12 Uses You Can Find The Raspberry Pi

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A computer the size of a credit card can do a lot.

1. Desktop computer

Despite the fact that the Raspberry Pi is not the most powerful thing, its capabilities are quite enough for creating a simple computer. It is unlikely that you will be able to play heavy games on such a device, but for office work, watching movies, listening to music and surfing the Internet, the Raspberry Pi is enough.

In addition to the Raspberry Pi itself, you will need a case for it, a microSD card, a power supply, an HDMI cable and a suitable display, as well as a keyboard and mouse - wireless or USB. Headphones or speakers won't hurt either. The device has built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet port, so there will be no problems with the Internet.

The Raspbian Linux distribution has been developed specifically for the Raspberry Pi. But if you don't like it, you can install the familiar Ubuntu MATE, the conservative but stable Debian, or the constantly updated Arch (most likely only geeks can handle the latter). In general, any distribution will do - just make sure it supports the ARM processor architecture.

If you want, you can even roll into Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi - for this you need the WOA Deployer installer.

Install a media player, office suite, browser and other things you need into the system - and you have a cheap, silent and miniature computer.

2. Media center

The Raspberry Pi is great for building your own media center. You will need any TV that supports HDMI. Moreover, it is not necessary for the TV to be new or "smart".

Put any Linux distribution of your choice on the Raspberry Pi. Then download and install Kodi into it. This is a great media server program with a convenient and stylish interface, tons of features, plugins and themes. And it's free, too.

And if you buy another remote control that connects via Bluetooth, you can conveniently control the program right from the couch.

Kodi brings many features to the Raspberry Pi. With it, you can watch any movies and TV series, listen to music and admire photos, connect to almost any streaming service, download torrents, surf the net.

And if you're missing something, check out the Kodi Extension Repository for tons of cool stuff.

3. Smart TV

In addition to the previous point, it is worth saying that a bunch of Raspberry Pi and Kodi can make any TV smart at all - even that old box from your granny. To do this, you need a special analog cable (like this one).

We connect the Raspberry Pi to an old TV with Linux and Kodi on board, connect the remote control to the single-board device, and you can safely watch "Game of Thrones" at the dacha. There is no need to carry a huge plasma outside the city - we use what is on the spot.

4. Music player

Do you like music? If you have a spare set of good speakers, you can plug them into your Raspberry Pi and turn your single board computer into a music station.

A special distribution called Pi MusicBox has been created for the Raspberry Pi, which provides many interesting features. With it, you can stream music from Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Music and listen to iTunes and gPodder podcasts. Play local and network music files in MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC and enjoy thousands of radio stations through TuneIn, Dirble, AudioAddict and SomaFM. And also scrobble on Last.fm.

The Pi MusicBox supports external USB sound cards - important for audiophiles as the Raspberry Pi's onboard audio is not of the best quality.

5. Attachment for retro games

Modern AAA projects Raspberry Pi, of course, will not pull, but good old hits for the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Genesis and others will take off on it with a bang. There are a huge number of classic console emulators for Linux that are easy to install on any distribution.

Or you can skip the steam and immediately choose one of the distributions that are entirely tailored to emulate classic games. For example, Recalbox or RetroPie. They are optimized for the Raspberry Pi and support modern controllers from the PlayStation 3/4 and XBox 360 / One, as well as replicas of the classic ones (for example, this one).

To heighten old school, it is recommended to run all this stuff on an old convex analog TV screen, and you yourself will not notice how tears of nostalgia will moisten your beard.

6. Steam Link Client

The performance of the Raspberry Pi does not allow playing particularly demanding games on it. But this does not mean that a single board is useless for a gamer. As you probably know, the Steam client has a Home Streaming feature.

It works like this: you launch the game on your powerful PC, and then the image starts being broadcast in real time to another device, from which you will control the game.

The Raspberry Pi may well act as such a device. Connect it to a monitor or TV, connect gamepads (the native Steam Controller is best) and give Ethernet access to your home LAN.

Next, install the Steam Link app, which is officially available on the Raspberry Pi for the Raspbian system. Turn on the game on your PC, start broadcasting. And the Rasbperry Pi will turn into a kind of console.

7. Wireless Print Server

Let's say you have an old printer. Not old enough to throw it away. But it's not new enough to support wireless connectivity either. And you have many different devices at home with which you would like to use this printer. The Raspberry Pi will help you with this.

Install any system you like on your single board computer (Raspbian or Debian will work fine). Then install the Samba and CUPS packages on the system. Connect the printer to the Raspberry Pi with a cable, and in the system settings, make it network.

We connect the Raspberry Pi to Wi-Fi, and now you can print to your printer from any computer or laptop on the local network.

And if you add the avahi-discover package to the system, then the printer will have support for the Air Print function. Through it it will be possible to print "over the air" from an iPhone, iPad or Android.

8. Network drive

NAS is a network-attached storage in a compact package that allows you to easily create backups and restore data from all your computers on the local network. It has many advantages, but it's still quite an expensive piece. The Raspberry Pi can still be cheaper.

Take a Raspberry Pi with Linux on board and plug in some hard drives. Both SATA and USB can be used. Then, in the media settings, make them publicly available to all your computers on the local network. It will turn out to be a kind of improvised NAS.

Your data is now safe. Save all documents, photos and other important information to Raspberry Pi drives and be sure nothing happens to them.

Windows 10's built-in backup tool and other backup software can save backups to network drives, so the backup process can be fully automated.

9. Own cloud

So, you have your own network attached storage. Why not go ahead and create your own personal cloud? Why depend on Google and Dropbox asking for money for every extra megabyte?

To deploy your cloud server on a Raspberry Pi, you need a distribution like Raspbian or Debian and a dedicated ownCloud application or its analog Nextcloud. They have both desktop clients for all platforms and mobile apps.

By creating a cloud on your Raspberry Pi, you have a lot of room for action. Automatic file sync across all platforms, highly customizable and very fast. Storage for contacts and mail (goodbye, Gmail). A vault for notes (goodbye greedy Evernote). You can even deploy your task management service and work on the Raspberry Pi as a team, like in some Trello.

10. Torrent Downloader

Those who like to download various things from trackers can turn the Raspberry Pi into a universal torrent downloader. To do this, you will need, in fact, the single-board computer itself, and one or more hard drives connected via USB or SATA.

Install the system and torrent client on the Raspberry Pi. For example, lightweight Transmission or functional qBittorrent. They can be controlled from any computer on the home network through the web interface in a browser.

Or, you can configure the client so that it automatically picks up torrent files from a folder of some cloud storage like Dropbox. Drop a torrent file from any device into a folder, and the device will automatically start downloading.

In addition, the Raspberry Pi can be trained to follow changes to RSS feeds. So when a new series of some "Game of Thrones" comes out, the device will download it on its own, without waiting for your command.

11. Router

You can make something like a router out of the Rasbperry Pi that will block ads on all devices on your home network. Install a special application called Pi-Hole on the single board computer, configure, then put the Raspberry Pi into Wi-Fi sharing mode. You may need to buy an external Wi-Fi module for the Pi if the signal quality seems to be unsatisfactory.

When all your gadgets are connected to the Internet via Pi-Hole, ads will stop showing on them. Banners in browsers, pop-ups in apps on smartphones or smart TVs - all of this will be carefully cut out.

In addition, Pi-Hole can block unwanted sites and show detailed statistics on Internet traffic costs.

And if you dig a little with the setup, then with the Raspberry Pi you can pass all your traffic through VPN or TOR. Then you will forget about permanent blocking.

12. Web server

Do you have your own website, blog or something like that, and you are tired of constantly paying for hosting? Why not host your creation on the Raspberry Pi? Of course, a single-board device is unlikely to pull a huge resource with millions of visitors, but if your site is small, the device will cope with it.

You can install Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress - whatever tools you need on your Raspberry Pi - and a miniature computer becomes a pretty good web server. All that remains is to purchase a static IP from your Internet provider. Or even do without it by using the No-IP.com service.

That's not all you can do with the Raspberry Pi. Craftsmen on the Web make their own weather stations, video surveillance systems, automatic dispensers of dog food and fertilizer for flowers, and even huge fighting robots. Finally, nothing prevents you from using the Raspberry Pi for several tasks at once - it all depends on your needs and imagination.