After reporting the Raspberry Pi foundation was offering its latest unit for free with the £5.99 MagPi magazine, we asked readers to share the ideas and projects they’d been working on to get the best out of the British built computers.
The Raspberry Pi Zero sold out within days, but with other iterations having been on the market since 2012 there’s already a thriving community building on the foundation pieces of kit, with conventional add-ons as well as, well, slightly more eccentric items.
Some may have ripped up the engineering handbook and forgotten to search for a problem to solve in the first place (did we really need a bot to tweet Craig David lyrics?), but in each submission there was an admirable level of ingenuity and enthusiasm and a genuine passion for learning.
Below are a selection of our favourites – you can still get involved by clicking the blue GuardianWitness button or commenting below. Have you encountered alternatives to the Raspberry Pi? Maybe you’ve built something from scratch? If so, we’d love to hear about that too.
First up, it’s RoboCroc
RoboCroc
I used a Raspberry Pi to turn one of my children's old shoes into a robot :)
Next, and perhaps more practical, a novel way to keep an eye on household utility use
Raspberry Pi Solar and Smart home data logger
We made a data logging system using a Raspberry Pi and a custom circuit board which logs the output from our solar PV system and solar thermal (hot water) and uploads the data every minute to a reporting website on http://home.briandorey.com/ There are more photos and details anbout the project on my blog at http://www.briandorey.com/post/raspberry-pi-solar-data-logger-version-2.aspx
More monitoring from Will McGugan, who shared his entomological pursuits
Monitoring the nocturnal activities of exotic insects
This is a timelapse created with the Raspberry Pi and an infra-red camera. It shows 24 hours of the movements of a pair of Mexican Elephant beetles. The Pi takes photos at regular intervals and sends them to a web application, also running on the Pi.
Then there was this perhaps Instagram-inspired camera
Raspberry Pi hacked into a Holga 120 Film Camera
I crammed a Raspberry Pi Model A into an old Holga film camera, along with the Raspberry Pi camera module, a wifi adapter and battery backed up clock. The resulting camera can take normal still pictures, but also has an ASCII art mode that generates pages of images using text.
Past and present tech collide in this BBC Micro project
Pi Twitter for the BBC Micro
This Raspberry Pi also provides access to Twitter on a BBC Micro Model B. The Pi does most of the hard work, connecting to the Twitter API over Wifi, and renders the output of a Twitter search in Mode 7 colour back to the BBC. As the BBC is connected over Serial, you can type messages and send them back as Tweets and use this implementation as a realtime Twitter Client.
This group of Quake fans were keen on the gaming capabilities of the Raspberry Pi
Quake On LAN
Quake On LAN allows even the most novice user to run a proper Quakeworld deathmatch server on their LAN using a low power Raspberry Pi Model B or Model B+. Long gone are the days when you needed a noisy, expensive, dedicated server and a degree in Networking Technology to arrange some free for all fun for you and your friends! No new code was written for this project. It is simply a bundle of pre-existing software pre-installed and pre-configured for your convenience (all wrapped up in some simple scripts and a cron job). Now starting your own QW Server at home is literally a “plug and play” experience. The image for your SD Card can be downloaded at http://www.quakeonlan.net/
This musical mod has combined a Raspberry Pi 2 with an Arduino to breathe new life into the Sinclair ZX81
Re-imagining of a ZX81 with a Raspberry Pi 2 and a Arduino.
Not exactly a ZX81: Fully assembled AZ15 case with a Raspberry Pi 2 and Arduino / Leostick at its heart, and fully functional ZX81 keyboard as its soul. Project is documented at http://zx81keyboardadventure.blogspot.com.au/
Sticking with audio, a smart way to give this modern hi-fi system a retro look
Connecting an old jukebox to a home media system
I used a Raspberry Pi to re-invent my old 1960’s wall box as a controller for my wireless home media system (SONOS). The RPi is housed inside the wall box and runs a program that polls the GPIO for pulses from the wallbox. It decodes the pulses into a song selection and using UPnP protocols over my home wi-fi, adds the song to the SONOS queue.
Many of you were keen to tout the Raspberry Pi’s educational capacities, and we were interested in this exploration of the internet of things
Internet of Lego
A living Lego city powered by a Raspberry Pi, several Arduiono and similar microcontrollers and web APIs. It's an experiment to learn more about the Internet of Things and smart cities. Www.internetoflego.com
And how this budding billionaire might be on the right track with his machine
Dylan's (age 8) first coding project!
Dylan (age 8) wants to be a game designer so as an indulgent grandad I bought him a raspberry pi and project kit. After An afternoon of trial and error and googling Dylan perfected the code that made the blue LED flash. He assures me that once he becomes a gaming billionaire he'll see me right!
There was a sci-fi theme running through some contributions
Raspberry Pi-corder
I hollowed out a Star Trek Tricorder toy and fit a Raspberry Pi, batteries, and a display into it. I also added a little web page to the device to mimic a medical tricorder display.
We also wanted to celebrate some of the most pointless ways to spread joy ...
@BotSelecta - programmed to tweet Craig David lyrics
Using the Raspberry Pi 2 as a host, I have programmed a fairly simple script (with the help of online tutorials) to periodically tweet random lyrics from Craig David's debut album Born To Do It. If that isn't a good use of the RPi, I don't know what is.
Lastly, something festive for those who feel Twitter should set the mood at this time of year
Christmas Twitter Tree Lights
Christmas tree lights controlled by a Raspberry Pi that festively attempt to reflect Twitter's feelings about Christmas. Using a string of individually addressable RGB LEDs and sentiment analysis software from Stanford University. https://vimeo.com/82496386 http://barnoid.org.uk/christmas-twitter-tree-lights
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