My Top Ten Best Raspberry Pi Projects

This is the project that started it all for me. I struggled to figure out what I would do with a Raspberry Pi. I regularly take the dogs for a walk, and don't want to carry the keys in my shorts. If I had a smart phone app that could open the garage door that would be useful.

Also, this project made me realize people have a lot of knowledge, and they assume I have it too. So, I started documented my projects.

Adding Kodi Media players as clients for TVheadend is what made me lose touch with reality. I cut the cord. I had 7 Raspberry Pis running OSMC and Kodi. I was constantly playing with them, discovering new content and improving on the original design.

This can be a trivial project or a complex one. For example, I soldered prototype board IR receiver. Buying an off-the shelf IR receiver would have made it much easier.

I had the opportunity to teach a high school course on setting up a Raspberry Pi as a student computer. It was two 1-hour classes. In the first hour, the students were able to put everything together and get to the desktop.

The 2nd hour was spent adding apps and using the computer.

I also set up a Home Theater PC using a Raspberry Pi.

I had an existing Rainbird Sprinkler System, but wanted one that could be controlled remotely. OpenSprinkler is a charm.

An existing sprinkler system is not required.

This was a much cooler project than I thought it would be. It's complex and yet easy. MotionEye does all the heavy lifting. The main issue was fitting it into a nice case, running the network cables and mounting it to the house.

The same concepts can be used for an in home security camera.

I did this just for fun. I learned a lot of things though. I added a battery so the Geiger counter was portable. I also learned how to use a touch display and shutdown the Raspberry Pi without corrupting the microSD Card.

I don't appreciate paying monthly fees and other fees that are outside of my control, such as for a monitoring company or police fees for false alarms.

My home came with a DSC security system. Envisalink offers an add-on board that interfaces with DSC system. The Raspberry Pi allows me to receive alerts on my phone and decide for myself whether or not the police should be called.

My house was wired in the master bedroom closet. I moved the cabling out of the closet and to a Rack. As part of this project, I wanted to rack mount some Raspberry Pis, mostly to clear up the clutter in my office, but also because it is very cool.

A Wi-Fi bridge allows a device that only has an ethernet port to access the net using Wi-Fi.

About 50 years ago, I built an AM radio using a crystal. For a kid in the 60s, this was very cool. OK, that's a lie. It was very nerdy, but it was cool to me.

There is no point in building a Radio Alarm Clock. A home built alarm clock radio costs way more than buying one and it took a crazy amount of time to build. But this project made me feel like a kid again and I learned a lot.

There are a lot of great Raspberry Pi cases. Making another best Raspberry Pi case seemed too easy. So, I decided to make the absolutely worst Raspberry Pi case. No design, no style, just a damn ugly case.

Every time I start a Raspberry Pi project I look at all the cases I could use. I spend a lot of time looking at all of the cases and examining the merits of each. Almost every time, I end up picking some version of a plexiglass case.