Interesting Raspberry Pi Projects
I have a few Raspberry Pi Model B’s laying around, and I’ve been meaning to try out some things with them. I also bought the recently-released Raspberry Pi 3 that I wanted to find a use for.
Pi-hole
Pi-hole, put simply, is an ad-blocking, anti-tracking DNS server that you can use in your home network. It was super-easy to set up, and even has a pretty web interface for viewing stats:
Included is a script that sets up everything for you, and schedules a weekly cron job to update block lists. However, the project website also includes complete instructions for doing everything manually.
I now have one of my Pis sitting in a cabinet next to my router performing DNS requests without any issues.
Retropie
RetroPie is a project around enabling the Raspberry Pi to be used as a video game console emulation station for as many platforms as possible. As with Pi-hole, they provide a script that sets up everything for you, and the default settings are adequate for most. You simply plug it into your display/TV/whatever, copy some games (via a USB drive if you’ve got it) and go. There’s enough of a community here to get most games working accurately.
I installed RetroPie on my Pi 3 and it worked like a charm. I plugged in a couple XBox 360 controllers and started playing old SNES and Playstation games without too much trouble. Now I just need to be patient until my son’s old enough to play with me…
Other ideas
I don’t have a lot of products I’d consider in the Home Automation category, but it’s inevitable that we’ll have more things available at home that could be controlled with a central hub. Home Assistant is a Python project around creating a full-featured hub for this purpose. Looks neat!
More sites for Raspberry Pi project examples and ideas: