Fall is here and Raspberry Pi makers around the world are harvesting their best ideas into fruition. These are some of the best Raspberry Pi projects we’ve featured over the last month and we thought they deserved a little extra attention. If you’re looking for inspiration or just to see what the community has been up to, this is the best place to start.
As always, these makers pulled out the best Raspberry Pi accessories and HATs money can buy just to create something cool with our favorite SBC. It’s been an exciting time for the community lately thanks to the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 5. We’re eager to see what the Pi community is going to do with the latest board but in the meantime, you can check out our projects to see what we’ve done with it so far.
Raspberry Pi RP2040 Becomes PalmOS PDA
Remember Palm PDAs? Now you can recreate the experience thanks to this Raspberry Pi RP2040 PalmOS PDA project. It has a touchscreen display and plenty of features to tinker around with. It’s neat to see the old PalmOS get some love and even more exciting to see it run on an RP2040. Grinberg named the project RePalm.
Why we love it:
We’re suckers for old hardware and love to see the niche communities that gather around obsolete systems like flip phones, Blackberries or in this case Palm PDAs. RePalm is a great demonstration of how the RP2040 can help revitalize the experience for both old users and new.
Read: Raspberry Pi RP2040 Becomes PalmOS PDA
Raspberry Pi Confetti Bot
Image credit: Hazal Mestci
Are you ready to party? Not without this Raspberry Pi confetti bot, you’re not! There are some things in life that are just a bit more exciting when automated. Sure, you could open a confetti popper on demand but throwing a Raspberry Pi into the mix adds for some unique use cases—especially if you’re looking to surprise someone. This project uses a Pi to automatically activate a tiny confetti cannon using a custom 3D printed mount and motor.
Why we love it:
If your party has a Pi in it, we want to be there. This is a really fun example of how you can use a Pi to implement creative ideas in a way that interacts with others. There are so many ways you could modify this project and we like brainstorming what we would do ourselves from blasting music to activating LEDs.
Read: Raspberry Pi Confetti Bot
Raspberry Pi AI Traffic Monitor
Collecting data from complex sources is getting easier every day thanks to AI. This traffic monitoring project, put together by a maker known as Naveem, is using a Raspberry Pi to monitor traffic using a custom trained AI model. This project is useful for urban planners and others looking to monitor local transportation flow.
Why we love it:
It’s neat to see data pulled in real time from an AI system that’s tracking vehicles with image recognition. This is a very useful project that could help a variety of industries and the technology that put it together just happens to be our favorite.
Read: Raspberry Pi AI Traffic Monitor
Raspberry Pi Pico Hexagon Heart
The combination of technology and art is truly unique, taking on the expressions of the designer in a digital fashion. This RGB Pico heart project is using a Pico to drive LEDs inside of a decoration shaped like a heart made from hexagons. The housing is 3D printed with individually addressable LED strips inside.
Why we love it:
This is a very cool looking project that’s also capable of being modified. You can use the STL files generated for this design and modify the hexagons around into all sorts of unique shapes. If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at trendy wall decor, now is your chance.
Read: Raspberry Pi Pico Hexagon Heart
Raspberry Pi Pico /r/Place Display
There’s no place like /r/Place. If you’re not familiar with /r/Place, this is a subreddit on a forum website Reddit. There, users are able to place one pixel at a time on a shared canvas. Over time, images can be created on a large scale requiring quite a bit of collaboration to pull off. This /r/Place Pico project uses a Raspberry Pi Pico to show sections of this giant image on an e-Ink display.
Why we love it:
We love the Pico, we love community projects, this was just a win win! /R/Place is a cool concept that’s stood up over the years as a great example of what community driven effort can achieve. This project highlights that hard work.
Read: Raspberry Pi Pico /r/Place Display
Raspberry Pi Pico Flexible Keyboard
Keyboard too big? No problem. Maker and developer Kārlis has created a super thin keyboard that relies on our favorite microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico, as its main driver. This keyboard is very flexible and is small enough to fit inside a Steam Deck case. The Pico provides USB interface support.
Why we love it:
Sometimes you do things because you can, not because you should and this is a good example of that idea. The keyboard Kārlis made is really neat when you dig into how it’s put together and how much work it took to pull off but the end result isn’t exactly practical when it comes to gaming. But that was never really the point. The point is we love it.
Read: Raspberry Pi Pico Flexible Keyboard
Raspberry Pi RP2040 Tombstone
Image credit: Adafruit, Ruiz brothers
Halloween will be here before you know it! Are you looking for something scary to decorate your home with? You need to check out this creepy Raspberry Pi RP2040 tombstone project put together by the Ruiz brothers for Adafruit.
Why we love it:
You could take this idea and modify it with all sorts of Halloween props and various sensors. If you’re going to make something spooky for decor, you might as well go all out and there’s tons of room to create a simple or complex decoration for your haunted maker mansion.
Read: Raspberry Pi RP2040 Tombstone
Raspberry Pi 'Technoframes'
Technoframes is an art project put together by Max Björverud. These works of art have hands worked into the design. When you touch a hand, part of a techno track starts to loop. The end result is a custom techno project that changes depending on what hands are being touched at a given time.
Why we love it:
We’ve never seen anything quite like Björverud’s Technoframes. This project is a great example of how to fuse technology and art for an end result that’s just as fun to play with as it was to build.
Read: Raspberry Pi 'Technoframes'
Raspberry Pi ISS Model
Head in the clouds? Bring it back down to Earth with this articulated Raspberry Pi ISS replica. It uses data taken directly from NASA to adjust the model in real time so you can see what the space station is doing when it happens.
Why we love it:
This project is open source which means files are available for anyone who wants to recreate it at home. This would be a fun project for a computer science class or even just a space enthusiast looking for something cool to put on the center of their mantle piece.
Read: Raspberry Pi ISS Model
Raspberry Pi Generates News Headline Images with AI
AI is arguably getting out of hand in some regards, so why not have a little bit of fun with it? Roy van der Veen is using AI with a Raspberry Pi to generate images based on text from news headlines. Sometimes the images are fitting, sometimes they’re hilariously out of place due to a blatant misinterpretation of the text.
Why we love it:
This is an artsy way to integrate AI with the Raspberry Pi and the final project is unlike anything we’ve come across before. It’s such a simple idea but it makes for a truly unique experience. Roy van der Veen did a great job piecing this one together.
Read: Raspberry Pi Generates News Headline Images with AI
Tom's Hardware Projects
It’s hard to look at all of these cool Raspberry Pi creations without getting inspired to tinker ourselves. Here’s a look at what the staff of Tom’s Hardware has been up to lately. We’ve got a gaming tutorial that’s definitely worth checking out and have been dabbling with the new Raspberry Pi 5.
How to Play AAA Games on Your Raspberry Pi
Have you ever wanted to play AAA titles on your Raspberry Pi? That’s totally in the realm of possibility! In this guide, Les goes everything you need to get started both hardware-wise and software with a step-by-step tutorial.
Read: How to Play AAA Games on Your Raspberry Pi
We Overclocked Raspberry Pi 5 to 3 GHz, Up to 25% Perf Boost
This isn’t exactly a tutorial per se but it’s a fun read for any fan of the Raspberry Pi eager to see what the new Raspberry Pi 5 is capable of. This is setting the bar for makers to push the boundaries of its performance. Now we play the waiting game to see what new heights it can reach.
