Best Raspberry Pi, Arduino DIY Projects For Your Holiday Downtime
Looking for an escape from egg nog this holiday season? Here are 10 tech projects based on either Raspberry Pi or Arduino to keep you busy, happy, and geeky through the New Year.
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The kids are home from school, the winter winds are howling outside (OK, this year, if you're in the Eastern US, the air-conditioning is humming inside), and boredom is threatening the peace and good will of the season. What, oh what, to do?
If you're like me, what you really want is a nice project. Not one of those projects that's been cluttering up your guilt-list for the last six months, but a nice, fresh, electronics project that lets you learn a little, practice a little, and end up with something that punches your geek card for another few months.
If you have kids (or friends' kids, or grandkids) who need something to do and could use a dose of engineering, so much the better. Now, you can have fun, pass the electronic torch to a new generation, and end up making some great holiday memories, all at the same time.
[ Those were the days, my friends. Read 11 Things Computer Users Will Never Experience Again.]
To help get your ideas flowing, I went out and looked on the Web for some fun projects that could take up an afternoon (or a weekend) and offer a ton of fun. These projects come from a number of different places. (I make sure to give you links to the originating project.) They make use of a variety of skills and can help you improve your hardware building, your code development, or both. Even better, each one makes something happen, whether it's as simple as blinky lights or as complex as 3D fabrication.
I've split the list between Arduino-based projects and those that use Raspberry Pi as their foundation. I know that there are other systems out there, from BeagleBone to PicAXE, that can be used for simple projects, and I promise that I'll do an article on them in the near future. For now, though, I'm going to concentrate on two very popular platforms for building cool things.
Since it's the season for giving, I'm going to ask you for something, too: Are there cool projects that you've built this year? Any that you're planning to build yourself, or with a young person, during the end-of-year holidays? How about projects that you'd like to see me talk about here at InformationWeek? I'd love to hear from you -- maybe we can start a project-based conversation that extends beyond the holidays into the new year.
So here's to happy project-building. Ping me in the comments section below and I'll tell you about the project I remember most: It's the one that taught my son to solder.
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Laser cutters are wonderful tools for the maker in your life. They cut and etch a lot of different materials and can be programmed to do so in intricate and complex patterns. The problem many people have is getting the pattern into the cutter in the first place. This Arduino-based project takes care of that by allowing you to make hand strokes on the piece to be cut -- hand strokes that are read and interpreted by the system to provide the pattern for the cutter.
This Chal-Kaat Cutter, featured on DIY Hacking, builds your skills in hardware and software then gives you a wonderful tool for your trouble. It's probably not great as a first project, but if you're ready to challenge your skills a bit it could be the perfect holiday project that keeps on giving.
Sometimes you don't need a big, complicated project to make a holiday memory. You need a simple, easy-to-complete task that makes a string of lights blink on command. That's exactly what this project does. If you're dipping your toes into the Arduino world, or have some young people who are ready to start making embedded things happen, then Brian Chee's Blinking Lights project is perfect. You'll do a tiny bit of hardware connection and enough programming to let you feel accomplished. When the lights are blinking, you can grab a well-deserved eggnog and start thinking about your next adventure.
OK, so maybe you're not actually stopping time, but you're doing a fine job of stopping a drop of water in mid-splash. This project has it all -- simple metal work, materials control, software, high-precision timing -- and proves that it works by helping you produce some of the coolest photos (including much more than water) you'll ever take. If you do much Arduino programming, you already know the people who hang around the Make Magazine website. If you don't, you should get to know the folks who helped create the maker movement.
OK, so what's the only thing that's cooler than blinky lights? Blinky lights in a cube that looks like it was dropped from the 22nd century! That's what you get in this utterly cool pulsating LED light cube featured on makeuseof.com. This Arduino-based project is perfect for someone who wants to work on soldering skills, and it teaches valuable lessons in multiplexing -- a critical way to get around some of the limitations inherent to the Arduino platform. On top of everything else, this project scales up nicely, so after you get tired of looking at the 4 x 4 x 4 version you can go up to 16 LEDs and beyond.
If you really want to take this project to the next level, stick it inside an infinity mirror. If you live in one of about half a dozen specific states, it will keep your guests entertained for days.
Everyone enjoys a nice, frivolous project, like making lights blink on and off. But, once in a while you want a serious project to sink your teeth into. And absolutely nothing is more serious than coffee.
What if you could control your favorite coffeemaker via Twitter? Cool, huh? And what a great thing to be able to show off as you're leaving the office -- "I think I'll have a nice, hot cup waiting for me when I get home," you can say as you tweet your triumph to the world.
This project is basically a software-only affair. The hardware components are plug and play. But if you're deeply into social media, or know young people who are, this project has a serious "cool" factor. It's extensible, too, since you can actually control all sorts of appliances with the same mechanism. If coffee's not your thing, how about tweeting out some on-demand toast? I thought so.
It's time to move to Raspberry Pi projects, and one thing will be immediately obvious: The software becomes much more complex. Part of that is due to the more complex nature of the basic processors involved, part is due to the greater complexity of the projects, and part is due to the fact that, with the Raspberry Pi, you're involving components like an operating system that don't come into play with the Arduino. With all that said, remote cameras are useful and popular, and you can build a great remote camera around a Raspberry Pi.
In this case, there are only two real hardware components, the RasPi itself and the Raspberry Pi Camera module. The software is the real challenge, here, and the pieces of the project, while many are already written, will likely take a couple of days to assemble and fine-tune. So settle in, put on your best coding mix, and make a camera that will provide entertainment for most of 2016.
Tea aficionados can be every bit as serious about their brews as coffee snobs are about theirs. There's probably some justice, then, in a system to brew the perfect cup of tea that is rather more complex than the tweet-activated coffee system. The good news is that this is a project that has a lot of lessons, from temperature sensing to stepper-motor control, in a package that ultimately delivers a really good cup of tea.
This project involves hardware and software, so it promises fun for both sides of your technical brain. Finish this, and things like automated sous vide are suddenly within your grasp.
Desktop computers are getting cheaper, but it's hard to find a good desktop computer for $29. If you have a bunch of old systems lying around your home office (and really, who among us doesn't?) then you can end up with a very serviceable Linux desktop for not much more than the price of the basic Raspberry Pi.
This is a good system construction project for you, and could be the perfect way to introduce a younger relative to Linux. After all, it's hard to beat a system you put together with your own hands. It's a surefire way to building enthusiasm for learning everything there is to know about a pile of parts.
Everyone wants to talk about the weather -- and with this project you can talk about it with the detail that can only come with a solid weather station in your own home. This project from Instructables has a lot to offer if you want to learn more about sensors, displays, or case building.
One of the things I really like about this project is that the author takes you through the stages of an evolving design, so you can see the results of following different paths to a solution. That's something that a lot of designers and engineers do, and that far too few articles or instructions let you see. This isn't the simplest project but the author makes most of the software available for download, so you can take your own long and winding road to the weather station that's best for you.
Holidays are times for taking photos and making memories, and how better to do both than with a camera you built yourself? In this nifty little Adafruit project, you use a camera module and touchscreen with your Raspberry Pi to make a small camera that sends your photos into the cloud for retrieval, processing, and sharing.
If you get a 3D printer in your holiday stocking, you can even print out a case for your new camera, but the cool thing is that you can make the case out of whatever you'd like -- you can even involve the woodworkers (or welders) in the family, if you want.
There are a lot of other projects you could build. I intentionally left out some cool builds -- supercomputer, anyone? -- because I didn't think most folks have dozens of unused Raspberry Pi boards sitting around. If you decide to take on something like that, though, please let me know.
In fact, let me know what you think about my list. There are several here that I've got on my "to-do" list -- what about you? Whichever holidays you celebrate at this time of year, I hope they're happy and filled with joy, good health, and plenty of hands-on projects.
Holidays are times for taking photos and making memories, and how better to do both than with a camera you built yourself? In this nifty little Adafruit project, you use a camera module and touchscreen with your Raspberry Pi to make a small camera that sends your photos into the cloud for retrieval, processing, and sharing.
If you get a 3D printer in your holiday stocking, you can even print out a case for your new camera, but the cool thing is that you can make the case out of whatever you'd like -- you can even involve the woodworkers (or welders) in the family, if you want.
There are a lot of other projects you could build. I intentionally left out some cool builds -- supercomputer, anyone? -- because I didn't think most folks have dozens of unused Raspberry Pi boards sitting around. If you decide to take on something like that, though, please let me know.
In fact, let me know what you think about my list. There are several here that I've got on my "to-do" list -- what about you? Whichever holidays you celebrate at this time of year, I hope they're happy and filled with joy, good health, and plenty of hands-on projects.
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