How are you using your Raspberry Pi?

I'm running a Twitter bot that tweets out sunrise/sunset timelapses, and also does on-device object detection and classification to tweet out helicopters that fly by the field of view.

https://twitter.com/dcskycam/with_replies

It's a Pi 4B with the HQ Cam (6mm lens). The ML models are trained on my MBP, converted to tflite, and run on the pi itself.

The main use case is the timelapses, but after seeing that that most of the helicopters that flew by weren't transmitting ADSB, I figured I could help out the @helicoptersofdc crowdsourcing project (run by someone else) by contributing heli spots in an automated manner that might otherwise go unreported.

I also have a 3B+ running pihole on the LAN.

Artificial Intelligence research[1]

I also have one dedicated to running the RetroPie[2] distribution and I use it for playing old video games.

I have another with an RTL-SDR dongle[3] attached, and running the OP25[4] software, and I use it as a scanner for listening to local fire/police/ems dispatch channels.

I had given some thought to doing a "cyberdeck"[5] project, but honestly it doesn't have much (if any) practical application, and most of the parts and stuff I bought for that have been repurposed for the "AI box" thing instead.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32310799

[2]: https://retropie.org.uk/

[3]: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/

[4]: https://github.com/boatbod/op25

[5]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/

I've got one of mine collecting weather data

https://github.com/bediger4000/station

I'm hoping to detect the "tide" in the atmosphere with barometric pressure readings, but I haven't done anything towards that.

I'd also like to have an automated way to pick out high/low temperature for the day. I've got 2 thermometers taking temperatures. There's data loss caused by both sensors quitting and operational issues, so I have a lot to learn and figure out in processing the raw data.

Not creative, I guess, but I use a Raspberry Pi 3 for about 90% of my computing.

It's hilarious to use commandline tools to get a way better and faster experience than with a fancy machine. For example, watching Youtube videos faster, with LoWeRcAsEd titles for videos, and without clickbaity thumbnails, comments, etc.

Having to buy a new machine every X years is ridiculous in this day and age.

I have a raspberry pi Zero W as my garage door opener[1]. Wired into the interior buttons and send relevant signals to an open or close the door. I got tired of replacing batteries in the remotes due to heat/freezing cycles. Hooked up a SignalWire SMS number to a webhook that the PI is listening on. Now I can send an SMS text to the garage door to get it to open.

Have other pi's doing many things, but that's the most creative so far.

[1] https://blog.penguincoder.com/garage-opener-1/

Across the three currently live Pis I have:

* Adblocking DNS on unbound and nsd with policies to serve different results on WG mesh

* Tiny Tiny RSS

* Gitea and Youtrack

* Some home-built apps with Grafana and Postgres

* Homechart

* Wireguard mesh for deployment and on-the-go access to those services

Everything is managed through a Nix flake and deployed through deploy-rs.

Nextcloud, Zabbix and Docspell are running on an old laptop which I plan to migrate to a Pi4 when I can get my hands on it.

Buried inside a PiDP-11, connected to a VT420. Used mostly for IRC. Though I am considering using it to build a bedside radio/clock/alarm that doesn't report back to FAANG.

https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

Raspberry Pi B: Stream a local ham radio repeater (weather spotters) to Broadcastify

Raspberry Pi Zero: Brachiograph

Raspberry Pi 4B: Octoprint

Raspberry Pi 4B: Home Assistant

Raspberry Pi 4B: NAS (running Kopia as backup target w/ USB HDD, not speed-critical)

Raspberry Pi Zero 2W: ham radio-related software for portable use (e.g. WSJT-X, etc.) using cell phone via WiFi as display/input via RDP

To do: MiniDexed synth module, eInk display driver, network a UPS via NUT, RetroPie, Ham Clock, etc., etc. I've also used them previously as a fax server, digital signage for office lobby, and other things I'm forgetting

I have one hooked up to a TV in my front room that gives me weather and live ETAs and visualization of the bus stops near my house:

https://blog.line72.net/2019/08/02/announcing-realtime-bus-t...

I'm running a Roon end point using RoPieee OS[1] which is connected to my DAC and amplifier. This also allows me to do Airplay or drop any streams on it so I can listen to it either on headphones or speakers connected.

[1]: https://ropieee.org/

PiMiga! https://youtu.be/KLJk8fTjQLw

Also Combian 64 is very cool https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/

I am lucky enough to have four Pi's, although only three of them are actively used:

- a Pi 4 8GB which runs Home Assistant along with Zigbee bridge, and PiHole - a Pi 4 4GB used to debug/flash my Precursor[1] - a Pi 3A+ currently in search of a use-case, after being used for a university research project - a Pi Zero 2WH for Pwnagotchi :-)

I was able to snatch the Pi 4 4GB and the Zero 2WH at very good prices by connecting the excellent RPILocator[2] to IFTTT (not sponsored :-)

[1]: https://betrusted.io/ [2]: https://rpilocator.com/

I won mine in a quiz competition, so I didn't have any special project thought out for it beforehand. I ended up using it as a piano synth: running Pianoteq and hooking it up to a digital piano, it gives much better sound than the digital piano's built in sound (and far more flexibility).

I was worried about latency, and that I would have to overclock it (the guides I read on the net suggested I would have to). Latency was a problem in the start, when using the Pi's built in audio jack, but once I switched to an external sound card the latency vanished. Didn't even have to overclock it, though I added a couple of cooling ribs just in case.

Printer server for turning a dumb printer into a network printer.

Sensor and pump control for a self-watering flower bed.

I used to run a server with my unifi controller, NAS gateway, and IRC server, but I found an old office PC that does that for me now with about 10x the performance.

- Pi 4 to relay data from 433/915MHz weather station/temp/humidity sensors to MQTT using three SDRs and RTL_433 (consumed by Home Assistant, but could be read my anything subscribed to MQTT topic). One SDR for each 433/915MHz and a third that cycles between scanning 315, 345, and 868MHz every half hour.

- Two Pi 4s used as secondary DNS servers (with RPZ for blocking crap like Pi-Hole but using ISC BIND) for home network (fed from hidden primary).

- Pi 4 as a Linux workstation

- Pi 2 as a proxy between my solar inverter and WAN to intercept/decrypt traffic containing panel optimizer data not available from API

- Pi Zero W as serial console server.

Not doing this yet for lack of a Pi 4 (or other SBC with USB 3.0), but I plan to build a simple and reasonably performant NAS with one and USB SSDs.

I've considered PCIe -> SATA adapters, the boards that do this nicely aren't available - Radxa Taco, Wiretrustee SATA board - or have too few slots - PiBox- and the performance gain, about 30%, doesn't seem worth it when accessed via the network anyway. Of course I'd love to be corrected (hey Jeff).

I use mine mostly for educational pursuits. For example, I have a clusterHAT with a bunch of Zeros on it, which I used to learn MPI.

I also use a pi as a home central server, and other pis for related things around that.

I actually love using the Pi4 with 8G RAM as a desktop with two monitors. I'm not a gamer, so I don't feel any lag.

Lately I've been re-learning a lot of my old electronics project material with the newer Pi Pico microcontroller. I'm actually putting a larger project together with it, that will hopefully go online and not just be for myself.

I created a little DIY web-based dashboard that displays on my TV. I have a tiny bit of Python that runs on startup that turns on my TV via an API, then launches Chromium in kiosk mode and loads my webpage written in Elm.

I have nicely tiled widgets with CSS grid that displays real-time bus arrivals and current hourly weather forecast. I'm going to add live streams from my IP cameras around my place. Some kind of calendar widget would be nice too, to remind me of important events at a glance.

If only I could find ~30 Raspberry Pi4, I'd use them for a digital signage system. (For availability tips or suggestions, I would be very grateful!)

Learning. Right now I have my Pi running a Python script that will grab messages placed in an AWS SQS queue and scroll them across an LCD screen attached to the Pi via breadboard.

For me, projects like this make learning something I am not all that interested in but required to use for work (in this case SQS) much more fun because I get to learn something that interests me (in this case getting an LCD screen to work with the Pi)

One running LibreElec and one as a web server running my Amsterdam ferry app https://pont.app. But the most “creative” has got to be the one that measures IAQ and CO2 in my office. It also runs Prometheus and Grafana as a front end. Custom 3D printed case for the sensors which are attached with embedded magnets.

Using a 4 as a wireless bridge. I've tried using them to host servers (mainly storing data) but been burned too many times using sd cards, and once I inevitably add in an ssd/hdd the value of using the pi vs just getting a cheap significantly more powerful x86 system starts to dwindle. Would love to come up with a project that makes good use of the GPIO pins though.

I have a super old pi 1b connected to a small screen that just randomly plays Conway's game of life every couple of minutes.

I have two Pi Zero/W with hard drives connected to them. I scp video files to them. I wrote https://github.com/daltontf/omxserver to allow those files to be played back via a web interface.

I have a pi zero functioning as a doorbell (with camera & opencv) One pi 3 running moonlight to stream my win10 desktop (with gaming!) over ethernet to my living room tv. One pi 3 running a display in the hallway. (purpose: grafana/ip cam views/etc) One pi 3 operating a cnc machine (octoprint etc).

I use it as a media player for my daily workout (I used DVDs before) :-)

https://pilabor.com/series/raspberry-pi/media-player-with-li...

Not particularly creative, but I have two in use (both rPi 4s):

- running Carbide Motion to control a CNC - running a backup of a wiki and forum which was taken off-line so that I can refer to it

I really should set up a media/file server and work up a suitable backup strategy.

I'm using pi's for these works: 1. A pi 4B running jellyfin and aria2c. I use aria to download files, torrents and stream them on jellyfin. I have a aria2 web frontend for using it from browsers. 2. A pi zero wh running pihole. 3. Another pi zero wh for nginx

With the digital TV hat and Kodi, it's a fantastic smart TV that has the huge advantage of not actually being a smart TV. Also, TV headend lets you stream TV or Radio to any computer you want -- it's amazingly fast and quite low bandwidth.

Comment here if you're interested in learning more, but: I made an app that periodically checks the US embassy website for visa appointments and got my family a trip to my graduation just because of it!

I have a 4 by my wireless router doing DHCP, Pi-Hole DNS ad-blocking, and hosting a Wireguard tunnel.

I bought a nice case and M.2 SSD for it, and it has been running happily for almost two years.

i am using mine as gateways into my networks. All deployed with wireguard and traefik and authelia to let me login to anything with 2fa if i want it exposed, got tired of the very bad solutions some companies like synology provides with 2fa and dyndns.

no firewall ports just plug it in and ready to go in a second, and i use ssd's instead of sd cards for speed and reliability. Works without thinking about it for at least 1 year now.

I've got 3 of them for learning kubernetes. Another is collecting ADS-B data, and one is a backup pihole when the main server is rebooting / offline

one for each of the following

- Pihole

- Apache, subversion (proxied through Traefik on a 3 node x64 Docker Swarm cluster)

- NodeRed, MQTT (ESP8266 temp / humidity probes various locations around the house, running since 2017)

- OctoPrint for PrintrBot (3D printer circa 2015)

- OctoPrint, Klipper for Ender 3

Also, a 4 node K3s cluster each with 400gb ssd and 2Tb seagate managed by Longhorn

apparently I don't know when to stop :-)

Past:

* Kiwix server hosting Wikipedia offline among other info

* RetroPie

Present:

* Home Assistant (home automation)

* Zigbee2MQTT (non-propriety home automation hub)

* Pi-hole (ad blocker via dns)

Future(?):

* WireGuard VPN

* Micro weather station reporting

* FlightAware station (tracking Airplanes flying nearby)

Ha, nextcloud, wireguard, miniflux. All on single Pi 4B, booted from SSD. Honestly I'm surprised how much can it lift.

Still trying to find one to buy to replace the one that died. But they are out everywhere every time i check

I am using multiple 4bs for WireGuard + pihole and cloudflare to setup my own global vpn.

I'm using it as an entry in my shopping cart, waiting for them to come back in stock

I host my web projects on a pi 4 using a reverse ssh tunnel to a $5 linode box.

Y'know, I still don't own a Pi. And I feel really guilty about it ...

My Zero W hosts a gopher site and an 'unfederated' email service.

one of the most popular use cases: as a dust collector in a drawer /s

Used one for quite some time as a Samba share and Plex server for music.

pi4B: Nextdns client, tailscale, shared network drive, log aggregator for other devices on my network and also data end point for some iOS Apps (Overland GPS tracker)