Tech: Fun Projects For The Raspberry Pi.

For the last couple of years I've always had a Raspberry Pi on hand. It's a cheap little computer and you can find the board for around $40. They use Micro SD cards for hard drives. I have the Pi 2 and the Pi 3 and I never stop finding fun projects for them. Whenever I talk about the Pi there's always that one guy that says, "But what can you do with it? Doesn't seem very useful."

Here's a picture of my Raspberry Pi. I bought a case, fan and USB hub for mine. I've got a few other accessories too, like game controllers and a couple different keyboards. I order most of my stuff direct from China through Ali-Express and they cost close to nothing, you just have to wait a few weeks for the products to arrive. All in all, I think I have under $100 USD into mine, complete with a ton of extra stuff.

This was a kit I ordered for the Pi2. It was my first Raspberry Pi and I ordered the kit just to get everything at once. It's really simple to put together, and once you install the OS you just plug it in and start using it. I use my TV as a monitor through it's HDMI port.

I think the number 1 thing you can do with a RPi is learn! I've learned so much with mine. There are so many tutorials and projects online that cover everything from engineering to basic & advanced Python coding. If you're not into all that, here are 3 projects that you can simply download a custom OS and have some fun with your RPi.

My most recent is Kali Linux. I've had an interest in network security since the mid 90's. For the most part it's a hobby that I just don't have time for anymore. Recently I ran into a friend who's still in "the scene" and he couldn't shut up about Kali Linux. He got my curiosity peaked, I heard there was a RPi distro, so I figured why not! I'm currently learning Kali Linux pen-testing with an RPi. https://www.kali.org/

My other love of all things RPi is RetroPi. This is a fun operating system that turns your Raspberry Pi into a retro 80's video game machine. Simply download vintage rom's for games like Donkey Kong, Sonic The Hedgehog and my all time favorite childhood youth waster, Super Mario Bros! If you love retro gaming or maybe want to reminisce the games of your childhood, you definitely want to add this OS to your RPi collection. I currently keep multiple SD cards with each different OS loaded on them. When I want to play RetroPi, I just pull out the Kali Linux SD card, insert the RetroPi SD card and start gaming. When I'm done, I replace the Kali card. https://retropie.org.uk/

I'm not sure how up to date this next project is, but I had a lot of fun with this one. ROKOS was created by OkToshi the dev of OKcash. Last I heard OkToshi had walked away from the coin and he may have walked away from ROKOS too. Regardless I think this is a fun RPi Linux distribution worth mentioning. This is a crypto friendly OS that is filled with various POS (proof of stake) cryptocurrency wallets. I staked a lot of OKcash with this OS. Just plug it in, fill your wallet, and let it run while your coins stake. The low energy consumption of the Raspberry Pi makes it perfect for this use. You may want to DYOR on this one, because like I said, I'm not really sure if there's currently anyone devving or updating this project. https://rokos.space/

When I ran ROKOS on it, I think that was when I did the most on it at once. I kept it running all the time while it was staking coin so I also programmed DoodBot which was a TwitterBot that spit out a news headline each hour between 12 midnight and 8a.m. I'd load it each night before I went to sleep. It utilized a little Python, and a cron job to get her done. I'm not sure if it will still works, I know Twitter really cracked down on running bots on the network.

I've also kept one running as a file server I can SSH into. I used it for shared files between computers sort of like a DropBox. The Dood's not a big fan of cloud computing, so the RPi can act as a personal cloud.

Some things I'd like to try in the future. Run an SFTP server for my friends and I to share files from. Maybe mess around with creating a basic low traffic web server and run a website off it. I've heard of some people doing that, and if your only getting a few hits an hour, the Pi is supposed to be more than capable of handling that.

Anyway if you love goofing around with Linux and computers and you haven't already, you may want to check out the Raspberry Pi. I've been seeing a little of other "Tiny Board" computers around. Sooner or later I'll get around to ordering a few different ones to see how they compare.