10 surprisingly practical Raspberry Pi projects anybody can do
Streaming. Gaming. Networking. Even printing. The Raspberry Pi is far more than a toy. BRAD CHACOS reports
The Raspberry Pi (£70 from fave.co/3aUBWrp) single-board computer and all its variants have captured the imaginations of DIY enthusiasts and budding hobbyists alike. Much of the coverage you’ll see around the web focuses on the more fantastical
projects – magic mirrors, portable gaming handhelds, intelligent drones, and so forth. And for good reason. Those maker masterpieces show what sort of power the mini-PC is capable of in the hands of someone with a little imagination and a bin full of spare electronics, especially now that the Raspberry Pi 4 includes more RAM, a huge CPU upgrade, USB-C charging and enough graphics horsepower to drive a pair of 4K monitors simultaneously.
But most people, particularly beginners, won’t use the Raspberry Pi to whip up crazy creations. There are near-endless practical uses for this bare-bones kit, from media streaming to extending the range of your Wi-Fi network, as the following 10 projects demonstrate. Time to put that mini computer to real work.
1. HTPC media streaming
The original Raspberry Pi may have been revolutionary to makers, but it took off with PC enthusiasts as well thanks to its ability to double as a dirt-cheap home entertainment PC. That allure may have waned a bit in recent years as dedicated devices like the Chromecast hit the streets at similarly low prices, but using a Raspberry Pi as a media-streaming box still offers far more power than those streaming-centric sticks, especially if you have a sizeable local media collection.
There are a slew of HTPC-centric Raspberry Pi operating systems out there, each revolving around slapping your HD videos on the big screen. OSMC (fave.co/338iG6X) and OpenElec (fave.co/39DpHis) are two such choices built around the popular Kodi media centre software (formerly XBMC), while RasPlex
(fave.co/2xmpIZP) transforms your Pi into the ultimate Plex streaming box. The Raspberry Pi TV Hat accessory (£9 from fave.co/2xmpOAF), meanwhile, can grant your mini-PC the ability to read over-the-air TV signals.
2. Give a dumb TV smarts
Likewise, if you have a dumb TV that you’d like to add web browsing and other basic computing abilities to, the Raspberry Pi does the trick without costing anywhere near as much as Asus’s Chromebit C10 (£149 from fave.co/2IxbN5L) or Windows-powered Compute Stick (£49 from fave.co/2Q2SsNE). You’ll want to use Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4, though – the original Pi and the Raspberry Pi Zero are just pokey enough to be frustrating for general tasks. With the right case, the Pi can look downright stylish in your home cinema, too.
Bonus: If you’re connecting the Raspberry Pi to your TV, you can use it to stream web videos, too.
3. File storage server
You can also have your Raspberry Pi play wingman for the other devices in your house, serving as a centralized device that performs helpful tasks.
Case in point: you can use the mini-PC as a Time Machine capsule for Macs (go to fave.co/3cPC7FV for details) or a cheap NAS box (see fave.co/39Rapqk) for general file storage if you connect an external USB hard drive to the machine. Hit those links for technical details, and one tip if you’re planning to convert the computer to a file server: use a wired ethernet connection rather than Wi-Fi if you’re able.