Key Takeaways
- Raspberry Pi LED watch offers a creative take on smartwatches with soldered LEDs for hours, minutes, & seconds.
- Raspberry Pi Gundam Cyberdeck project features custom LED lighting on a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller.
- Raspberry Pi-powered signs language translator glasses convert hand gestures to spoken words.
In the vast and intriguing world of SBCs, the Raspberry Pi stands out as the most popular lineup thanks to a huge community that keeps pushing out new project ideas on a daily basis. While the average Raspberry Pi weather station, NAS-berry Pi, and DIY web server present solid use cases for the miniature boards, the sky’s the limit when it comes to bringing your ideas to life with the uber-popular SBC series.
In fact, there’s no shortage of innovative projects built with just the Raspberry Pi boards, and here are ten amazing creations that made our jaws drop in awe.
10 LED watch
Ol’ smartwatches have nothing on this nifty gadget
Smartwatches have become mainstream over the last couple of years, and there are plenty of options to choose from if you’re in the market for one. But for DIY enthusiasts, I daresay this Raspberry Pi LED watch has them all beat by a long shot.
Interestingly, the watch doesn’t use a Raspberry Pi board and instead runs on an RP2040 microcontroller chip. This neat device also ditches the clock hands in favor of soldered LEDs, with the three LEDs representing the hours, minutes, and seconds. However, it’s far from finished, with its inventor littlespleen/Kim Paulsson looking into ways to improve the watch’s battery life.
9 Gundam with functional LEDs
Every Gundam fan’s dream come true
As someone who was obsessed with Gundam mecha kits as a teen, this project was everything I wanted 15 years ago. Featuring the affordable Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, the Gundam Cyberdeck is an amazing project that provides custom LED lighting modes for your favorite mecha.
Thanks to a detailed guide by its creator, Rob, it’s easy to replicate the project. The initial version of the Cyberdeck supports 16 LEDs with distinct lighting patterns, though Rob intends to release a Mark II variant, with a mini-display and other new additions.
8 Tiny PC with dual displays
An adorably-sized PC setup
The PC gaming ecosystem is filled with larger-than-life battlestations and gigantic monitors that occupy a lot of desk space. But if you’re into smaller, compact PCs that are good enough for light browsing, then you need to check out this amazing mini-PC created by Rizwan Pathan.
Powered by a last-gen Raspberry Pi 4, this neat setup includes two 7-inch touchscreen displays mounted on custom stands and a wireless keyboard. Meanwhile, the case housing the SBC has speakers built into it and includes RGB fans to keep the Raspberry Pi cool – both in terms of temperature and aesthetics.
7 Gigantic magic mirror
That can also run your favorite retro games
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the huge 65-inch magic mirror designed with the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi. Created by element14’s genius tinkerer David Edwardsthis humongous project combines a full-sized magic mirror with a retro gaming setup… and despite the wild premise, it works exceedingly well.
Software-wise, the huge screen runs RetroPie, which, requiring some complicated workarounds for the newer versions of the Raspberry Pi OS, is arguably the best emulator for the SBC. While the project has some issues, including the inability to rotate the display while gaming, it’s one of the most interesting projects ever created with a Raspberry Pi.
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6 Mr Dice
D&D lovers, rejoice!
If you’re into tabletop gaming, then you might be familiar with the sheer frustration of losing a die in the middle of your adventuring session. Enter Mr Dice, a (sadly, non-sentient) device that provides the perfect balance between digitally calculating your dice rolls and making the process interactive enough to make it feel as though you’re using a physical dice.
Unfortunately, Abe, the creator of the project, has neither disclosed the procedure to build this device nor has he revealed any plans to sell the product commercially. Either way, just the fact that someone created a full-fledged die simulator using just the Raspberry Pi is enough to satisfy my Lizardfolk heart.
5 Automatic storybook generator
Your very own AI-generated fantasy storybook on an eInk display
If you’re tired of running SLMs and LLMs on your Raspberry Pi using Ollama, you can try building an AI storybook generator with the SBC. Developed by GitHub user tvldz, this repository lets you create Ai artwork that resembles typical fantasy storybooks on your Raspberry Pi and display it on an ePaper/eInk HAT.
Despite being a creative project, it’s held back by the low processing power of RPi boards in AI workloads, meaning even the all-powerful 8GB RAM variant of the Raspberry Pi 5 will struggle to generate images. But if you don’t mind waiting at least 5 minutes for each image, then you can leverage the AI storybook generator to create infinitely long fantasy storybooks.
4 Sign Language Translator spectacles
No more communication gaps
Created by computing enthusiast Nekhilthese Sign Language Translator glasses can detect sign language hand gestures and convert them into spoken words using the text-to-speech capabilities of the VIAM platform.
The spectacles are powered by an affordable Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board. The Camera Module V2 at the center of the glasses recognizes your hand movements when you attempt to converse in sign language. However, the project is still in its early stages, and can only detect one letter at a time. But since Nekhil has graciously provided all the steps to create this project, we’ll hopefully see other developers pitch in and improve the processing capabilities of the goggles.
3 BMO TV
The best way to binge Adventure Time episodes
BMO, the fan-favorite gaming cosole/mechanical construct from Adventure Time, got a second life as a case for a Raspberry Pi that continuously plays episodes from the hit cartoon series. Although the inventor of the project, Redittor u/golbscholar3D printed the BMO chassis, the rest of the components are relatively easy to find.
For starters, this cute project has a Raspberry Pi Zero at its core, with a 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen from Waveshare serving as the display. Besides running on the Raspberry Pi OS, goldscholar noted the BMO-Pi needed another Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller for the buttons under the screen. better yet, the genius inventor also plans to create a GitHub post to make it easier for other enthusiasts to build their BMO streaming station.
2 Raspberry Pi-powered Etch-a-Sketch
Complicated, but rewarding
What happens when you combine an Etch-a-Sketch toy screen with the highly versatile Raspberry Pi? You get Micah Tilton’s robot Etch-a-Sketch, of course! One of the most complex projects on this list, this little gizmo is capable of replicating any image uploaded to your Raspberry Pi onto the toy drawing screen.
The RPi-flavored Etch-a-Sketch requires a handful of components for its creation, including a breadboard, lots of jumper wires, stepper motors, and most importantly, a Raspberry Pi. Although it’ll take a lot of programming and robotics skills if you want to replicate Micah’s Etch-a-Sketch, it’s bound to surprise anyone who lays their eyes on it.
1 Cat-monitoring system
A surveillance camera to keep an eye on your feline companion
There’s no doubt that a motionEye-based Raspberry Pi surveillance camera is incredibly useful. However, there’s another project designed by GitHub user ykhli that’s better if you wish to keep tabs on your pets.
True to its name, the AI Raspberry Pi Cat Detection constantly monitors your feline friend and immediately sends you an email the moment it makes mischief. You can also configure the AI narrator to keep you posted on your cat’s activities. Besides cats, the OpenAI-based project can monitor other pets, including birds, and can even notify you if your plants are on the verge of drying up.
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Feeling inspired yet?
There’s a surprising amount of cool things you could pull off with the miniature boards, regardless of your skill level. For instance, beginner-friendly projects, such as a DIY media server, can provide a solid learning experience for newcomers.
As you go up the difficulty ladder, you can start tackling complicated projects that can even pose a challenge to maestros who have memorized thousands of terminal commands over the course of their DIY journey. Heck, there’s no need to restrict yourself to just a Raspberry Pi; once you’ve familiarized yourself with these tiny computers, you can move on to more powerful SBCs, and even sink your teeth into microcontrollers like Arduino.
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