7 Coolest Raspberry Pi Projects You Can Try On Your Own

Introduced for the first time in February 2012, Raspberry Pi has come a long way in its journey. It is now much more advanced, something that allows users a lot more ground to play. Of course, you can use it as a computer, but there’s scope for a lot more. If you like to try new things, Raspberry Pi can be a lot more customizable than the average desktop or laptop. Here are some of the coolest projects that you can try on your Raspberry Pi.

Retro gaming machine – If you are the one who grew up playing video games on large consoles, you may want to try it again. Raspberry Pi supports a variety of retro gaming operating systems and all of these have their own controller support. A wide variety of classic gaming platforms are supported on Raspberry Pi.

Minecraft game server – Using Raspberry Pi as a Minecraft gamer server will allow you to play from anywhere. You can even invite neighbors to play, who are connected to your home network. Gamers active on the internet can also be asked to play. There are various other multiplayer network games that can be operated on Raspberry Pi. Games like Doom, Civilization, Quake, Open TDD, etc. that have open-source ports is supported by Raspberry Pi. You can create game servers of these as well on your Pi.

Stop-motion camera – Stop-motion videos have emerged as a popular choice on YouTube and social platforms. Depending on the type of content, these videos are liked by people across age groups. You can create your own stop-motion videos using Raspberry Pi in combination with a dedicated camera module. You will need to know Python programming language and the usual equipment required for making stop-motion videos. You will need patience as well since stop-motion photography will need time and effort to perfect.

Your own FM radio station – Some nerds will always be out there, trying to listen to unknown radio transmissions. Eavesdropping on radio waves is quite exciting, something that you can target by launching your own FM radio station. You can do it through your Raspberry Pi to transmit your message or communication via radio waves. This is a secret feature built within Raspberry Pi. You will need basic equipment such as battery and a microSD card to record and broadcast your message in a loop.

Host your website – Being open source, Raspberry Pi can easily be used to host a homepage or blog. You can have static pages or full-fledged database-driven website. You should have knowledge about technology stacks like WordPress, PHP, Apache, MySQL and LAMP. Just save the HTML files in the www / directory / folder and your web server will be up and running. Remember that this will work only with a static IP address.

Twitter bot – Using Twitter API, you can program your Raspberry Pi to work like a bot. You will need to have knowledge of Python or Node.js to work out the programing part. You can program Raspberry Pi to tweet anything that it has access to. For example, you can tweet random images from a folder or quotes from a list.

Smart mirror – Multitasking surely improves time utilization, provided your brain can handle it. Smart mirror is a good example in that context. With Raspberry Pi, you can create your own smart mirror. It’s essentially a two-way mirror that has a display screen mounted on one side. So, while you are doing everyday chores, you can catch up on the latest news updates or watch videos and movie trailers.