't work on all
of the boards out there. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier. Also, don't
buy crap SD cards, and probably have 2x the number you'd like to have running.
This stuff is cheap so that you can have multiples for testing.

------
forinti
1 runs RISCOS so I can run old beeb games on and emulator;

1 keeps a log of temperature/pressure/humidity using sense hat;

1 has a backup of my photos on an external hd (and also has an sds011 dust
sensor
([https://github.com/glgraca/sds011](https://github.com/glgraca/sds011)).

But my best project has been a picture frame using a Pi Zero W that receives
photos via Telegram. My kids' grandparents have this also and they love it
([https://github.com/glgraca/PiFrame](https://github.com/glgraca/PiFrame)).

I once took one on a holiday to watch Netflix at night.

------
oceanghost
I have several running 3d printers-- OctoPi or NanoDLP. I've been able to
modify OctoPi to run several printers at once, but it is way more work than
its worth.

I also made a media player for my daughter that has all of her kids shows on
it. I designed/printed a case for the RPI+vesa mount. I'm super excited about
the new RPI that was announced todayish-- because it has a hardware h.265
decoder meaning, I'll no longer have to transcode some things.

I tried PiHole and I really liked it, but it caused some problems with some
sites my folks frequent, and it broke mDNS discovery on my network. I may
reinstall it and just exempt their devices.

------
dividuum
Not technically my Pis, but I built a digital signage ([https://info-
beamer.com](https://info-beamer.com)) product around it. So I enjoy working
with the Pi and making a living from it.

------
ardeliens
I did a whistle box. A NAS for whistle blowers and journalists.
[https://github.com/Guiraud/WB](https://github.com/Guiraud/WB)

The Idea is for anyone to make a low cost NAS that allows a TOR service to
upload/dowload files , pgp encrypted them with the key of the journalist,
while having the simpliest interface as possible. I did'nt update for a long
time tho.

There's a Slide in french language here :
[https://fr.slideshare.net/Fred2baro/la-
whistlebox](https://fr.slideshare.net/Fred2baro/la-whistlebox)

------
Eric_WVGG
My father built this wild automatic glass cutter with one.
[https://twitter.com/Eric_WVGG/status/1010952072139890694](https://twitter.com/Eric_WVGG/status/1010952072139890694)
[edit: I'm a dummy, this is built on an Arduino]

He also built a solar panel that's mounted on an upside-down bicycle frame,
slowly turns all day to keep facing the sun. Lot of interesting math to track
the sun across the calendar year.

I'm boring, just building a NAS with Nextcloud Pi. Although it will likely be
built on a different board that's better-suited for NAS…

------
gen3
I use a B+ to run a print server. Its wired directly over serial to a receipt
printer. Since it exposes a standard CUPS interface, I have a few bots that
call it to print out things. (messages, memes, weather, diagnostics)

------
chris72205
\- 1x Raspberry Pi (older, not sure exact model) - exposed to the internet and
acts as a bastion host for ssh'ing into other devices on my home network

\- 1x Raspberry Pi Zero W - monitors several Wemo Insight Switches around the
house and turns them on if they are in an off state (if the power goes out,
the Wemo switches do not turn back on so I have to do it manually)

\- 6x Raspberry Pi 3 Model B - running in a k8s cluster (1 master, 5 workers)
doing nothing until I can find time to continue working on this project...
found out I need to build Docker images on an ARM host so my CI/CD first
choice did not work :(

~~~
kkapelon
I work for Codefresh, a CI/CD solution that has ARM support.

Maybe it can help you? [https://codefresh.io/docs/docs/incubation/arm-
support/](https://codefresh.io/docs/docs/incubation/arm-support/)

~~~
chris72205
Nice, I'll have to look into this further!

------
squarefoot
Video playing through Kodi and nothing else. Nearly all other "competing"
boards are either cheaper or more powerful or both, and more open, but the PI
has the best CEC imlementation along with good video acceleration which makes
it ideal for the task. The freshly announced PI4 seems a step in the right
direction price and performance wise, although I don't expect the Pi
Foundation (aka Broadcom) to solve the openness problem anytime soon, so
although it could soon become my main video player I won't consider it for
anything else, especially if security related.

------
diarmuidc
1x RP3 running OSMC [https://osmc.tv/download/](https://osmc.tv/download/)

2x RP2/3 with HiFi Berry DAC driving an amp.
[https://www.picoreplayer.org/](https://www.picoreplayer.org/) connecting to
[http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Logitech_Media_Server](http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Logitech_Media_Server)

1x RP2 running PiHole and Apache + Owncloud

1x RP3 running RetroPie

The OSMC and music players get daily use and have been in use for a few years

------
ozkatz
The Pi Zero W can act as both a USB host and a USB HID device, i.e. can act as
a keyboard/mouse. This makes it a very capable bad USB/rubber ducky/automation
tool with Wifi enabled.

I've created a small repo to demonstrate this. Connect a zeroW to a computer,
the Pi will expose a hidden Wifi network that by connecting to it you'll be
able to send remote keyboard commands (or execute ducky scripts) on the host
computer: [https://github.com/ozkatz/pi-remote-
ducky](https://github.com/ozkatz/pi-remote-ducky)

------
vanadium
Pi-Hole, RetroPie, and for my 1st-grade son I installed Kano OS for his first
computer. I see a couple of Pi 4s as upgrades in my future.

Also looking to get my SDR rig up and running on one of the other Pis i have
waiting to be used.

~~~
dgacmu
Anything you've learned to share about having it as a computer for your first
grader? I recently set one up for my daughter, same age, but haven't put much
thought into the software side yet. She's played Minecraft-pi a couple of
times, we made the cat meow in Scratch, and we used it to watch a movie the
other day, but that's it so far.

~~~
vanadium
Since I only installed the Kano OS image on a bog standard Pi 3, it's
basically this without all the accessories.
[https://kano.me/store/us/products/computer-
kit](https://kano.me/store/us/products/computer-kit)

It's great that Kano makes it available standalone. Kano OS has all the
activities built into the image, including visual coding of Minecraft and
other tools, and guided lessons around using the Terminal. Chromium and
LibreOffice are also installed by default. There's also a curated app "store"
like experience to add new games.

Installing CUPS to add our printer to the Kano OS Pi was pretty
straightforward, so he also uses it for personal writing and printing out
stories.

It's really engaging for our son, and provides ample time for parent-child
learning opportunities to boot. We ended up getting the Pixel Kit while we
were at it, and Kano OS picked up on it immediately and exposed all the
lessons for it.

Hoping their move to Windows 10 doesn't leave their Kano OS image locked to a
Pi 3, though. I'd love to upgrade his Pi to a 4 soon.

Kano OS Image:
[https://hello.kano.me/downloads/](https://hello.kano.me/downloads/)

------
erlemantos
A programmable, annoying, rotating alarm. Triggered every time a Jenkins build
fails.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgXXkwVXqvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgXXkwVXqvI)

------
ravenstine
I'm not really using one regularly right now, but here are the few things I've
done with my Pis:

\- Hosted a blog using Rails and a Cron that updated the A record on my
Route53 domain to point to my local IP address. I'm not sure anyone ever read
it, but I had it up for about a year.

\- Attempted to reverse engineer a treadmill controller with the UART pins. I
successfully figured out the baud rate and captured bytes, but never figured
out how to control the treadmill motor board. I have a feeling the motor board
had a problem.

\- Connected a piezo element to GPIO and made a controllable alarm device.

Nothing that cool, really.

------
CapricornNoble
1\. RPi Model 2B: running Kodi, and connected to my TV. Utilized for watching
movies from my NFS-shared movie storage drive.

2\. RPi Zero: used to prototype a device for my company. The RPi is connected
to a LimeSDR Mini and an UPS. Meant to work out some of the software and form
factor for a deployable electronic warfare device.

I'm starting to replace RPis with ODroids for the most part. I'm actually
waiting for 2x ODroid-HC2 to arrive any day now. One will be hosting a
Syncloud instance, as I want to experiment with Diaspora social network. Not
exactly sure what I'll use the other for yet.

------
shriphani
Mine drives an LED pixel frame in my living room:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BIgFP9dhkPZ/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BIgFP9dhkPZ/)

------
chadd
With my 16 year old son, I built a weather balloon with one, including an
Arduino, a few temperature sensors, a GPS, LoRA radio, and we're going to
launch it next month. Having a hard time finding Helium.

~~~
orpheline
As a further science project, why not liberate hydrogen through electrolysis?
Much less expensive than helium, and greater lifting capacity...

~~~
chadd
good idea! I think we're just going to get a hydrogen tank, some protective
gear, and go that route.

------
picantePepper
Shameless plug but run a basic weather station (currently in my room until I
find a weatherproof enclosure)
[https://alonsoarteaga.me](https://alonsoarteaga.me)

------
markfchapman
We use them in our stores for digital signage - we use 60" screens in the
store front and behind the food counters. We created web app that allows our
Marketing team to allocate posters/menus/videos to stores or groups of stores.
Changes are pulled by the store from the server every 60 seconds. If the store
loses network connection it will just continue to cycle the existing
images/videos until the connection is restored. Even with the price of the
screens it's very cost effective compared to commercial offerings.

------
cgrf
Among other things, I use it for a cycle-exact emulation of the Commodore 1541
floppy disk drive:

Firmware: [https://cbm-pi1541.firebaseapp.com/](https://cbm-
pi1541.firebaseapp.com/)

Hardware: [https://www.hackup.net/2018/07/pi1541io-
revision-4/](https://www.hackup.net/2018/07/pi1541io-revision-4/)
[https://github.com/hackup/Pi1541io](https://github.com/hackup/Pi1541io)

------
chrsstrm
Outside of off the cuff experiments, most of my Pis are provisioned as
MotionEyeOS[0] security cams. Each client can be linked into a central
"server" so you can view them all at once, and lots of nice config options for
storing or sending image and video either continuously or based on motion. I
have the streaming set up so I can peek in from anywhere using VLC on my
phone.

[0]
[https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki](https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki)

~~~
megy
Do you need one pi board per camera?

~~~
chrsstrm
There’s only one camera ribbon connector on a Pi board, not sure if you could
also plug in a USB cam or not.

------
daxorid
1\. Buy 8 of them with large-capacity SD cards, hoping to make an awesome Ceph
cluster.

2\. Build said Ceph cluster.

3\. Become disillusioned with both SD and USB I/O.

4\. Place all of them in storage.

5\. Buy 8 Tinkerboards, hoping to make an awesome Ceph cluster....

------
jupp0r
A project I want to do: use an rtl-sdr to catch temperature readings from a
BBQ thermometer off the air. Then push that data to prometheus/grafana and get
alerting when the brisket is done.

------
dirkc
Currently:

* I use a Raspberry Pi Zero-W and a neopixel strip to tell me the time at night. This post describes part of it: [http://www.thebacklog.net/projects/smart-light/](http://www.thebacklog.net/projects/smart-light/)

* Run a piHole at home.

Things I've done in the past:

* Use a Raspberry Pi as an intervalometer to do time lapses with a DSLR camera

* Make a photo booth for a 2 day workshop.

* As a cheap computer to run coding tutorials

* Monitor water levels in a hydroponics system using a ultrasonic sensor

* As a WiFi access point to access a wired network from my phone

------
kylegordon
Pi Zero running a digital picture frame that I made from a discarded 17"
laptop screen

Pi 3B running adsb-receiver and feeding flight data into Flightaware, ADSB-
Exchange, ADSBHub, FlightRadar24.

Pi B Rev 1 running node-red with a Jeenode decoding weather station data from
my weather station. Sends data over MQTT to Home-Assistant.

I have a BananaPi M2 Zero running Armbian and doing nothing at the moment.
It's likely going to be put in a box close to the ADSB antenna and take over
ADSB duties in order to free up the 3B for AIY/Snips.ai experimenting.

------
bmurphy1976
At home: emulating old games, wifi hot spot (not needed so much these days)
for hotel rooms with wired internet, and a plex server to serve videos to the
kid's iPads in the car during road trips.

At work: show Grafana dashboards on our 4k monitors. Currently using model 3
which doesn't like 4k so much. I'm looking forward to upgrading to the 4 in
this case, see if they are more reliable. The 3's like to crash/reboot
periodically and really struggle to drive the 4k display at a decent speed.

------
pinjasaur
I run Pi-hole off a RPi Zero W on my local network. Set it up over Ethernet
with a bit of cron automation [0] and later expanded Gravity (the blocklist)
along with firewall NAT rules to redirect all DNS queries to go through the
Pi-hole [1].

[0]: [https://paul.af/adding-pi-hole-to-my-local-
network](https://paul.af/adding-pi-hole-to-my-local-network)

[1]: [https://paul.af/pi-hole-revisited](https://paul.af/pi-hole-revisited)

------
flexer2
I wrote up a Medium post about what I do with mine:
[https://medium.com/@adamargo/how-i-use-raspberry-pis-for-
hom...](https://medium.com/@adamargo/how-i-use-raspberry-pis-for-homekit-
automation-ed69df8d8be7)

Mostly home automation. 1x homebridge server, ffmpeg transcoder for security
cameras, 1x for controlling an electric fireplace using an IR shield and power
monitoring outlet, 1x for controlling model train switches and bridging that
into HomeKit

------
rayraegah
I used to turn my pi into low power consumption devices and donate them to the
solar berry project [0]. Side loaded with rachelpi [1] software that brings
the better part of the internet to kids in dark regions of Africa.

[0]:
[https://turingtrust.co.uk/home/our_work/solarberry/](https://turingtrust.co.uk/home/our_work/solarberry/)

[1]: [http://rachelfriends.org/](http://rachelfriends.org/)

------
crankylinuxuser
I built the RadioInstigator, a mobile SigInt attack platform for around $150.

[https://hackaday.com/2019/06/05/mobile-sigint-hacking-on-
a-c...](https://hackaday.com/2019/06/05/mobile-sigint-hacking-on-a-civilians-
budget/)

If it wasn't for F5OEO's Rpitx library, I would have been stuck with non-SDR
Tx. [https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx](https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx)

------
MrsPeaches
Not using the Raspberry Pi yet but have been exploring the idea of using it as
a way of delivering our educational content to rural areas of Zambia.

Idea would be to provide enough information in a booklet to get students to a
point where they can power the pi and then teach them the basics of
electronics and coding by building a power monitoring system, with the pi at
the heart.

You can what we are doing here:
[https://localelectricity.org/](https://localelectricity.org/)

------
zachpendleton
I have a few:

\- v3 that runs RetroPie \- v2 for PiHole \- a zero W with a vibration sensor
that I use to text me when my washer is done (turned off the washer's alarm so
as not to wake sleeping kids)

------
mytdi
1\. RPi 1B (256 MB RAM) as my home phone/voicemail system, using Asterisk PBX
(with FreePBX). Have used it since it first came out. 2\. RPi 1B+ as a car
media server with minidlna using a USB WiFi adapter. 3\. RPi 2B as an ownCloud
server. 4\. RPi 3B as a LibreELEC (Kodi) media (streaming) center. 5\. RPi
Zero W. No use yet.

I have used the 3B for RetroPie as well in the past. I am planing on using a
RPi for different kinds of webscraping in the future. I would also like to set
up a NAS/backup server.

------
castis
Quadcopter pet project
[https://github.com/castis/currant](https://github.com/castis/currant)

One for running Retropie
[https://emulationstation.org/gettingstarted.html#install_rpi...](https://emulationstation.org/gettingstarted.html#install_rpi_retropie).

Next one is for playing with
[https://www.zoneminder.com/](https://www.zoneminder.com/)

------
batoure
Besides the standard PiHole VPN so on I have several RPis I use. 1\. I run
Samba to manage access to provide AD to my home computers and manage the
attachment of various network shares.

2\. I have a RPi with an attached set of 12v switch controls that I use to
manage various things in my Airstream trailer such as internal/external lights
a backup shut off valve for my LP tanks as well as a watering system for
plants that I keep in the trailer that I don't always get around to watering.

------
cheeko1234
Homeassistant (Hass with mqtt and grafana), Octoprint, MotionEyeOS, pihole,
pivpn, Donkey car, Robot operating system (ROS), and a wireless controller for
my crazyflie quadcopter

------
mpettitt
I have one running pi-hole and Ubiqiti controller (powered by my router's usb
port), one sitting under the TV running Kodi connected to a NAS, avoiding the
need for discs (big plus when you have small children), one sat next to an old
hi-fi which also links to the NAS and lets me stream music to the hi-fi, and a
couple of older ones which aren't connected to anything having been replaced
with newer models. Oh, and a Zero, which I've never found a use for.

~~~
covercash
I also do the PiHole + Ubiquiti controller w/ PoE, it’s a cheaper and more
robust solution to the CloudKeys!

------
Falcorian
Really simple stuff, compared to the self watering plants, etc.:

\- AdGuard Home DNS (Pi Hole was just not stable for me)

\- Unifi Controller

\- Torrent box (come get your Linux distros!)

\- Always on platform to host various scripts on; one backs up my blog to
Internet Archive when it changes, for example.

\- Twitter bots that report the RPi status (just went down for reboot, etc.)

\- Bot that watches Caltrain for delays and Tweets them to me.

\- Platform to play around with orchestration, DevOps, etc. I learned Ansible
using them. Still want to move it all to Docker, but that'll have to wait.

------
ivolimmen
When reading specs of the new raspberry pi I decided I will buy two in the
near future to serve as a desktop for my girls. I still have a raspberry pi 1b
with 512mb. I was too soon and missed the free upgrade. Tried it once as media
server. Was not impressed. After that I bought a pine64 with 2Gb ram that runs
my bookmarks web application I personally use every day. Also bought the
hardkernel mc1 cluster to play with. Still the support for raspberry pi is
unbeatable.

------
hanklazard
1\. Retropie 2\. Pi-hole 3\. Bluetooth presence detection 4\. Previously ran a
Hassio instance on one 5\. Wireguard server 6\. _(HiFiBerry + Volumio) x 3

_ great for multi room sonos-like system

------
tlack
Does work-in-progress count? I have two with cameras I am attempting to rig up
as a frontend/backup camera in my Humvee (very necessary!), hopefully w/ UI on
iPhone

------
iuguy
Things I use Raspberry Pis for:

* Pi-hole

* Home Assistant

* Processing assistance and PPP/Serial and tcpser connection for an Amiga 4000

* MyCroft personal assistant

* Octoprint for 3D Printing

* MotionEye camera management (Moving across to a NUC)

* A 4 node pi-zero cluster using a ClusterHat for distributed Pi approximation optimization I normally run once a year on Pi day.

Much of this is due to the segregated way my network is set up, and the Pis
have largely replaced previous OpenWRT devices, although some of these Pis
have now or are in the process of moving to other more reliable systems.

------
watsocd
I run my own energy monitoring business. We use many RPi's for remote customer
site energy meter data collection and forwarding to our cloud based REST
servers. Once we got over the SD card issues, I have had zero problems and no
hardware failures (including SD card issues) in four years now.

Because of the low cost, I always install two units on every site; one is
powered and idle but ready to take over if the other fails. Not hot-standby
but close enough for my purposes.

------
oneplane
A Pi for UniFi, a Pi as a print server (older model) for a USB laser printer,
a Pi as a print and input server for a thermal receipt printer that only has
serial (or a 350$ option for a 10Mbit ethernet addon) + a button to fetch a
hotspot code from UniFi and print it for a guest for limited guest access. And
a free floating Pi for various functions, sometimes as an I2C board, SPI
interface, Scan server, placeholder when one of the others is in maintenance
etc.

------
Arn_Thor
Nothing too exciting. I've got an air purifier set up with homebridge and run
a PiHole from it. I've also used it to practice setting up websites from
scratch.

------
riston
I have several Raspberry Pi's in use: \- One Zero with AudioQuest Dragonfly
for PiMusicBox \- RPI v1 with a camera for motion detection \- RPI v3 for
HomeAssistant Hub

------
aylmao
I haven't built it yet, but I want to buy some clickable rotary encoders, some
knobs and build a light switch for my smart lights.

A knob you can click to turn the lights on or off, and turn to control the
brightness.

A knob you can click to toggle between "natural light" and "color", and turn
to control either the warmth or the hue.

Not sure if I need a whole Pi for this or if I should attempt it with
something more bare-bones, but that's the project I have in mind.

------
cuspycode
\- Network controller for my latest file server and video NAS, which is based
on a USB RAID-1 drive. The box that produces the graphics however is a small
Intel-based box (not a NUC though).

\- Network controller (using CUPS) for a very old laser printer that only has
USB.

\- Various hobby electronics projects like controlling an Arduino robot via
photo and ultrasonic sensors and wifi, developing networking software for
ESP8266, and various other simple electronics experiments.

------
loginatnine
On my original pi, I use it to sense whether my washing and drying machine is
working and sends me a notification when the load is done. It uses 2 adxl345
accelerometer with 1 pi. Instructions are on github
[https://github.com/jebeaudet/time-to-fold-
alerter](https://github.com/jebeaudet/time-to-fold-alerter)

On my rpi3, I use it for download automation with couch potato, sonarr and
radarr.

------
LameRubberDucky
I think I have at least one of every variant. I had fun playing with all of
them. But in the end, I wanted to use one for a Linux development machine and
it was always just a bit too slow to be useful. This one sounds like it might
have just crossed into the lower realm for laptops so I'll give it a try. And
yes, I know, using it as a development machine was not really the intended
purpose, but a $55 machine is so tantalizing.

------
FullMetalBitch
I have a Raspberry Pi 3 where I host my personal website including a nextcloud
instance, with it I learned more about Linux.

With the release of Raspbian Buster I am currently rebuilding it because it
was the first one I bought so there was plenty of residual stuff from when I
had no idea what I was doing.

I have a Pi 3b+ I use as a Pi-Hole, samba share and whatever I want to try at
the moment. I have to rebuild it after I "finished" with my site.

And I want a Pi 4, or two.

------
milofeynman
I have one pi3b+ running Dark Ice transmitting my local police scanner to
broadcastify. I built it manually on raspbian and it was a bit of a pain to
get setup.

------
wolrah
I have a bunch of them scattered around my house.

2x LibreELEC media players 1x RetroPie emulation station 1c OctoPrint/OctoPi
3D printer controller 1x Home Assistant automation controller 1x Car PC
project 1x retrofitted old alarm clock 1x hosting RTL-SDR stick in attic

One of the media centers is actually a Tinkerboard, but that's been annoying
due to half-assed support and I'll be replacing it with a Pi 4 as soon as I
can get my hands on one.

------
adrianrocamora
2 RPis running Octoprint for the 3D printers 1 RPi connected to the laser
cutter which I'm currently fixing 1 RPi that I take with me and connect to
from my phone through ssh (moving to mosh and a Bluetooth terminal when I get
the chance) 1 RPi that I leave in the lab so people can play with it with
numpy/scipy/octave 1 RPi that I'm setting up with something like Jellyfin for
my home media server

~~~
plicense
If you don't mind me asking, which laser cutter do you have?

------
keybits
Airplay server connected to my hifi using
[https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-
sync](https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync) Here's a setup guide:
[https://thepi.io/how-to-set-up-a-raspberry-pi-airplay-
receiv...](https://thepi.io/how-to-set-up-a-raspberry-pi-airplay-receiver/)

------
Havoc
Experiments mostly.

Yesterday I tried steam link. Previously a vpn AP. Also a air quality mon. And
a flightaware station. And a file server.

ie i Format it quite often and start from scratch

~~~
erredois
Which sensor did you use to measure air quality?

~~~
Havoc
Right...back on a laptop - I purchased the item linked below. Amazon should
have similar for a couple bucks more.

Integration part was easily...bit of hackey python does the trick.

Noted very slight buzzing sound which was irritating if next to bedstand. Not
a major concern.

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32606349048.html?spm=a2g0s.9...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32606349048.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.8edd4c4dm17zE7)

------
anotherevan
Fairly pedestrian uses.

One running OSMC (Kodi) media server.

One that manages nightly backups for all the machines on my network. Does
wake-on-LAN as needed, uses rsnapshot to encrypted external drive. I also run
Pi-Hole on this.

Have one in the office that serves as a terminal server via X2Go. Let's me
remote desktop to office machines as needed.

I'm quite a fan of DietPi as my distro to use on these. I also use Ansible as
much as possible to configure and manage them.

------
vetrom
With an amazing team, I'm helping run a fleet of a few hundredish pi3/3b+ and
hundreds of pizero-W cameras in an evolving automotive IoT solution.

It's definitely been a challenge using them in volume, but they've been
surprisingly reliable once you control for things like heat dissipation and
get a decent networking solution. (At our scale we're approaching having to
decide if we want to be a MVNO.)

~~~
mirceal
take a look at my project at cattlepi.com

------
cstuder
Mine is running Hypriot OS
([https://blog.hypriot.com](https://blog.hypriot.com)): Everything on it is
dockerized.

The coolest application: An Airconnect container
([https://github.com/philippe44/AirConnect](https://github.com/philippe44/AirConnect))
which upgrades my mediocre Internet radio device with AirPlay.

------
noisy_boy
After reading the replies in this thread, I just feel so inferior. I can't
solder to save my life and here people have made amazing things. :(

------
sunmaker
I am using The Pi for

1) video security system using zoneminder

2) text and email me alerts

3) Automate lights/devices using 433MHz RF sockets, crontab and RF433Utils

4) A cloud storage for my files using owncloud

------
callahanrts
I have one set up as a sprinkler timer
([https://github.com/callahanrts/sprinklers](https://github.com/callahanrts/sprinklers)).
Scheduling my sprinklers with cron jobs gives me a lot more flexibility over
water times. It also runs a local webserver so I can turn a zone on for just a
few seconds when I'm fixing a leak.

~~~
atomi
You should check out Open Sprinkler. I've got mine running on a Zero W in a
docker container and it's been solid.

------
sairahul82
I use it to remotely start my computer. My raspberry pi is always on and i use
"wake on lan"[1] to start my desktop whenever needed. My desktop is powerful
and consumes decent amount of power. Using Rpi to start is lot more power
efficient.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-
LAN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN)

------
outlog
I use it with Elixir - [https://github.com/nerves-
project](https://github.com/nerves-project)

various IOT things - plants, HVAC etc etc

for real world: deployed "kiosk"/touch POS using
[https://github.com/LeToteTeam/kiosk_system_x86_64](https://github.com/LeToteTeam/kiosk_system_x86_64)

------
Zaskoda
I used several Pi Zeros with EnviroPhat sensor hats to monitor temperatures
and light levels in my Bitcoin mine. I have a Pi 3 setup as a game emulator in
the basement. And I used to chop up rc toys from the thrift store to make RPI
robots to chase my cats:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Set6z566-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Set6z566-s)

~~~
VectorLock
Are the light levels important for your Bitcoin mine?

------
chandlermayo767
I use it to control my 3D printer:
[https://octoprint.org/](https://octoprint.org/)

------
Xelbair
Absolutely nothing.

Because i still need to buy a micro HDMI cable :)

The plan is to setup a piHole, make a SMB share on usb HDD, and if it has
enough juice left - connect it to TV and setup it with some streaming
services.

I would love to have a small home server rack but both power costs and space
constraints prevent me from setting it up. i might do it on multiple RPI's -
and maybe add a NAS for storage later on.

------
davidbanham
I use it to run my automated watering system in my garden.

[https://github.com/davidbanham/relay_runner](https://github.com/davidbanham/relay_runner)

I used to use an esp8266 but replaced it with a Pi after a lightning strike
destroyed it. The Pi is just so much easier to write software for and it's
been no less reliable in practice.

~~~
OJFord
Why would it be less reliable in theory? The obvious argument against is that
it's 'expensive' [relative to what you need], not, I wouldn't have thought,
that it's unreliable.

~~~
davidbanham
There's a lot more going on with a Pi than an ESP chip. More bits, more
failure modes is my reasoning.

------
dokument
\- Hosting personal website from my DMZ at home.

\- SDR and packet radio (Direwolf) projects

\- Kodi

\- rpi zeroW with usb serial for connecting back to my house from work/travel.

I had more projects, but I've been able to replace them all with ESP8266's.
Rpi is overkill to do simple things like toggle a gpio pin or take temperature
readings. Use it if you have it, but it's nice freeing up extra rpi's with a
$2 ESP.

~~~
inson
I am planning to build Voip server using raspberry pi. Any idea how to start
with this?

~~~
mytdi
Take a look at RasPBX ([http://www.raspberry-
asterisk.org](http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org)).

------
yellowapple
I keep buying them, but so far the only thing I've done with one was years ago
when I entered an RPi-powered "pumpkin computer" as the IT department's entry
to the company jack-o-lantern contest.

I keep meaning to buy a bunch of 'em and build a portable Erlang/OTP cluster.
So far I've only done the "buy a bunch of 'em" step ;)

------
ulzeraj
Personally I have a Model B running Alpine and SSH to receive incoming
connections at home.

I’ve also convinced the company to buy 8 3B. Each of those is connected to a
1080p display through HDMI and each one of them boots raspian with chromium-
browser in kiosk mode into one specific Grafana panel or playlist. I control
what URL each of them boots into from Saltstack states.

------
dws
A Pi 2 at work runs a Grafana playlist on a spare display.

A Pi 3 at home runs a Flask server that collects data from sensors around the
house (ESP8266 + SHT20 for temp/humidity), and provides a web page that
overlays sensor data on a diagram of the house. I've been curious about CO2
levels in the bedroom overnight, and have parts for that experiment on order.

------
warp
1\. A raspberry pi 3 on which I use git-annex to archive data on a bunch of
large USB disks.

2\. A raspberry pi 2 at a different location which provides off-site backups
for the data archived by the first pi

3\. A raspberry pi zero to run magic mirror on a leftover screen (I cannot be
bothered to turn it into an actual smart mirror though)

4\. And I recently added another raspberry pi 3 to play with RetroPie

------
pfalafel
I run a Newsreader server. It collects news from many hundreds of places and
at any time offers a beautiful timeline view for all my screen devices:
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2381...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=238133)

------
bloopernova
I have a Pi3 in a case that looks like a NES. I'm running RetroPie on it with
a few ROMs I've found around the internet. It works pretty flawlessly.

When the pre-order frenzy for the Pi4 has died down, I'm going to buy a 2 or
4GB model and use it to replace the old and slow crappy Windows 10 box we're
using to stream Amazon Prime stuff to our TV.

------
michelb
I made a fairytale phone as a present for a colleague's kid. I played with
Arduino's before and this was my first Pi project. Pretty fun to do.

Roughly followed this tutorial: [https://www.instructables.com/id/Fairytale-
Phone/](https://www.instructables.com/id/Fairytale-Phone/)

------
heisthefox
I have a live stream of my bee hives, the pi reads the stream from the camera
and frame copies it to the correct format for YouTube live:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2E5s3LTU9ObXjiOL7K8KPg/liv...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2E5s3LTU9ObXjiOL7K8KPg/live)

~~~
riledhel
ffmpeg right? can you elaborate a little more on your setup please?

------
lando2319
I have a script check Hacker News every hour for stories on VIM and Tweet them
out. Love my Pi.

[https://github.com/lando2319/HN_Vimmy_Bot](https://github.com/lando2319/HN_Vimmy_Bot)

[https://twitter.com/HN_Vimmy_Bot](https://twitter.com/HN_Vimmy_Bot)

------
lamby
I tried making a "travel access point" with mine, so I could have all my
devices already setup to access a single access point and funnel all the
traffic through that. I was previously using a $20 router, but curiously the
Pi 3B just didn't want to play ball, dropping packets / connections and
generally sucking. :(

------
jquinby
Pi3 runs piaware (aircraft tracking via rtl-sdr), pivpn, and pi-hole. Another
Pi Zero runs an RF hotspot for ham radio stuff.

------
orpheline
One Pi 3 running Pi-hole: One Pi 3 hosting a Picroft instance; One Pi 3 with a
camera to experiment with simple video capture; One Pi 3 and several Pi zero
W's on a custom network ( the Zero's act as temperature sensors in different
rooms, reporting back to the Pi 3 as a control node; eventually it will be
running our HVAC).

------
camhenlin
I use one to control a 3D printer with
[https://octoprint.org](https://octoprint.org) and another to integrate some
smart home devices that are not homekit compatible with my homekit setup,
using [https://homebridge.io](https://homebridge.io).

------
neumann
All headless:

One for Kodi+VPN. With yatse on Android I have my own Netflix and Spotify for
my own owned content on demand whenever.

Another for a baby monitor that feeds TinyCamPro with audio and video

A third that is a slave Kodi to play music in different part of the house as
well, but mainly to operate the electric gate from my phone.

About to buy a rp4 to build a synth with a keyboard I just got.

------
chrisparton1991
I previously used mine to drive my synchronised Christmas light display. It
worked great one year, then for some reason the next year, retrieving the
playback position of an audio file in Java was taking nearly a second
(previously it was practically instant).

I never figured that out, so I bought a second-hand Mac Mini to power the
display instead.

------
elroyjetson
I just recently went on a vacation that included two 14 hour days of travel. I
setup a Raspberry Pi as a Wifi hotspot for the car, added a 128GB USB thumb
drive, loaded it up with movies, attached it to a 20,000mAh battery pack. My
wife and son were able to watch movies on their iPads using the VLC iOS app
for the whole trip.

------
efazati
Better media center with Raspberry PI and Dropbox ( or whatever you like ) ->
[https://medium.com/@efazati/better-media-center-with-
raspber...](https://medium.com/@efazati/better-media-center-with-raspberry-pi-
and-dropbox-or-whatever-your-like-bd716d272357)

------
smilesnd
I have a rpi2 I use as a low power server that keeps me connected to my irc
server and runs tasks for me.

I have a rpi3 installed in my truck that acts as a media player. It also reads
my OBDII so I know how my engine is running and other diagnosis information. I
also use it to map wifi/bluetooth spots and other random data as I am driving.

------
lordelph
I have a pi with a Displayotron HAT which is designed to wake me up with a
loud klaxon noise if it detects service outage. It also emits a soft glow to
show that all is well.

Aside from valuing my sleep, I have a lot of incentives to ensure it never
goes off, including the fact my wife says she'll divorce me if she ever hears
the klaxon :D

------
roland35
My aspirational goal is to make a "mission control" panel for my kids -
basically take a bunch of panel mount buttons and switches and combine it with
an old monitor to make a fun toy! The Pi would control the monitor but I will
need to add/design an input/output board to handle the buttons and switches.

------
0xADADA
I run [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/) on a pi-zero.

------
egn
I have a small Internet kiosk for one-off browsing and guests.

Currently, mine is running on an ODROID-C2 but the Pi 4 should have more than
enough performance for one.

My setup is a stripped down install with a minimal window manager. There's
only one icon for launching Firefox which is configured in an amnesic mode.
The DNS is set to my Pi-hole.

------
Waterluvian
I have a wall mounted 20" TV in my garage above the corner of my workbench.
Use it to look up stuff or watch how to videos or just play music.

I love minimalism and part of my minimalism approach is not having vulnerable
things in vulnerable places. So if the Pi gets destroyed because a workshop is
fairly volatile, no big deal.

------
djbelieny
I setup a pi 3 running OpenLighting Architecture (OLA) connected to 2 ENTTEC
USB->DMX adapters, connected to 2 Wireless DMX transceivers as an ARTNET->DMX
gateway to allow our team to remote control all the stage lighting at the
church via software without running cables to all the lights. Pretty cool
setup.

------
xbhatnag
I'm trying to write my own micro-kernel from scratch that runs on a Raspberry
Pi 3B.

It boots up and has support for virtual memory, interrupts, timers and very
basic multi-threading.

You can take a look at the source code here ->
[https://xbhatnag.com/xyos](https://xbhatnag.com/xyos)

------
brunt
1\. Telegram chat bot from this rust crate:
[https://crates.io/crates/telegram-bot](https://crates.io/crates/telegram-bot)
2\. Some web microservices that the chatbot communicates with 3\. Pi hole
adblocking.

This is all on one 3b+ with plenty of resources to spare.

------
guilhermetk
I have 3 use cases for my RPi:

-PiHole as an ad/tracking blocker (adding PiVPN tonight to VPN into my home network)

-Plugging sensors to measure temp/humidity and controlling AC state (on/off) via IR Led ([https://imgur.com/a/pYugqXz](https://imgur.com/a/pYugqXz))

-Unifi Controller

------
greenido
I created this project with my kids:
[https://greenido.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/raspberry-pi-as-
se...](https://greenido.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/raspberry-pi-as-security-
camera-with-motion-detection/) Fun stuff!

------
udia
Currently have one Raspberry Pi serving as a home git (Gitea) server, incase a
widespread GitHub outage occurs. Good to have multiple repositories and take
advantage of the distributed nature of Git anyways.

[https://gitea.io/en-us/](https://gitea.io/en-us/)

------
dw0rm
Currently using Raspberry Pi to expose the speakers through the AirPlay
protocol, since my AirPort Express died.

------
TheGRS
There was a time I was super into a project where I had a streaming server
that used my Spotify account and would allow anyone with access to the server
to change the song. I was basically trying to replicate what Sonos does with a
Pi. It worked, but I abandoned it after a few months of not using it.

------
kingnothing
It was bought with the intention of using it as an emulator for old games, but
it just sits unused in a closet.

------
pier25
I used RBPs when working on museums. For example as mini video players, to
connect sensors and trigger a video or turn on some light, etc.

Also to serve as RS232 to wifi adapters. You'd be surprised how much stuff
still uses serial to interface with the outside world (tvs, projectors, audio
switchers, etc).

------
elkos
I've set up a SatNOGS ([https://SatNOGS.org](https://SatNOGS.org)) ground-
station using a turnstile antenna. I'm able to retrieve signals from
satellites and assist the rest of the community to retrieve signals from my
location as well.

------
djmips
Just another Talking Fish controller project...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7busGsuIOU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7busGsuIOU4)

[https://github.com/djmips/trout](https://github.com/djmips/trout)

------
wybiral
I have multiple but the one I use the most has Kodi installed. It's connected
to a projector and I basically use it as a media center streaming files from
one of my desktops over the local network.

Another one is used more like a custom IoT hub/gateway for various BLE (and
even some LoRa devices).

------
teekert
RPi2: Hass.io, switches the lights and reads my electricity/gas usage from
mqtt. RPi1B: sends smart energy/gas meter values over mqtt to RPi2. RPi3:
Recallbox, mainly for Mariokart 64 and GranTurismo 2 with my son but also does
Kodi. Probably will be replaced by a 4 soon :)

------
ecesena
Streaming via airplay (we have iphones at home). Currently connected to a
jukebox:
[https://twitter.com/0x0ece/status/1137487161974972416?s=21](https://twitter.com/0x0ece/status/1137487161974972416?s=21)

------
WoodenChair
I run my new daily newsletter (btvdaily.com) from a Raspberry Pi 3. It
generates the content and mails it out each morning (via Mailchimp) from my
house. The website is not hosted on it though.

It also runs a Twitter bot I made that takes a picture of my backyard each
morning (@walkburlington).

------
Kaway
I use it for a personal project implying scraping some websites. One of these
websites was behind Cloudflare (I think), and thus was blocking request from
my OVH server. Therefore I used my Raspberry to do the job, on my own
connection. I also put recently a Pi-hole on it.

------
Lammy
I use a Pi 3 running FreeBSD 12 and CUPS as a print server for my Brother
laser printer. The printer has an option for a network card, but finding one
is many times more expensive than the Pi, and it's so old I wouldn't entirely
trust it on my network anyway :)

------
rjo
I use them to convert old industrial equipment into oddball control surfaces.
For example
[http://www.digitalesoterica.net/projects/honeywell.html](http://www.digitalesoterica.net/projects/honeywell.html)

------
johnpowell
Pi-hole and Syncthing. And I have Apache installed that just spits out a list
of upcoming Doctors appointments since I have a few of those a week and they
frequently change. I don't drive and my sister drives my to appointments so it
helps her keep track of things.

------
jmhobbs
I used mine to build an egg incubator this year,
[http://www.velvetcache.org/2018/03/04/chicken-cam-
incubator-...](http://www.velvetcache.org/2018/03/04/chicken-cam-incubator-
edition)

------
FerretFred
Good question! I have quite a few Pi sipping small amounts of power here,
so... Web server, mail server, gopher server, key server, NTP server, SMS
gateway (with SMS hat), NTP client network reference clock (Pi Zero), MQTT
server, Flightaware box, PiHole, XMPP server.

------
jononor
Doorlocks of our hackerspace has been RPi controlled almost since the original
RPi came out, maybe 2013. Nowadays we got 4 doors on 3 RPIs (internal and
external), with over 200 members that has access. Using MQTT to communicate
with our membersystem since 2016 or so.

~~~
Tomte
Please think about failure modes, and don't take these guys as an example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10302686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10302686)

~~~
jononor
Of course. Our system controls electronic latches in the door frame, while the
door-bolt is unmodified - so all doors can be opened from inside without any
electronics. Additionally there are separate fire-exits from all our rooms.

------
maddentim
To run Kodi as a frontend to my Mythtv backend. The 4 out I am wondering how I
could replace the backend desktop with a Pi. I would need to find a way to
connect a TV tuner to it. That seems the biggest hurdle. My current card
connects through PCI slot as I recall...

------
onion2k
I spent a while figuring out the cheapest possible way of doing front end dev
for a series of blog posts (that I never wrote) . The result was using a Pi3B+
and a lot of open source tools, Github and Netlify. It works so well I'm still
using it for a ton of dev.

------
b3lvedere
1 x Rapsberry Pi 3 as RetroPie/Kodi/Printserver for an old Dymo Labelprinter 1
x Raspberry Pi Zero W as Dakboard
([http://www.dakboard.com](http://www.dakboard.com))

I think i want to make useful wireless NAS out of a Pi 4 once.

------
KingFelix
\- pi hole \- NAS \- Plex server

working on

super interested in the work Nick Busey has been workingon

HomelabsOS

tons of cool stuff, lots of awesome software to install.

I have been enjoying the open source community a lot lately

[https://gitlab.com/NickBusey/HomelabOS](https://gitlab.com/NickBusey/HomelabOS)

------
netsectoday
In production since 2016 with 3 x Raspberry Pi 3s. Very reliable - they only
need a reboot once a year. These guys are hardcore - processing bursts of
thousands of records from a serial interface 24 hours a day 7 days a week and
shuffling it off to the cloud.

~~~
fsagx
Did you do some work to run 100% from ramdisk after boot? Conventional wisdom
says that the SD cards should fail eventually from log writes, etc.

------
jonobird1
Has anyone used it for any car-related mods? I share my passion between coding
and cars so I'd love to push some boundaries there if anyone has tried before?
Gauage display from sensor units, just a cool OS display for music, or maybe
something cooler?

~~~
sparker72678
[http://www.carberry.it/](http://www.carberry.it/)

------
spiderfarmer
I have 4 raspberries running 24/7:

\- 2x Raspberry PI 3B+ in my office running 2 custom dashboards with info
related to my web projects. One also runs Homebridge.

\- 1x Raspberry PI 3B+ running pivpn.io

\- 1x Raspberry PI X running an energy monitor (bough it as a kit

I threw my first Raspberry Pi in the trash just last week.

------
jepler
\- LED Light alarm

\- Living room music player & "radio" streamer -- I need to set this up as an
A2DP audio receiver too

\- octoprint server

\- Stratum 1 NTP server (GPS referenced)

If I didn't also have a "big" linux system running 24/7, it would be doing
things like DHCP, DNS, MQTT server, etc.

~~~
prkr
I'm interested in learning more about your LED light alarm set up—I had a
similar idea a while back but am less familiar with the world of Raspberry Pi.

~~~
jepler
Thanks for asking! I haven't documented it anywhere, and the source code isn't
suitable for consumption by others. But, I can tell you about the basics.

I bought a "12V" LED strip intended for automotive use, and created a simple
circuit with a +12V DC supply and an NPN transistor. By hooking the NPN
transistor to a PWM output on the Pi's I/O (via a resistor), I can control the
LEDs from nearly full darkness to their maximum brightness. Here's a tutorial
that covers the same ground: [https://dordnung.de/raspberrypi-
ledstrip/](https://dordnung.de/raspberrypi-ledstrip/)

There's also a switch for "disable alarm no matter what" and "turn light
on/off right now". (I also use it as a nighttime reading lamp, with the added
bonus that it starts ramping down the brightness after about 25 minutes and
turns off after 30: a good reminder to go the f--- to bed)

This all hooks to some not very interesting software to listen to the buttons,
carry out an alarm schedule, ramp the LED intensity up and down, and so forth.
In my case, it's written all in Python in a sort of timer-and-event-driven
style.

Since this pi has wifi, one part of a traditional alarm clock is missing: it
sets the time from NTP and applies the standard DST rules to obey summer time;
there are no controls to set the time, and even after a midnight power outage
it'll generally alarm at the right time in the morning, as long as power came
on at least a few minutes before the appointed minute.

I've had a number of variations on homebrew light alarm over the years, AVRs
and arduinos, TRIACs switching standard incandescent lamps, RGB LEDs
simulating the sunrise color sequence, etc. It's the sort of project you can
always do again and explore more of the problem space and find what works best
for you.

~~~
prkr
I appreciate the writeup! I had originally looked into using the Arduino for
this project but the prospect of handling times and daylight savings seemed
like more crunch than I wanted to dig into. NTP is a good solution.

Have you found waking up to light a good alternative to standard alarms?

------
orhmeh09
I am going to use one to try to replace my Echo Dot with. I only use Spotify,
TP-Link lightbulbs and power plugs, timers, reminders, and weather, so I think
replicating this functionality with RPi and Mozilla IoT Gateway should be a
fun little project.

------
abdullahkhalids
I have been trying to build an Rpi+eink screen laptop, using
[https://github.com/joukos/PaperTTY](https://github.com/joukos/PaperTTY) But
haven't touched the project in months now.

------
jhc_za
One runs pi-hole, and maybe soon will also run pi-vpn. The other runs a small
Nextcloud instance that I use for org files and such. In the past I also had
magic mirror installed on one and used it as a sort of weather/reddit/news
dashboard.

------
SketchySeaBeast
I used it as a ad hoc game camera last summer (we had something coming through
our back yard, so wanted to see what it was, and I won't say no to buying more
electronics I'll use once), but that's about it. Been powered off ever since.

------
arrakeen
1\. pihole and unifi cloud key (not pleased that this is a requirement, but
glad i can run it alongside my pihole)

2\. retropie

3\. commodore64 disk drive emulator! [1]

[1] [https://cbm-pi1541.firebaseapp.com/](https://cbm-pi1541.firebaseapp.com/)

------
gattr
I got a RPi 3B+ to build and test some open-source amateur astronomy tools I
contribute to - everything has been working quite nicely so far (I use Fedora
on my computers and it also works fine on the Pi). I'm eyeing the RPi 4 with
interest.

------
m-p-3
A Pi Zero W at work, controlling an LED from BlinkStick which change color
depending on my presence and status, monitoring my position and calendar
through IFTTT.

I I can also change it manually through HTTP GET commands on the BlinkStick
server with my API key.

------
floren
I've got a first-gen Pi that's filled a variety of roles through the years.
Currently it's hooked up to an old black-and-white TV where I play old TV
shows and the occasional youtube video (omxplayer `youtube-dl -g <url>`).

------
ajs1k
I rigged up something where by I can see and operate the garage door at home.
It even works by talking to Siri to get it to do its thing...

[https://imgur.com/a/Gd54E](https://imgur.com/a/Gd54E)

------
dekhn
One runs my 3d printer. I've also tried using them for robots and I've built a
couple microscopes/telescopes where the pi ran the video subsystem. But for
that case I always end up switching back to an Intel NUC or a laptop.

------
zmix
I didn't fiddle with it for quite a while, since I was bored of updating and
using old code, so I removed it from the chain, but a few years ago I ran it
as an ad-filtering, transparent proxy in my LAN. Very nice (for a tiny
network) !

------
seanalltogether
I used mine as a dlna server and file server, but I was constantly having to
restart it or delete the database to get it to pick up new files I had
recently dragged on to it. Has anyone been able to use one successfully for
serving media?

~~~
sirius87
I run minidlna on it to host music. No issues scanning for new files, but IIRC
detecting new files was an issue when I ran Plex under docker on it.

------
sbouma
Another friend of mine also used a Raspberry Pi with MagicMirror
([https://magicmirror.builders/](https://magicmirror.builders/)) to build a
smart mirror. That was a neat project.

------
matco11
1x Raspberry Pi 3 to power a weather station sampling wind direction, wind
speed, air temperature, soil temperature, air humidity, rainfall and push data
to Weather Underground.

1x Raspberry Pi 3 to teach the kids how to code in Python and do math games.

------
jimmaswell
I set up a camera facing the door to the apartment with it but I haven't gone
farther with motion detection like I planned to. Also got some IR emitters to
try to control the AC unit with it but haven't gotten around to it.

------
jbuzbee
I have a bunch of headless Zero Ws spread around the house, each monitoring
temperature and reporting themselves over multicast DNS

[http://jpbuzbee.asuscomm.com/](http://jpbuzbee.asuscomm.com/)

------
jedberg
A lot of folks have said "pihole". I have a linux server at home that does my
DNS and a bunch of other stuff. I also have a pi3 still in the box.

Would there be an advantage to me running pihole on the pi3 instead of on my
linux server?

~~~
NikkiA
I still don't understand how pi-hole became so popular whereas privoxy didn't

~~~
dgacmu
A filtering DNS server is much easier to add into your network - don't have to
play with proxy autoconfig, and because it's not mucking with the http
content, very lightweight.

------
jchw
Right now: I use it as a Flashrom rig, for flashing BIOS chips.

The new Raspberry Pi looks powerful enough to use as a media center PC, I
ordered one and want to see if it can do that well enough (read as: I’m
curious to see emulation performance.)

~~~
fsagx
I've been happy for a year or two (not even sure, now that I think about
it...) with two Pi3s running openElec. Both run over wired ethernet to SMB
media server. I'm generally stingy with my storage, so I usually opt for the
1080p file sizes. I don't know how well or if it can handle 4K.

------
slumber86
Beside the classical setup of homeassistant I have a telegram bot that parse
the website of a local used camera gear. Sometimes you can find good deals,
but they last a couple of minutes, so having the new deals on time is vital.

------
hawaiian
Hack NASA, mostly. Also it makes a great pihole and man-in-the-middle for
phone apps.

------
Isamu
Stepper motor control - I use the Adafruit DC & Stepper HAT
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/2348](https://www.adafruit.com/product/2348)

Pretty easy to use, so far I like it.

------
philjohn
I wrote a small network monitoring system to check jitter, packet loss, RX and
TX speeds (single and multi threaded) on a regular basis. Had some troubles
with an ISP a while ago and having metrics like this on hand are useful.

------
smush
Pi Zero W running Pi Hole

Besides having to hit the reload button 10 times day or so, it works a treat

------
INTPenis
Like most people on here I have several raspis that I don't use. Two raspi
zeros are wild life cameras for my dog. I like to see what she's doing when
I'm not home.

One raspi 3 is a camera covering the entrance to my apartment.

------
alexcabrera
RetroPi + [8bitdo
N30]([http://www.8bitdo.com/n30pro-f30pro/](http://www.8bitdo.com/n30pro-f30pro/))
controller is the best gaming box I've ever owned.

------
dlevine
* A Pi3 running RetroPie. Might upgrade to a 4 if I can find a use for the 3. * An original Pi that I gave to my brother in law because he was interested in setting up a PiHole (he might have used it for RetroPie, though).

------
clord
I use 2, one controls fans and pumps, linear actuators, and sensors for my
greenhouse. The other does likewise (plus heaters and heat lamps) for my
chicken coop. I prefer rolling my own to ensure it works without internet.

------
zoul
[https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net). Just installed, very happy so far.

~~~
Tehchops
How do you deal with it breaking things like Amazon-based UI(Fire, Mobile
shopping etc...)?

~~~
zoul
So far I have not found anything broken yet. I think I would go for a
whitelist in that case.

~~~
Tehchops
I tried that in the past. Unfortunately shopping and multiple FireTV apps
would break due to non-trivial data being sent from multiple domains.

------
bobbylox
I used it to make a game about High-Fiving, and I got to show it at GDC!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RGjEkkfuwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RGjEkkfuwA)

------
guruz
We're actually running multiple of them (different generations bought at
different times, one is even some similar product)

* company ownCloud server

* company wiki, company IRC server

* private RaspberryMatic instance for doing smart home (HomematicIP) without cloud

------
erlemantos
A programmable, annoying, MQTT-triggered rotating alarm.

Used to annoy people when a Jenkins build fails.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgXXkwVXqvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgXXkwVXqvI)

------
mnem
There are so many amazing projects here, all of which are more impressive than
what I actually get around to doing with mine! I really just use mine a simple
way to play around with assembler in a simple environment.

------
xt508
I created an internet-controlled rover, with live camera feed. Tutorial:
[https://limitos.com/tutorials/rover](https://limitos.com/tutorials/rover) .

------
peternicky
PiHole service is the only project I run on my raspberry pi. Setup is not as
user friendly as we are accustomed to these days, however, with a few hours
you will have a robust ad/analytics block system in place.

~~~
djhworld
I've been using the docker version of pihole for a few years now

[https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole](https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-
pi-hole)

It made the setup process really very simple for me

------
peckrob
Pet Feeders!

[http://www.robpeck.com/2017/11/robs-raspberry-pi-powered-
cat...](http://www.robpeck.com/2017/11/robs-raspberry-pi-powered-cat-feeders/)

------
gerpsh
I have a Raspberry Pi 3 that functions as a multi-purpose home server (Pi
Hole, laptop backups, data scraping jobs, etc).

I have another 3 running MotionEyeOS that I keep pointed out the front of my
house to catch package thieves.

------
dexcs
I just ordered a complete Raspberry Pi Set to grab CAN BUS informations of my
old landrover defender to send engine metrics to a remote sink on my synology
nas at home. Maybe incl. gps tracking. Thats my plan :)

------
thallada
I currently have three around the apartment attached to the network:

One running Seafile
([https://www.seafile.com/en/home/](https://www.seafile.com/en/home/)) with an
old laptop hard-drive connected via USB enclosure. It acts as my own Dropbox.
I mainly store notes and photos on it and sync them to a few other devices for
redundancy. It also has a Samba share with all of my music and has an open vpn
server so I can connect to it from anywhere.

One with a HiFiBerrry Digi+ hat
([https://www.hifiberry.com/products/digiplus/](https://www.hifiberry.com/products/digiplus/))
connected to my sound system via toslink running an MPD
([https://www.musicpd.org/](https://www.musicpd.org/)) server. I can control
it with M.A.L.P.
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gateshipon...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gateshipone.malp&hl=en_US))
on my phone. This one also has a 7" touch screen
([https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-7-Touchscreen-
Display/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-7-Touchscreen-
Display/dp/B0153R2A9I)) which I use to sometimes display ncmpcpp
([https://github.com/arybczak/ncmpcpp](https://github.com/arybczak/ncmpcpp))
inside edex-ui ([https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-
ui](https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-ui)). This one also acts as the living
room clock with an USB LED message board ([https://www.amazon.com/818-Dream-
Cheeky-Message-Board/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/818-Dream-Cheeky-
Message-Board/dp/B001KU43WK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8)) controlled
by dcled
([https://github.com/Conservatory/dcled](https://github.com/Conservatory/dcled)).

Another with a GPIO breakout and breadboard with an individually addressable
LED light strip attached. I got the idea from this Adafruit tutorial
([https://learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-with-raspberry-
pi/...](https://learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-with-raspberry-
pi/overview)). I wrote a program in Python to make it softly glow between
random colors and sync to any beats-per-minute.

------
daltontf1212
I'm partial to PiZero/Ws.

I have one connected to a big screen TV with a USB stick loaded with home
videos playable using omxplayer. I use Raspicast to control the playback using
my phone.

Also, like using them for projects using Rust.

------
mikosty
I use it mainly for music streaming via Spotify (raspotify) and airplay. It's
paired with an 10-year old EMU 0202 USB DAC which haven't had working drivers
for OS X since Snow leopard or something.

------
rapfaria
I use one to receive GPS signals. Whenever I'm <500 meters from home, it turns
on my air conditioner and starts making coffee.

Not fully automated since I still have to put the capsule in the morning, but
works great.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
1x nailed to my wall and acting as a jump box for my home network and a DNS
server

1x running OctoPrint by the 3D printer

1x responsible for remote serial access to and cycling power on my RISC-V
board

1x updates the weather on an e-ink display every 20 minutes

------
odiroot
As I mentioned in another post in here I'm running a 4 Raspberry Pi Kubernetes
cluster at work (based on K3S).

At home I use RPi Zero W for controlling my media centre in the living room
(Mopidy-based) from my kitchen.

------
LukaD
I'm using a Raspberry Pi 3 as an airplay receiver for music streaming at home.
The software is called shairport-sync and is open source. My other Raspberry
Pi 3 is a Retropie retro gaming console.

------
bborud
Lots of things, but the most useful yet is the RPi Zero USB stem which turns
it into a dongle that gets power and network from my Mac. Very useful for
quick and easy access to GPIO pins for ad-hoc use.

------
tau255
I have two Pis currently active:

1\. Pi3: media server (minidlna), nfs & samba for backup to usb drive, Pi-
Hole, weather station with BME280 sensor and gnuplot for graphing

2\. Pi2: wifi bridge for my tv box

And two (Pi2 & Pi3) waiting for some use.

------
xmichael999
1x House power monitor 1x Solar power monitor 1x DVBT airplane tracking
(flightradar.com) 1x Fridge temperature and humidity graphing for Salami
chamber 1x Pi-hole (I also run a second pi-hole on a VM)

~~~
Tempest1981
What sensors for your power monitor?

~~~
Tempest1981
This project shows some $8 sensors: [http://www.the-diy-life.com/simple-
arduino-home-energy-meter...](http://www.the-diy-life.com/simple-arduino-home-
energy-meter/)

------
noise
1x Raspberry Pi 3: Retropie powering a converted cabinet

1x Raspberry Pi 3: Home-assistant.io, perennial WIP

1x Raspberry Pi 1b: Prototype of Pandora streaming box w/pianobar and an LCD
char display

1x Raspberry Pi 2: WIP for next rev of Pandora box

------
Ftuuky
Have any of you done something with machine learning on rpi? Like face
recognition or some fun robot. I'm looking at rpi4+google coral and it seems
impressive enough to run interesting projects.

~~~
2sk21
I have a script that retrieve photos from an attached camera and then uploads
the images to an AWS GPU instance and train an image recognition model there.
This is all for controlling my model trains :-)

------
farmerbb
I use my Raspberry Pi 3B+ as an AdGuard Home server, as an OpenVPN server, to
wake my PC via WoL, plus as just a basic Linux box that's on my home network
that I can remote into from anywhere.

~~~
albemuth
> that I can remote into from anywhere

I've been looking to set up something like this, do you have a static IP or
use an external server you could recommend?

~~~
Piskvorrr
All you need is a DNS provider with an API, and a check for external-IP
change.

~~~
farmerbb
That's correct. The one I use is duckdns.org - it comes with a script that you
can add as a cron job that updates the DNS record every few minutes with
whatever your current IP address is.

------
immnn
I‘m running Bind9 and ISC-DHCPD on my Pi.

Having set a bunch of DNS blacklist zones to completly eliminate necessary of
ad blockers on all my devices.

Following, I have set up dhcpd, thus I‘m not bothering about setting static
IPs.

~~~
e12e
How do you maintain the blacklist? Is there a good community project around
dns blacklists?

------
asatterfield54
Meat curing fridge, plant watering system, LiDAR controllers on my truck

------
bbulkow
I have two that control fridges for cheese making and aging. I used to have
one running a custom news aggregator my gf made for me. I use them as
controllers for large scale art at burning man.

------
marcuskaz
I use my raspberry pi to automatically delete my tweets:
[https://github.com/mkaz/ephemeral](https://github.com/mkaz/ephemeral)

------
rolandblais
I use it to monitor a Tilt submersible hydrometer to keep track of the
fermentation status of my beer. It displays the data on a small oled display
and pushes it to a couple of Google sheets.

~~~
xcubic
Source?

------
novok
I run home assistant, unifi controller and to test out restic backup to my
nas.

I don’t maintain it that well, right now unifi is crapping out for an unknown
reason, but my one access point still works fine.

------
VilleO
1\. Rpi 3 keeping my IRC session up and working as small server for small
tasks. 2\. Rpi 2 has zigbee-module (raspbee) which controls lights. 3\. Zero W
with camera is currently doing nothing.

------
skocznymroczny
Buy it, think of the cool projects I'll make with it, then hide it in the
cupboard. Every few months I'll take it out, set up a webserver on it and
after few days hide it again.

------
TomMasz
I've got a Zero running my PedalPi guitar pedal from ElectroSmash and a 3
running with a USB dongle as a digital radio hotspot (soon to be upgraded to
an MMDVM board with PiStar).

------
DanTheManPR
I use mine to run and monitor my 3D printer remotely. I use octopi and the
little webcam extension.

Since I have a permanent use for it now, I'll probably be buying a second to
play around with.

------
realshowbiz
retropie, pi-hole and running misc temporary servers like minecraft

~~~
ladberg
How does it perform as a Minecraft server? Do you use any mods or just
vanilla?

~~~
realshowbiz
Vanilla. It’s so-so performance wise. A raspberry pi 2 has been good enough
for our 6 player games. Newer models I’m sure would perform better.

------
deepsy
[https://github.com/deepsyx/home-automation](https://github.com/deepsyx/home-
automation) That's what I do :)

------
totalrobe
Installed raspbian then stored it in the closet for 4 years unused

------
connorcodes
I turned mine into a simple Apache server. It's really nice to save a file and
instantly see it live. If I like a program, I just save it and play around
with on my server.

------
Magnitopic
I have a Raspberry Pi 2,3 and 0W. 2 as a media and games center with RetroPi
and Kodi. 3 as a Web server using LAMP and Wordpress. And 0W as a server for
my non wifi printer.

------
ewoodrich
I use a Pi as a bridge to control some lights using an Arduino and a 433mhz
transceiver. It has a simple web API that IFTTT hooks into so I can use them
with a Google Home.

------
H1Supreme
I have a Pi 3 running Kodi, and I have another that I'm using as a border
router for a thread mesh network. I'm going to get another at some point to
run piHole.

------
gregpaton08
I’m using one as a smart lock so I can get in my house using my phone.

I have another one running HomeAssistant with a USB z-wave adapter as well as
some esp8266/tasmota switches.

------
jeffdubin
Currently:

Raspberry Pi 1B+: Streaming radio scanner to Broadcastify

Raspberry Pi 2B: Octoprint

Raspberry Pi 2B: Signage, looping videos on a 32" TV

Raspberry Pi 3B: Duplicity "server" (backup software)

Raspberry Pi 3B+: Web dev box

Previously:

Raspberry Pi 1B: Hylafax server

Raspberry Pi 2B: Kodi

~~~
wferrell
What are you using to play the looping videos?

~~~
dividuum
If you need a professional solution for more than a single screen, consider
taking a look at [https://info-beamer.com](https://info-beamer.com) (my
companies product). Otherwise omxplayer has a -loop argument IIRC.

------
gsruff
1\. I used a Raspberry Pi Zero W to flash Coreboot onto my Lenovo X200.

2\. I have a 3 B+ running RetroPie.

3\. I use a model 1 with USB Wi-Fi adapter as a wireless print server for an
old LaserJet printer.

------
megous
Networked sound card that can also play by itself via ssh/screen/mpv when the
main workstation is down.

That was the easiest way to avoid ground loops in my home audio setup.

~~~
vonmoltke
What software are you using for the virtual sound device, and does said
software work with Windows?

~~~
megous
Pulseaudio with network plugins. It does not.

Maybe some ancient version does:

[https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Ports/W...](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Ports/Windows/Support/)

------
loeg
Pi 1 here. Sits on a shelf collecting dust. I use lower power or more
specialized micros for actual micro work and old x86 parts for higher
performance workloads.

------
Magnitopic
I have a Raspberry 2, 3 and 0W. 2 as a media server with RetroPi and Kodi. 3
as a web server using LAMP and Wordpress. and the 0W to work with my non WiFi
printer.

------
moron4hire
I have the original Pi. With it, I started a collection of various organic and
inorganic particulates. The collection site is a shelf in the corner of my
basement.

------
neop1x
HTPC for local home IPTV, another one as a wifi camera photo forwarder
(security camera), another one as ADS-B receiver for adsbexchange.com and
flightradar24.com

------
pretty_bubbles
PiHole... Also I have Transmission handling torrent files for downloading
entirely legal movies, and keeps seeding them. I use MiniDLNA to stream them
to my TV.

------
bromonkey
...plug it into networks I'm not authorized to with the default password and
forget about it...

but I actually use one w/ octoprint for my 3D printer, really like it.

------
pixelmonkey
Primarily, an always-on node to run wake-on-lan (via etherwake) on other home
network nodes, and to act as an SSH bastion when other entrypoints are
failing.

------
stzup7
I use one as a hardware ad blocker on my home network (the project is Pi-Hole)

I also attached a webcam for home security (motion-project) that sends me a
gif over telegram.

------
shocks
\- One running my home automation setup (zigbee2mqtt, home assistant,
influxdb, grafana, and nose red)

\- OctoPi for my 3D printer

\- RasPlex (Plex client attached to TV)

\- Lakka, an emulation OS for retro gaming

------
pierregillesl
Run my home automation system with Gladys Assistant! :)

[https://gladysassistant.com/](https://gladysassistant.com/)

------
agumonkey
here's what I used mine for:

    
    
        - znc bouncer
        - tiny public http server
        - attempt at osmc/kodi
        - see how low (Hz) can it go while still be emacs capable (https://monkeyplush.blogspot.com/2012/09/raspberry-pi-underclock.html)
    

plans that never realized:

    
    
        - pi as electromechanic controller
        - pi as atmel flasher (thinkpad bios fix/coreboot)

------
kasbah
Controlling a precision stage and camera on my 3d-printed microscope.

[https://openflexure.org](https://openflexure.org)

------
thachnb
I have 1 Pi and 2 Odroid XU4. \- Pi for Pi-hole \- Odroid for VPN and home
assistant server and also a CCTV. \- Another Odroid XU4 for RetroPie games.

------
neelkadia
Feed my rat online –
[http://neelkadia.com/feedmyflash](http://neelkadia.com/feedmyflash)

------
inamberclad
I'm running CoreFlight on a rapsberry pi zero and I want to mount it on my
bike with a GPS (and maybe some other sensors) to track my rides.

------
inson
I haven't used RP before but I am planning to get one and use it as Voip
server. I wanted to start with blogs but most of them are outdated.

------
a_lifters_life
call me a little paranoid but - a RPI security camera. I have it running
locally on my network, capturing still pictures of cars/people/things walking
by (I live near a train). Its really just a passive monitor, but I'd like to
add more difficult things to it like tell me if someone comes within x feet of
my house - phone me, or something, it works for now though.

~~~
tru3_power
got any tutorials you can point me to for something like this? I want to make
a front door peep hole camera after someone recently stole a package from my
apartment entrance.

------
jaythvv
\- Huelights control \- PiHole \- NFC card hacking \- ARM assembly programming
\- Kubernetes + OpenFaas cluster \- Postgres DB (with SSD harddrive)

------
nategri
Current and former use cases:

1.) Arcade emulator box for a custom control panel I made

2.) Host machine for a twitter bot

3.) Octoprint server

4.) Virtual disk drive for an Apple II computer

5.) Internet connection quality monitor

------
rjakobsson
I run PiHole on a raspberry 1 rev b. Going to get the new model to run a
bitcoin node at home (instead of running it on my old laptop).

------
LeonM
I use my Pi2 as a media player (LibreElec), and just ordered a Pi4 4gb which
I'm planning to replace my ageing server and NAS with.

------
mwill
Mines not as cool as all the others here, but I use pi's to run all my
homemade machines: A few 3D printers, pen plotter, CNC etc.

------
hsnewman
Mine runs my game [http://decwars.com](http://decwars.com) (or telnet
decwars.com 1701)!

------
nurettin
I have mine set up as a motion detector, weather display, alert scraper for
local gas, electricity and bad weather condition alerts.

------
tyilo
Unpowered in a drawer.

~~~
elagost
If yours has wi-fi (Pi 3 and above or Pi Zero W) you can always just leave it
plugged in somewhere innocuous as a pi-hole. It's super useful and takes
almost no time to set up, provided you can change the settings on your router
to use it as DNS.

~~~
elcomet
I'm scared that if the pi is down then the whole internet is down (i'm not
always home with my family, so if I'm away I couldn't fix it). How do you
manage failover ?

~~~
elagost
If necessary I can SSH in (if the pi is on) and troubleshoot. No one runs a
business out of my home so Internet isn't super critical, and the smartphones
have data connectivity if need be. I have a couple fresh SD cards in storage
and take quarterly SD card images, so if it fails I don't have to rush out and
buy anything. If the pi itself blows up, I can talk my wife through changing
the DNS server on the router config page from her laptop, or she can just wait
until I get home. Not a huge hassle.

Even so, normally you can set a fallback DNS server on your router, and you
could have two little Pi Zeros on a plugstrip in a closet somewhere! (Or just
set the fallback at opendns or something)

------
sbhn
Zabbix Proxy [https://youtu.be/i2b1DfscSqo](https://youtu.be/i2b1DfscSqo)

------
ramy_d
I'm making a toy that prints a nice message through a receipt printer to my
coworkers when they scan their key cards on it.

------
northernman
1\. Pi3 controlling my swimming pool pump (basically a fancy timer)

2\. PiZero controlling a mousetrap (servoe controlled trapdoor with IR sensor)

------
Scramblejams
IIRC Pi3 gave no access to hardware crypto so using it as a VPN server could
be slow. Anyone know if that changes with the Pi4?

------
twooclock
I monitor several solar plants with old syntronic inverters using node
installed on rpi. Works 24/7 without any problems.

------
babyslothzoo
There are tons of great comments and use cases here. Perhaps I'll have to dust
off my old Raspberry Pi and repurpose it.

------
whalesalad
For a while I had a doggy puppy cam running with a real old Pi.

Just grabbed a 3b+ to use as a dedicated Pihole DNS server for my home
network.

------
guggle
I have 2 Pi3. Nothing special, one is for retrogaming (recalbox), the other is
for files server / backup (raspbian).

------
elvecinodeabajo
I've a Raspberry Pi 3B hosting my NextCloud instance. That's the coolest thing
I'm doing now with it.

------
auiya
RetroPie to run video game console emulators and MAME. Maybe the new version
can finally run a proper N64 emulator?

------
YaBa
1x Pi-Hole

1x Pilight (working together with HomeAssistant in a different machine)

1x sandbox (testing software, web stuff, etc)

1x Asterisk/RasPBX

1x backup manager

1x honeypot

1x bastion host

1x media player (also integrated with HA)

------
chadlavi
I have a pi0 running pi-hole on my home network, and another one running a
network drive.

Just got the 4B to use as a Plex server

------
Malcx
Using it to run an order scheduling system in store of an automated coffee
chain startup we're developing.

------
felepeg
3 rpi w 8mb camera to create a HD CCTV. 2 rpi to serving to 2 viewsonic touch
screen 1 backing up PROD server

------
senectus1
PiHole for one and Media player for the other.

Will be buying the new one to up my media player then I'll have a spare :-D

------
gensynackbar
One RPi 2 for RetroPi, one RPi 3 for PiHole & PiVPN and one RPi 3 running
motioneye as a security camera.

------
F00Fbug
\- WiFi garage door controller \- OSMC x 2 \- Stratux

I had PiHole, but moved it to a tiny VM in an effort to minimize cables.

------
bravura
What I would pay for is:

A preconfigured raspberry pi, maybe with case, that automatically saves
multitrack audio from a USB card. When you plug it into a Soundcraft Signature
MTK audio interface (USB soundcard), at boot it waits for sound and reads all
the live input channels and saves them to disk.

That way, we could record the full multitrack of our sessions very easily, and
not necessarily need to have a laptop computer involved.

Edit: I would also pay for this if it shipped:
[http://www.samplerbox.org/](http://www.samplerbox.org/) which is a sample-box
for a MIDI keyboard. So also taking instruments off a laptop and into a
smaller device.

I don't know why people don't sell prepackaged RPis for a mark-up for
installing software that just boots and has sensible defaults.

~~~
Kliment
I've done this for clients as part of projects (automated firmware flasher
sort of stuff) but never thought of offering it as a service. People
definitely do do this (I know people have done for HTPC stuff, and as VPN
boxes, and for adblocking) but I haven't seen it at scale. If you're
interested, email me and we can look into making it a product.

------
Nican
I use to control WS2812 LED strip and synchronize it real time with the music
being played in the party room.

Also- a PiHole.

------
janvdberg
Mine runs Domoticz. To monitor gas and electricity usage via a USB-P1 cable
(which plugs into my meter).

------
messe
DNS and DHCP server running on NetBSD.

------
Mazzen
openHAB home automation. The Raspberry Pi is a recommended base for openHAB
and a prepared image is provided for easy use. I use more for other purposes
but openHAB is the important one. The Rpi is also nice for it as many hardware
receivers/transmitters are compatible

------
jachee

        Pi hole.
        SSH server for tunneling
        gogs
    

Anything else that needs a tiny Linux box.

------
johnobrien1010
I built a device that pulls the weather from Darksky and displays it on
electronic paper every hour.

------
andrey_utkin
Wearable computer with head-mounted display (Vufine+) and one-handed
keyboard+joystick (Twiddler 3).

------
mgaitan09
at an Airline, we are designing a IOT feed for Aircraft Turn Around processes
(RFIDs, Cameras, Sensors, etc), fed to a Pi per gate and transmitted to a
MongoDB with a custom made GUI, it's a prototype/lab kinda thing though not
made for full production...

------
aurelian15
1\. Programming AVR µCs via ISP/SPI

2\. Home automation based on a 433 MHz transmitter

3\. Media centre

4\. Small router bridging from WiFi to Ethernet

------
zadler
I have one with a DAC running shairport-sync to recieve audio from iPhone and
one running pihole.

------
matthewowen
It's a great paperweight!

I'm sure it does other things too but I haven't got round to it yet :).

------
romtx
All four of mine sit on a box of wires and parts, waiting to be used. Have for
some time now.

------
jandrese
I have one hooked to a RTL-SDR that pulls down Earth snapshots from NOAA
weather satellites.

------
vivekkalyansk
Anyone has any experience using it as a NAS? Is the I/O too slow for it to be
smooth?

------
albumdropped
Tracking aircraft within radio range and feeding data to ADSB Exchange and
Flightaware.

------
werber
I use it to play old movies and video games with a projector in my bedroom.
Super fun

------
hugg
Transmission daemon + Kodi + Running home assistant (just preordered the rpi4
4GB)

------
GuyPostington
1x 3b+ Retropi cabinet 1x 3b+ Prometheus metrics scraping + grafana 2x 3b+
Volumio

------
Inversechi
1 x Pi3 running hassio for home automation 1 x Pi3 running osmc for some media

------
NegativeLatency
I run a print server on one of mine, and shairport for AirPlay compatibility

------
geophile
Stuck a 2TB disk drive on it and I’m using it as an offsite backup server.

------
atum47
I have used it as a server to control electronics, among other things.

------
ddmma
\- MagicMirror \- Nodejs IoT Azure Gateway \- Lamp server for Greenhouse

------
sawmurai
One raspberry pi to water the plants on my balcony every night at 4am

------
jonotime
Internal network services. Mostly UniFi controller, Emby, Syncthing.

------
SteveNuts
Pi-hole, and my home backup target using an external HDD and Samba.

------
cartoonfoxes
1\. Trello displays in conference rooms.

2\. Admin terminal that sits on my desk.

------
khnov
pihole, nodered domoticz mosquitto for home automation, plex sonarr bazarr
radarr jackett emby deluge for home media server, all in one little rpi3 and
dockerized

------
Avamander
A DNS server, running MyController, serving media in LAN.

------
novaRom
I block all YouTube ads using PiHole in my local network.

------
ngaut
Running a distributed database cluster TiDB as a Demo.

------
jonathankoren
mine gathers data from my weather station and uploads it to various places.
I’ve been thinking about using for some robotics recently though.

------
everdrive
Pihole, Owncloud, Ambient particulate matter sensor.

------
lavoiems
I use it as a visualization server for my research!

------
epynonymous
i created a digital scoreboard that can be hooked up to a large led for
sporting events, can be used.from rpi 2, 3 to a, b, and zero

------
LawnDart1
Octoprint - 3d printer monitor & controller

------
polskibus
Check out hass.io

------
rishabhd
Pentesting. PiHole. OOBM device for my Infra.

------
joaomoreno
I got it running an OpenVPN server, love it!

------
vs4vijay
I have setup RetroPie on my Raspberry Pi....

------
dewy
I have three connected in a Spark cluster.

------
chrshawkes
I turned mine into an old Atari system.

------
alexandander
piHole, UniFi Cloud Key, Wikipedia Bots (not for spam of course, these were
officially sanctioned :))

------
_emacsomancer_
Persistent IRC bouncer with Weechat.

------
argimenes
I use it run RISC OS on the metal.

------
postit
main pi: pihole and google cloud print spare pi: retropie loaded with all the
good goodies.

------
jonotime
UniFi controller, Emby, Syncthing

------
cbm-vic-20
SSH/IRC client for a VT420.

------
unhammer
one as a baby monitor (shoutcast + microphone) and one for my weechat irc
bouncer

------
TaylorAlexander
With the Raspberry Pi:

I've made a four wheel drive robot called Rover that uses brushless motors and
3d printed planetary gears. It's all CC0 open source:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCkX6bLY3E&t=4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCkX6bLY3E&t=4s)

[https://github.com/tlalexander/rover_control](https://github.com/tlalexander/rover_control)

[https://reboot.love/t/rover-and-skittles-cad-design-files-
he...](https://reboot.love/t/rover-and-skittles-cad-design-files-here/171)

[https://imgur.com/a/GqXD2Zj](https://imgur.com/a/GqXD2Zj)

I've made a smaller classroom style robot named Skittles that also uses
brushless + planetary and is open source:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2-zIUY_kww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2-zIUY_kww)

I taught a robotics class using the robot Skittles, and the students did a
great job picking up Raspberry Pi. There's a lot of tutorials on the web they
found to do their work!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pql6ZbPVog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pql6ZbPVog)

I've made a "fake Philips Hue" light out of a SK6812 RGBW LED strip to go with
my existing Philips Hue system. That uses this github project:

[https://github.com/diyhue/diyHue](https://github.com/diyhue/diyHue)

I made a humidity controlled chamber for mushroom cultivation:

[https://github.com/tlalexander/humidity_controller](https://github.com/tlalexander/humidity_controller)

I've made an RTK GPS system using two raspberry pis and two $75 GPS receivers
to make a GPS system that so far looks to be accurate to within a few
centimeters (when you have clear sky).

[http://rtkexplorer.com/how-to/posts-getting-
started/](http://rtkexplorer.com/how-to/posts-getting-started/)

I replaced our dodgy bluetooth audio sink on our stereo with an Airplay node
using this software:

[https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-
sync](https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync)

I've added a wireless front end to some of my 3D printers using Octoprint:

[https://octoprint.org/](https://octoprint.org/)

What else? Well I just keep going. Professionally I'm a robotics prototyping
engineer and I cannot tell you how much joy I get from the Pi and the things I
can make with it. :)

------
ei8htyfi5e
Is collect dust an option?

------
sWallo
mostly for running pi-hole as a DNS server for my local network on it.

------
orliesaurus
Smart dashboard for TVs

------
teh_klev
Keep them in a drawer.

------
drev
Playing with retropie

------
s-macke
Pihole and tvheadend

------
jaimex2
Kodi media centre.

------
westondeboer
pihole and instapy

------
just_myles
ctrl + F 'emulator'. lol only 3.

------
GnarfGnarf
Watch TV shows.

------
adrianvega
print server for an older printer

------
antirez
Retrogaming

------
hansdieter1337
Pihole

------
blago
VPN

------
yCloser
pihole with my rpi1

retropie with my rpi3

------
cr0sh
I'm kinda concerned by the number of mentions here of using the Pi to run
OctoPrint (I think that's right?) to remotely admin and monitor a 3D
printer...

I've always been of the mind that a 3D printer should never be left physically
unattended - even with monitoring (via camera and such), as they can
potentially start a fire if something goes wrong (failed print spewing random
filament?).

Is this a wrong viewpoint? Are there certain failsafes put into place to make
the possibility of a fire non-existent?

I can think of a few failsafes (fire/smoke detector to shut things down,
encasing the system inside a fireproof cabinet, perhaps with some kind of
instant extinguisher system, filament/jam monitoring sensors) - are they
enough?

~~~
weaksauce
You can also get a small automatic fire extinguisher like they have for grow
rooms and over stoves to help mitigate. Having that in an enclosure with some
leds and a webcam would be a decent mitigation. Checking in on the print every
now and again is a good call too.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I've heard that purging the 3D printer with e.g. CO2 gas is something that you
can do to improve layer adhesion. It should be sufficient to prevent fires
also? Seems most plastics have a limiting oxygen concentration of around 16%.
Purging from 21% down to, say, 15% requires that one adds 40 L of CO2 (at STP)
to dilute a 100L chamber. Your typical 2.6 kg small CO2 bottle that people use
for home-brew beer kegs would last for at least 35 fillings.

~~~
weaksauce
interesting thought but it's hard to seal up a vessel for any length of time.
you could perhaps do a positive pressure vessel that slowly leaks from inside
to out. (this is a common tactic in clean rooms with purified air a psi or two
more pressurized than the hallways so the clean air always flows out to the
hall.) not sure what the effects of leaking CO2 into your room would have
though.

------
madengr
Using one for a DMR (ham radio) hotspot.

Plan on using one for a GPSDO data monitoring.

The problem with the RPi is the SD card file system. It’s just not reliable
enough. I have had better luck with the Beaglebone Black, which as on-board
eMMC.

------
simgim
I have 1 in my dmz running wireguard (VPN for safe public wifi browsing) and
nextcloud on ubuntu 18.04. Another inside my network running Freedombox for
Privoxy and Searx.

------
cheesymuffin
I don't use it, I never got around to it because I'm not actually all that
interested in computers, at least not in the sense that I thought I was.

------
downtide
I bought a Pi 0 W. The USB port failed on it. Sent it back, the second did the
same. Booted probably about 10 times in all. That was the end of that.

------
JudgeWapner
* DHCP server for my LAN

* DNS server including pi-hole

* headless bittorrent client (transmission daemon)

* NFS and miniDLNA media server

* git remote

------
dymk
It runs OctoPrint for my 3D printer

------
ixtli
Pi Hole!

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I think I'm just going to nope out of this one before the over-engineering
makes me want to burn the world.

