If you’ve got a Raspberry Pi and you’re wondering what to build with it, here are some great ideas. We’ve found 5 of our favourite Raspberry Pi projects which vary in complexity, so there’s something for you to start with and a few to really challenge your Pi abilities.
Pi Powered Productivity Tracker
This Raspberry Pi based productivity tracker by Gocivici collects productivity data from your PC and mobile phone to display a chart showing the percentage of time you’ve spent on productive activities for the day, your to do list, a radar graph showing the time spent using certain categories of programs and a weekly productivity overview.
It also features a bright ambient backlight which illuminates the wall in green when your productivity is over 50% and goes red when your productivity falls below 50%. It’s a great motivational tool! Or a device to keep an eye on you if you need to practise a bit more self control.
Picroscope
If you haven’t guessed from the title, the Picroscope is a Raspberry Pi based digital microscope by RiksEddy which enables you to learn about microbiology, optics and DIY electronics all in a single project.
This is a great project if you’re on a budget as it makes use of a Pi Zero (the cheapest of the Pis) and only requires a few other inexpensive components and some 3D printed parts.
The magnification is achieved using a cheap CCTV lens and lens holder and produces amazingly clear results, like this image of rabbit hair:
MudPi – An Automated Indoor & Outdoor Garden System
This automated indoor and outdoor garden system by Mudpi is great for people who like gardening but who either don’t have the time or don’t remember to maintain it properly.
The system monitors the outdoor temperature and humidity as well as the moisture levels in the soil and automatically waters your plants.
The best part is that it can be connected up to the internet to allow you to monitor your garden from a web page or through an app on your mobile phone.
Pi-Hole Ad Blocker
The Pi-Hole Ad Blocker by Puffball101961 is a really awesome ad blocker for your home or small office network. The Raspberry Pi runs software called Pi-Hole and PADD to block ads and a display connected to the front of the Pi displays statistical data on the number of ads blocked, and the Pi-Hole’s IP address.
This is quite a nice starter project as you’ll learn a lot about programming your Pi without having to worry too much about additional IO and electronics hardware.
Raspberry Pi Laser Scanner
We’ve seen a couple of 3D scanners for Raspberry Pi’s which are photo or video based, but this cool 3D scanner makes use of a laser line and a clever algorithm to convert the line data into a 3D model which is then emailed to the user, meaning it can be a complete stand alone system.
The end results are still a bit rough but this is mostly to do with the post processing. 3D scanning software has come a long way in the past few years and there are a number of free or affordable software packages available to convert imagery into 3D models with continually improving results.
Let us know in the comments section below which one of these Raspberry Pi projects you’d like to try first.
