Raspberry PI Projects

nice1franko

They seem like great yokes. Can't wait to get my hands on one but I'm actually not too sure what to do with it apart from run XBMC on it... which I don't even need.

Has anyone any interesting projects or uses in mind for their Raspberry PI?

Khannie

I plan on making good use of the fact that it's going to be running linux to possibly remote control stuff in my house. It would be easy to set up sending a command over ssh to a box in your house from a smart phone. My first thought was being able to turn on the heating remotely. That would require:

RPi running linux and an ssh server.
Android app that can send an ssh command (easy for anyone with even basic programming experience to code).
Gertboard add on for the pi to turn on / off the boiler.
Bit of wiring.

I considered hooking it up to a google calendar, for timing the heating too.

Fysh

My plan is to pick up 4 or 5 and build a dedicated network with them, as a way of familiarising myself with the various Linux infrastructure components.

Combined with an arduino kit I reckon you could have a lot of fun with these things. Edited to add: I can see Khannie has similar sorts of ideas

fionny

Man I wish I had the knowledge to do that sort of stuff!

TouchingVirus

Well get learning, and have fun while doing it too

Fysh

fionny wrote: »

Man I wish I had the knowledge to do that sort of stuff!

Strictly speaking, I don't - hence wanting to start the project. I have a vague idea of where to start and a couple of O'Reilly manuals that I keep meaning to make time to read, but I find I learn better by actually doing stuff than just reading about it - so being able to build a test environment with several machines with a low power overhead and a low overall cost suits me perfectly.

Bear in mind that when they get around to the educational launch they'll hopefully have suggestions and documentation for learning projects you could start with one of these.

fionny

Ill be trying to do the obvious of making a HTPC out of it anyway for the fun. That will be my starting point I guess

Myrddin

One of the lads in Arcade & Retro has this in mind - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056532927

Khannie

fionny wrote: »

Man I wish I had the knowledge to do that sort of stuff!

That's what these bad boys are for! I'd be willing to point people in the right direction / help out with specific problems once they were doing the leg work themselves. Linux knowledge is going to be a barrier for a lot of people initially but there's a decent bunch of folks on here with good linux / unix experience.

If enough people were actually doing projects, it would be cool to have a dedicated forum for it. The learning possibilities are really phenomenal when presented with something as cheap and useful as this. Linux knowledge is worth real, actual, cash.

cian1500ww

I'm hoping to use it to port over whatever Linux software that I can to the ARM architecture.

Fysh

EnterNow wrote: »

One of the lads in Arcade & Retro has this in mind - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056532927

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

SHINY.

I still have an ancient (working) GameBoy at home. No games for it though (thought I'd lost/thrown out the Gameboy, and gave away the games to charity along with my Super Gameboy & SNES). This might be a better use for it than trying to find a reasonably-priced copy of Tetris on eBay.

GinjaNinja

My first project is a taking apart a 17" touchscreen i have lying around and make an all-in-one 'puter loads of kds stuff on it and let the 2.5 year old go mad on it.

long term goal or another unit would be to replace the the mash-up is have in my arcaade machine with a Rpi. only problem to getover would be the non-vag compatible. part. might have to get a digital -jpac or equilvant.

anyway you look at it these are great pieces of kit, and loads of flutin.

nice1franko

I was half thinking on making little HTPC's for friends and family but ... then the other half of me is thinking they'll have my heart feckin broke with questions and complaints and what not

wes

Thinking of a simple HTPC for one of the TVs in the house, and or maybe as back up share for everyone one in the house (with USB drives connect to the RPI and making them avaliable over the network), or maybe even a combo of the 2.

Also, maybe a machine for my younger cousin thats locked down, that will let her play simple web games that she likes.

**EDIT**
Gizmodo have some idea for what to do with the system:
Five Things You Can Do With the New Raspberry Pi

**END EDIT**

TheDoc

For me its about learning and removing some redundant hardware in the house.

I'm going to start off with 1 but can potentially see more coming if they work out well.

Download Manager
Currently I use an old laptop to organise TV shows etc through Sickbeard and SabNZBD, to be then viewed through my AppleTV downstairs. I can see the APTV staying, but the RASPI to replace the laptop. I have a NAS so my laptop essentially redirects the download, so I want RASPI to do the same.

IRC Bouncer
I use IRC alot, and I mean alot. This has the potential to run irssi 24/7, and for me to simply SSH in through irssi and screen is dead handy.

Remote dropbox, anywhere, anytime
I can pop one of the various USB HD I have into this and run a anytime anywhere dropbox folder. There are some cool linux apps where you can set your own dropbox style access, so its a thought.

Plug in TV emulator
This is for the second one. Basically with a large storage SD card, just downloading the various and vast Linux Emulators and assosiated ROMS to play old console and handheld games through the TV/monitor. Its essentially €40 for a serious amount of odschool fun. The recent videos of Quake3 gave me this idea.

Remote access
It appears this can run remote desktop and SSH. So it would also be feasible that I can use this RASPI, which will be connected to my network, to do the usual remote access style stuff. Handy

LEARN LINUX
This is the big one. I plan to after initial setup, have this RASPI only plugged in with an ethernet cable and power plug. Totally controlled through SSH and Remote desktop, and simply learn the OS.

There is endless possabilities really thinking about it.

Also interesting enough, you can probably power this for about 13 hours running 2 AA batteries

Fysh

It occurs to me that you could combine this with an Arduino-type kit with optical sensors and a webcam (assuming you can get suitable software, or are happy to develop it yourself) and create a bespoke CCTV type system - either dumping the videofeed to storage or uploading directly via NIC.

mach1982

Read some other posts, with his you make a nice compact surveillance kit, the Raspberry PI with a web server , and SD wireless card, and a web cam. It could use to watch a a birds nest or keep an eye on your house.

U_Fig

I have a fairly good knowledge of Linux mainly Debian and Slax so might get a couple of them and have a play around see what I can come up with. But I want one as a media player to connect to my NAS drive for something easy for my mother can use. I like the idea of a retro gaming station aswell

TheDoc

From what I gather you can put pretty much any linux distro you want on it assuming it can handle SD card reading.

Figuring ubuntu since its what I'm used to

Anyone else thought of the distro they are putting on ?

Khannie

Ubuntu won't run on this. They have dropped support for the arm processor that the pi has. I'll probably stick with the default distro for convenience and support.

interested to see how the non Linux among you get on.

Firblog

nice1franko wrote: »

I was half thinking on making little HTPC's for friends and family but ... then the other half of me is thinking they'll have my heart feckin broke with questions and complaints and what not

No good deed goes unpunished...

PogMoThoin

I'm thinking about a cheap HTPC/MythTv frontend for the kitchen and bedroom TV's. A nice alternative to a Saorview box and HTPC for each

unkel

fionny wrote: »

Man I wish I had the knowledge to do that sort of stuff!

The whole point of the project is to get people to learn to do that sort of stuff. Everyone of us, including school children in the third world who up to now would not have had the money to buy a computer

Let's get programming. Something :cool:

Khannie

Can someone with some electronics knowledge tell me: How would I go about using a low voltage to control a higher voltage switch?

Lets' say I have a 2v line that I have control of (like you will in the r-pi) and I want to switch on a 240V switch with that (let's say to turn on a light in the house). Is there something that I can buy that can do that?

edit: I found this which is in the general ball park (though aimed at the arduino, I think the principal should be the same, more or less). I have an arduino on the way if dealextreme ever get off their bums and ship it. I can flute with that until the pi gets here.

TheDoc

Khannie wrote: »

Ubuntu won't run on this. They have dropped support for the arm processor that the pi has. I'll probably stick with the default distro for convenience and support.

interested to see how the non Linux among you get on.

Thanks for the info

I'm extremely non linu, so this is as much of a learning process as anything.

Is there any information on what OS these will be running?

I'd be very interested in putting it onto a VM on my Laptop to get myself familiar.

wolfyboy555

Could this be used as a second apple tv? like can I run xbmc on this and simply connect it to my tv?

bittihuduga

wolfyboy555 wrote: »

Could this be used as a second apple tv? like can I run xbmc on this and simply connect it to my tv?

yes, there is a raspberry version of xbmc being worked on

Khannie

TheDoc wrote: »

Is there any information on what OS these will be running?

Any Linux VM will do you if you just want to fiddle around a bit, but it's going to be running some kind of light weight variant of Fedora. Probably running LXDE as the window manager (that's the main GUI for want of a better description). The browser will be Midori. I don't know too much beyond that because the details don't really matter to me so I haven't investigated. I'm fairly experienced with Linux at this stage so beyond the bare essentials it's all just much of a muchness to me.

Don't expect too much of a user interface experience. The processor is actually really rubbish (I have the equivalent in my phone for example). Trying to run a full on browser is going to be relatively slow and painful I'd imagine. Your best bet is to learn how to use the command line / terminal. That way you can access the box RPi and issue commands from anywhere. This, IMO, is one of the massive benefits that Linux has over windows.

I think a VM's a great idea though to get you going. Some kind of basic Linux introductory tutorial would be good too. You can shout here or the unix forum if you've any trouble.

Khannie

Here's a link to the LXDE version of fedora.

Myrddin

Khannie wrote: »

Lets' say I have a 2v line that I have control of (like you will in the r-pi) and I want to switch on a 240V switch with that (let's say to turn on a light in the house). Is there something that I can buy that can do that?

A bog standard relay should do that...I think.

bonzodog2

EnterNow wrote: »

A bog standard relay should do that...I think.

I don't think a 2v signal from a pin on the RPi would drive a relay, even if you could find a 2V relay. You'd probably need some little bit of circuitry with a transistor to drive it.

Myrddin

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I don't think a 2v signal from a pin on the RPi would drive a relay, even if you could find a 2V relay. You'd probably need some little bit of circuitry with a transistor to drive it.

Yeah your right, 2v prob wouldn't drive the relay to open.

nice1franko

Something like this might be useful for the front garden:

Fysh

Now that the main Raspberry Pi site and forum are back up, I'm looking around for ideas of what to do with the bunch of Pis I'm planning on ordering.

The discussion here about using them to build a small cluster is pretty interesting. I mean, I know that something at non-gigabit ethernet will have limited real-world applications, but even so - in the same way I hope to learn about building networks using a handful of these things, I'm sure there's a lot I could learn about cluster design and implementation with them.

Redisle

Think I am going to use one for a car computer. The only issue I have is the video quality from the composite output since hdmi screens are generally very expensive. I'm going to get a cheap 4.3" lcd from ebay along with a 4.3" resistive digitizer and build my own touchscreen lcd (using a microcontroller of some kind). Should be a good project.

I also plan on using one for some home automation as mentioned by others already. Not sure I will go with one of those gertboards, thinking more along the lines of this or this. These are nice relay boards and just require a 5V logic signal to activate a relay. Considering there are 8+ free GPIO pins on the pi it could easily switch 8 large AC loads with that 8 channel board.

cookie1977

Just got a code today to allow me to order one. Now I have to wait (im) patiently for up to 3 weeks

Fysh

cookie1977 wrote: »

Just got a code today to allow me to order one. Now I have to wait (im) patiently for up to 3 weeks

Me too Order placed, next thing is to decide what to do with this one in advance of getting 4 or 5 more and building a Bramble.

cookie1977

I'm going to (try ) let my son play with it . Maybe get him to build a lego case for it and go from there

imitation

I'm looking at the PI as a kind of cheap always on server for my home. It meets the main criteria in that its got a low power draw (2-3w instead of 200w that my PC can hog).

I was hoping to use it as a DNLA Server, a VPN/Hamachi springboard to remote onto my home network and as an email forwarding server of some sort for IP security cameras.

I may also try and get really fancy and do some smart home stuff if I can get IP temperature probes and watt meters cheaply. Fire in a SQL database and you have a very interesting home historian.

Khannie

Mine just arrived in the last few minutes. Nom nom nom. I'll decide what to use it for once I see what it's capable of.

vibe666

nice1franko wrote: »

Something like this might be useful for the front garden:

[YOU/TUBE]6QcfZGDvHU8#t=201s[/YOUTUBE]

that's why you don't bring a knife to a gunfight. :pac:

whitesands

I want one, I'm in Dublin & registered interest on farnell & radionics only today. How long will it take me to get a code, any ideas?!?

One of these will go great with my arduino, I've no idea how but it'll be fun figuring it out

cookie1977

whitesands wrote: »

I want one, I'm in Dublin & registered interest on farnell & radionics only today. How long will it take me to get a code, any ideas?!?

One of these will go great with my arduino, I've no idea how but it'll be fun figuring it out

Not sure but I registered my interest on the same site on Feb 29th and got the code today. If production improves You might get one quicker.

bittihuduga

is registering interest and actual ordering - different?
i had ordered on feb 29th evening but my order still says processing.

cookie1977

bittihuduga wrote: »

is registering interest and actual ordering - different?
i had ordered on feb 29th evening but my order still says processing.

Registering interest is different from ordering. If you ordered then you entered credit card details or used paypal. Did you do this?

u140acro3xs7dm

I ordered one on Tuesday and it arrived today. In my haste to get it I never ordered any peripherals. Will the micro usb for my phone power this up?

cookie1977

Check the voltage on it. The pi needs 5V as far as I know and I my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet charger should work perfectly with it when I get it.

u140acro3xs7dm

Thanks ill check it out.

You should get it soon as i ordered mine on Tuesday night and it arrived today.

Khannie

Juliette Bitter Revolutionary wrote: »

Will the micro usb for my phone power this up?

If it's an original charger then almost certainly. It's what I plan on using.

GreenWolfe

I'm using an AC-8X Nokia charger (which is a bit off the recommended 1A, it's 5V/890 mA) with a CA-146C charger adapter at the moment. It seems to run OK, but I'll keep an eye on it. It got through an hour of continuous SD video with omxplayer so I'm having hopes for this setup.

vibe666

there's a thread over in the D15 forum about neighbourhood watch type stuff and as a result of that i have an idea for a motion activated front door peep hole camera that i'd love to get made into a real product and it might be a good Raspberry Pi project for someone (smarter than me).

it would probably be simple enough, just screwed to the inside of the door using a standard sized peephole lens to the ouside world with a camera lens on the inside with the usual basic facial detection that you'd find on any camera these days, so that any time someone comes to your front door it takes a decent quality (decent enough for an ID) snap of their face with a time/date stamp embedded in it.

No need for you to even look at it unless something dodgy happens, at which point you whip out the memory card and put it into your PC and hand over the pics of who was at your door for the garda to investigate.

maybe even have a little ring/logo around the peephole lens outside with "smile you're on camera" in big bright letters to ward off anyone that might be considering doing something they shouldn't.

you'd just need something to supply power to it, but most people have a plug socket in their front hall, so i don't see that being an issue.