CHAPTER
20

More Advanced Projects

In This Chapter

As you’ve learned from the preceding chapters, you can do a lot with your Raspberry Pi right out of the box. But you can get even more out of it if you’re willing to put in a little extra effort and attach some accessories.

One of the nice things about the Raspberry Pi is how versatile it is. You can hook it up to just about anything, and because of that, people have really pushed what can be done with it to a whole new level.

In this chapter, you learn about a few of these advanced projects, ranging from a retro video game station to a complete home automation solution. Most of these projects require extra parts and a little ingenuity to get them working. Some, like integrating the computer system into your car, can’t be made specifically for every single car out there, so you’ll have to be willing to improvise to get it working. Others, like the retro game station built into an arcade cabinet, require some woodworking skills. All these projects are doable by anyone; they just require some work.

To that end, let’s take a look at some of the best projects to help get your brain moving to figure out what else you might want to do with your Raspberry Pi.

Retro Game Station Projects

Constructing a retro game station is easily one of the most popular projects for the Raspberry Pi. With just a few clicks, you can play all kinds of old-school video games on your Raspberry Pi using the keyboard and mouse or with a third-party controller.

This works through emulation. In order to play games from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Sega Genesis, and countless others, you’ll need an emulator. This is a simple program that essentially pretends to be a video game console so you can play old games. With a little work, you can play everything from Doom to Duke Nukem on your Raspberry Pi.

Although it might sound a little shady, emulators are totally legal. However, the games, which are called ROMs (for read-only memory) in emulation, aren’t. That said, a number of ROMs exist for homemade games, older PC games that are no longer copyrighted, shareware, and more, so you’ll have plenty of things to play.

DEFINITION

Emulation is when your computer pretends to be another kind of computer. In this case, your Raspberry Pi acts like a game console so it can understand the programming in a game. An emulator is the program that does the actual emulation. It duplicates the function of one computer onto another. Here, it makes your Raspberry Pi act like a game console. A ROM (read-only memory) is an image of a chip. Games and older computer firmware don’t run off software, so ROMs are dumps of everything included on the chip, including the game’s code, which makes it possible to run inside an emulator. A ROM is very similar to the ISO files you use to make your Raspberry Pi operating system images.

You learn how to set up the software in a second, but the real appeal of these systems is what other people have done with them. The Raspberry Pi community rarely wants to leave good enough alone, so instead of just setting up a boring emulator on the Raspberry Pi, people have created full arcade systems, tabletop systems, and so much more. How far you want to take your game station is up to you, but you’ll find all the resources you need in this chapter.

Retro Game Station Operating Systems

You can install any emulators on your Raspberry Pi, but two of the more popular solutions come in the form of custom operating systems. RetroPie (blog.petrockblock.com/retropie) and PiPlay (pimame.org) are both operating systems that preload your Raspberry Pi with game emulators so you can start playing right away.

RetroPie was one of the first retro game emulator distributions available on the Raspberry Pi, and it’s also the one you learn how to set up here. In this project, you basically burn the image just like you would with Raspbian and then run through a simple setup script to get everything working. It’s pretty easy to use, but it isn’t as intuitive as PiPlay, which we get to in a second. RetroPie comes with a ton of different emulators:

PiPlay is a little easier for people to use because it uses big, familiar menus to navigate and pick out games. In only supports a few emulators though:

Really, there’s no major difference with performance between RetroPie and PiPlay, so it’s mostly about the aesthetics of which you prefer. RetroPie is a little older and has a lot of support, so that’s the one you learn how to set up in this project.

PI POINTER

Emulation on the Raspberry Pi is typically pretty good, but you might notice some slow-down with more powerful systems like a PlayStation. The general rule of emulation is that the computer running it needs to be about twice as powerful as the system it’s emulating, so PlayStation tends to be a bit sluggish on the Raspberry Pi.

Setting Up RetroPie

I’m not going to guide you through the entire process of building a cabinet for your Raspberry Pi–powered retro game station, but setting up RetroPie is easy enough you can do it in a few minutes. When it’s set up, you can easily connect it to your TV and begin gaming.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Download the RetroPie SD card image from blog.petrockblock.com/retropie.
  2. Burn the image onto an SD card using the same methods you used for Raspbian in Chapter 8.
  3. Plug your SD card into your Raspberry Pi, and boot it up.
  4. You’ll be greeted with the raspi-config menu. Select Expand Filesystem, and choose Yes.
  5. Under Internationalization Options, set up your location, keyboard, and time zone.
  6. Exit the raspi-config screen and wait for your Raspberry Pi to reboot.
  7. You’ll be greeted by a controller setup screen. If you have a USB controller, plug it in and follow the on-screen prompts. If you’re using your keyboard, press Enter to get through the prompts. This only sets up your controller to work with the Emulation Station, the RetroPie’s navigation screen, not the emulators.
  8. Press Esc to exit out of RetroPie and get back to the command line.
  9. Type in cd RetroPi-Setup, and press Enter.
  10. Type in sudo ./retropie-setup.sh, and press Enter to load the RetroPie setup screen.
  11. Navigate to Setup, and choose Register RetroArch Controller. Follow the on-screen directions to set up your controller to work with the emulators.

Reboot your Raspberry Pi with sudo reboot, and everything should be set up and ready to go. RetroPie comes packed with the emulators to play games, but no actual games outside a few free games and demo versions, so you’ll need to track those down yourself.

HARDWARE HELPER

Just about any controller that has a regular USB plug will work with your Raspberry Pi. You can even get drivers so you can play with a PS3 or Xbox 360 controller.

Example Projects

Setting up your Raspberry Pi as a retro game station with software is really only half the battle. It’s a fun project, but to take it up a notch, create a whole box and setup for your system. I’m not going to cover all that in this book, but a few guides are available online to get you started if you’re looking for ideas:

Build a full-size arcade cabinet: If you’re handy with woodworking, you might want to turn your Raspberry Pi into a full-blown arcade cabinet. This project is exactly what it sounds like. You’ll make the cabinet, build custom joysticks and buttons, set up the software on your Raspberry Pi, integrate it all with a monitor, and stuff it all inside the cabinet. As you’d expect, you have a ton of different options for doing this.

DIYer Kyle Shipley built one for up to four players. Find the directions at blog.kyleshipley.com/posts/2013-08-29-raspberry-pi-arcade-cabinet.html. Tested has a large guide for custom making a cabinet from scratch at tested.com/art/makers/463888-tested-projects-building-custom-arcade-cabinet-part-1.

Build a small-scale Raspberry Pi arcade game console: Not everyone has the space to build a massive arcade cabinet in their house, but thankfully, there are plenty of small cases you can build as well.

Adafruit has a kit to build a tiny little machine available at learn.adafruit.com/cupcade-raspberry-pi-micro-mini-arcade-game-cabinet/overview. Instructables shows you how you can make your own with 3D-printed materials at instructables.com/id/Build-your-own-Mini-Arcade-Cabinet-with-Raspberry, and you’ll find another guide for an alternate small case on Instructables at instructables.com/id/NaCade-The-Naked-Raspberry-Pi-Arcade-Machine.

Connect official Super Nintendo controllers to your Raspberry Pi: If you really want to live the old-school life, you can connect actual Super Nintendo controllers to your Raspberry Pi with RetroPie. The process is pretty complicated, but you can find how to do it on the RetroPie site at blog.petrockblock.com/2012/10/21/the-retropie-gpio-adapter.

As with most Raspberry Pi projects, you can alter these cases to suit your particular needs. Countless other projects are available online as well, so dig around to see if you find something that’ll work for you.

PI POINTER

Buying an actual arcade machine would cost you upward of $4,000, but with a Raspberry Pi and a lot of spare time, you can build your own for a fraction of that cost. It’s not easy by any means, but it could make a great addition to your home or garage.

Raspberry Pi Photography Projects

I walked you through setting up a Raspberry Pi as a home surveillance camera in Chapter 16, but you can do a lot more with Raspberry Pi photography than that.

Using the official Raspberry Pi Camera Module, you can do a variety of projects, including creating a point-and-shoot camera, putting together a time-lapse photography setup, or even integrating your Raspberry Pi with your DSLR camera for a super powerful camera.

Building a Point-and-Shoot Camera

When you look at a point-and-shoot camera, you probably don’t think much about what’s inside of it. Like any electronic, it’s made of a computer. So as you’ve probably come to expect at this point, you can use a Raspberry Pi to make your own little point-and-shoot camera. It’s not going to blow away the competition with image quality, but it will take some pretty good pictures.

Turning your Raspberry Pi into a point-and-shoot camera might sound complicated, but the software portion of it is pretty easy. Beyond that, it’s just about building a case and trigger system.

There are a few variations on building this project, but in addition to your Raspberry Pi, you also need a touchscreen, the Raspberry Pi Camera Module, buttons for the trigger, and a battery pack so you don’t have to plug it in.

Setting up the camera only takes a few minutes:

  1. Install Raspbian (see Chapter 8).
  2. Plug in the Raspberry Pi Camera Module and power up your Raspberry Pi.
  3. At the command line, type in sudo raspi-config, and press Enter.
  4. Scroll down to Camera Enable/Disable, and select Enable.

That’s it for setting up the camera. Now you need to download a GPIO library so you can actually connect your buttons. Here’s how:

  1. At the command line, type in sudo apt-get install python dev, and press Enter.
  2. Type in sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio, and press Enter. This downloads all the tools to manage what the GPIO pins are doing.

HARDWARE HELPER

The camera module is an official Raspberry Pi accessory created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It’s a very simple, 5-megapixel camera. It doesn’t feature zoom or any special filters, but it can take a pretty good picture, especially considering it’s only $30. The Pi NoIR is a night vision version that costs the same.

As far as the software setup process is concerned, that’s about all you need to do. You can start taking pictures with your Raspberry Pi right now, albeit from the command line and from a nonportable setup. I’m not going to walk you through the whole process of buying and building your camera, but here are a couple great guides to get you started:

Build a simple point-and-shoot camera without a case: DIY magazine MAKE has a guide that details all the parts you need, how to set up the GPIO, and how to build your trigger at makezine.com/projects/raspberry-pi-point-and-shoot-camera.

Build a point-and-shoot camera with a case: DIYer Ben Heck built a Raspberry Pi camera using the same basic process as MAKE, but with a case and a slimmer construction. You can find his video guide on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=iZ3ajIoNIkA.

Really, you can do this in all kinds of ways, so how you decide to build your camera is totally up to you. The important part is getting it working, which is a surprisingly easy process.

Using Your Raspberry Pi for Time-Lapse Photography

Point-and-shoot cameras are pretty cool, but if you really want a project that’s above and beyond, a time-lapse photography setup might be just your thing.

Time-lapse photography is a series of pictures taken from the same location at separate times of the day. If you’ve ever seen one of those videos that turn from morning to night over the course of a few seconds, you’ve seen time-lapse photography in action.

The software portion of this project is pretty easy. For this one, you need your Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi Camera Module, and Raspbian installed.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Install Raspbian (see Chapter 8), connect the Camera Module to your Raspberry Pi, and boot it up to the command line.
  2. Type in raspi-still -o cam.jpg, and press Enter to take a picture. If the picture taken is what your camera is pointing at, everything’s working as it should be.

Now you need to write a script to tell the camera to take a picture at a set time interval. This is a two-step process. First, you need to write the script to take the picture and save it. Then you need to write the script that tells the first script to run at set times. Here’s how:

  1. At the command line, type in sudo nano camera.sh, and press Enter. This creates a new file.
  2. To create the script, type in the following:

    #!/bin/bash

    DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M")

    raspistill -o /home/pi/camera/$DATE.jpg

  3. Press Ctrl+X to save and exit the file. You’ve now created a small program that tells your Raspberry Pi to take a picture and save it with the current date and time.
  4. Now type in ./camera.sh, and press Enter. You should see a picture taken again. This verifies your program works.
  5. To create a schedule to take pictures at set intervals, type in sudo crontab -e, and press Enter.
  6. This is the cron editor. Scroll down to the very bottom until you see this line: # m h dom mon dow command. This is the scheduling instructions. M stands for “minute,” h for “hour,” dom for “day of month,” mon for “month,” and dow for “day of the week.”
  7. Now you just need to schedule the picture. If you want to take a picture every minute, add this line to the file:

    * * * * * /home/pi/camera.sh 2>&1

    You can change the timing by substituting numbers in for the asterisks. For example, to run it every 15 minutes, type in:

    * /15 * * * * * /home/pi/camera.sh

    For every hour, type in the following (hours are listed as 0 through 23, so once an hour is a 0):

    0* * * * * * /home/pi/camera.sh

  8. You can alter the script to take pictures at other intervals or even on set days by substituting current information for the asterisks at the beginning of the code. When you’re all done, press Ctrl+X to save and exit.
  9. If everything is working properly, your camera should take pictures at the intervals you select. Type in ~/camera, and press Enter. Type in ls, and press Enter, and you should see all your pictures appearing in the camera folder.

PI POINTER

As with most of these projects, play around with your setup to get everything working exactly how you want. Change the time intervals, experiment with putting the camera in different places, and spend a little time composing your shot before you start actually recording everything. Time-lapses are very cool, but they’re time-consuming to make, so do your best to get it right the first time.

By itself, this is pretty cool. But you also can turn all your single pictures into a time-lapse video if you want. You do this with software called MEncoder.

When you have all the pictures you want, pop back into the command line on your Raspberry Pi and do the following:

  1. Type in sudo apt-get install mencoder, and press Enter. This downloads and installs the MEncoder software.
  2. Type in cd ~/camera, and press Enter.
  3. Type in ls *.jpg > stills.txt, and press Enter. This creates a new text file listing all the pictures you just took so MEncoder knows what to use.
  4. Type in the following, and press Enter:

    mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts
    vcodec=mpeg4:aspect=16/9:vbitrate=8000000-vf scale=1920:1080-o
    timelapse.avi -mf type=jpeg:fps=24 mf://@stills.txt

    This tells MEncoder to turn all the images into a video file called timelapse.avi.

Congratulations. You just took some time-lapse video.

Now, if you want to use this time-lapse photography setup in the real world, you’ll likely want to get a case of some kind for your Raspberry Pi. You don’t need to do anything too crazy. Instructables has a guide for building your time-lapse system in a coffee tin at instructables.com/id/Simple-timelapse-camera-using-Raspberry-Pi-and-a-c.

Embedding the Raspberry Pi into a Digital Camera

By itself, a digital SLR (DSLR) camera is already incredibly powerful, but if you want even more power, you can embed your Raspberry Pi into your camera for lots more functionality.

To do this, you need a Raspberry Pi, a battery grip, a power convertor, a short USB cable, and a Wi-Fi adapter. After doing some work to get everything together, you’ll end up with a Raspberry Pi hidden inside a battery grip and connected to your DSLR camera. With it, you can set up wireless tethered shooting, USB backups, time-lapse photography, image conversion on remote devices, and so much more.

The process for this is far too complicated to cover in its entirety here, but you can find a large lesson to get you started on photographer David Hunt’s website at davidhunt.ie/raspberry-pi-in-a-dslr-camera.

Car-Related Raspberry Pi Projects

Many newer cars have fancy computers with LCD screens built in so you can control music, check out your car’s diagnostics, and more. This is a pretty great feature, but it’s incredibly expensive to add to an older car. The Raspberry Pi makes an excellent computer to power these types of projects if you want to make one for your vehicle.

When you get everything set up, you can get a camera, on-board diagnostic (OBD) reader, FM radio, media center, and even GPS navigation, all built in to your car, no matter what its age. You also can power a small entertainment system for the backseat using XBMC. This is an incredibly complicated project, but it’s also very rewarding once you get it all put together.

Due to the nature of these projects and the fact they differ from car to car, it’s hard to write one complete guide that covers all makes and models. Instead, I point you to a few projects online other people have done that you can pick up.

PI POINTER

Working on anything on your car is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re unsure about any of this, be sure you consult a professional for help. You should never work on your car’s electrical system when the battery is plugged in or the car is on.

Raspberry Pi–Compatible LCD Screens

Nearly all these projects require an LCD screen of some kind. And if you want to include features like GPS or cameras, you need a few extra parts as well.

LCD screens: Just about any LCD screen or touchscreen works with the Raspberry Pi, but if you’re looking for an inexpensive touchscreen, you have options. Tontec makes one for less than $40 that’s available on Amazon (amazon.com/Tontec-Version-240x320-Display-Raspberry/dp/B00GASHVDU), and Adafruit makes one for about $35 (adafruit.com/products/1601). Either option works great on the Raspberry Pi.

GPS screens: To add GPS, you’ll need a USB GPS device. Many of these are compatible with the Raspberry Pi, including Garmin’s eTrex Vista HCx, Intec’s EBT-200, and Bluenext’s BN903S. These GPS adapters are pretty expensive though. They usually retail for around $100 to $200.

FM radio: Because you’re replacing your car’s stereo, you might also want to add a radio to your system. To add an FM radio, you can use a USB FM adapter like the one made by ADS Technologies. You can purchase it at amazon.com/ADS-RDX-155-EF-Instant-FM-Music/dp/B000HNHA12 for about $10.

Of course, what you need really depends on the project you decide to tackle and what you want out of your Raspberry Pi–powered car computer.

Example Projects

These projects are far too complicated to go through in great detail here, and you’ll need some technical skill to get them working in your car, especially considering all cars aren’t the same. With that in mind, here are a few projects you can track down online to help get you started with a Raspberry Pi–related car project:

Car diagnostics display: If you fancy yourself a stats junkie, you probably already know about your car’s built-in diagnostics tool, the OBD. Typically, this is meant for technicians to troubleshoot problems with your car by looking at various readings about the car’s speed, temperature, timing, and more. This data is all stored live though, so you can access it in real time pretty easily.

The DIYers at CowFish Studios have made a guide that turns all that data into a heads-up display on your car so you can track your car’s real-time engine data. You’ll be able to monitor speed, RPM (revolutions per minute), time, intake air temperature, airflow rate, and more. All you need besides the Pi is a Bluetooth adapter, a screen, and a few cables. You can find their guide online at cowfishstudios.com/blog/obd-pi-raspberry-pi-displaying-car-diagnostics-obd-ii-data-on-an-aftermarket-head-unit.

In-car entertainment center: If an entertainment system is more your type of project, it’s pretty easy to make one with your Raspberry Pi. The bulk of this project uses the same Raspbmc build you made in Chapter 12 and then wires it through your car. You can set it up with a touchscreen in the front of your car to use for music and then wire everything to the backseat to set up small televisions for people in back.

As you’d expect, you have a ton of different options for building this, but Instructables offers a guide for a single-screen system at instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Touch-Screen-Car-Computer and MAKE has a guide for multiple screens at makezine.com/projects/raspberry-pi-car-computer-2.

Build a complete car computer: If you really want to go all in, you might consider building a full-blown computer car system. You need a GPS for maps, Raspbian for the entertainment system, and a reverse camera so you can see what’s happening behind you when you’re backing up.

It takes a bit of work to get this set up, but blogger Andrei Istodorescu shows you how on his blog, engineering-diy.blogspot.ro/2013/08/car-pc-projectaugust-2013-update.html.

Really, making your own car computer system with a Raspberry Pi is about what you need, what you want, and what’s compatible with your car. Not every car has a place to put in a screen, but if you do, you should be able to do all kinds of great stuff with your Raspberry Pi.

Home-Automation Projects

Another popular project for the Raspberry Pi is home automation. These systems enable you to automate all kinds of things in your home, such as managing the thermostat, playing music in multiple parts of the house, monitoring for leaks, and more.

Essentially, you’re creating a house of the future in which you can control various aspects of your dwelling from your computer or smartphone. The Raspberry Pi is a great computer for these projects because it’s small and you can connect all types of accessories to it.

Typically, home-automation projects have two parts: the server and the accessories. The server is what’s on your Raspberry Pi and gathers information from around the house or tells your house what to do. The accessories connect to your Raspberry Pi to collect that data. To give you a better idea of what you can do with these projects, let’s take a look at some of the types of accessories that work with the Raspberry Pi.

PI POINTER

These home-automation projects tend to sound a lot like something out of the Jetsons, and for good reason: you can actually do a lot of those “futuristic” types of things with your Raspberry Pi. On the surface, it’s about controlling your lights or maybe monitoring some locks, but if you have some ingenuity, you can do so much more.

Raspberry Pi–Compatible Home-Automation Accessories

In the case of home-automation projects, your Raspberry Pi is the brain, and the extra accessories you attach to it handle the actual monitoring. Many options for accessories exist, but let’s take a look at a few of the more popular ones to give you an idea of what’s possible.

Remote control outlets: Most remote control outlets that come with an infrared (IR) remote work great with the Raspberry Pi. Using these, you can hook anything with a plug to your Raspberry Pi and control it remotely. Typically, this applies to lights, but just about anything works.

Most sensors: If you walk into an electronics store, you’ll find all kinds of sensors that can monitor the environment. Most are small, plastic or metal parts you can add to your Raspberry Pi’s GPIO. Sensors are available to monitor temperature, sound, distance, motion, light, and so much more. In the case of home automation, you can either use these sensors to trigger an event like turning down a thermostat or to collect data about your home and display it on a screen.

If you’re not sure where to start, just about any sensor from Adafruit will work with the Raspberry Pi. You can browse them on Adafruit at adafruit.com/category/35.

Webcams and security cameras: You already learned how to set up a Raspberry Pi–powered home security system in Chapter 16, but that system can work as part of your home-automation system as well. If you don’t want to do that, you can use pretty much any webcam on the market. These cameras are a great part of your home-automation setup because they can monitor for movement as well as record anything that happens.

As you’d expect, there are countless other things you can add to your system. You can integrate your home stereo, your lawn sprinklers, or even your pet feeder if you want. If there’s a power button on it, chances are, you can connect it to your Raspberry Pi somehow.

Example Projects

Much like the car computer projects, it’s hard to really create a guide for home-automation projects because all homes are different. Likewise, not everyone’s needs are the same. So to tackle one of these projects, it’s best to choose what you want out of a home-automation system and go from there. These tend to be pretty expensive to build, too, but they’re still a lot cheaper than retail solutions. To get you started and spark some ideas, here are a few big projects worth tackling.

Monitor your home and play music with BeakPi: If you’re interested in doing some lightweight home automation like playing music around the house and controlling lights, BeakPi is a pretty solid solution. It enables you to monitor the temperature in your house, play music from Spotify, and control lights. Find everything you need on GitHub at github.com/beakable/BeakPi.

Track everything with PiDome: If you’re looking to track everything going on in your house, connecting several different devices, and creating triggers for different automation tricks, you might want to keep an eye on PiDome. It’s an operating system that’s currently in alpha, but it promises to do a lot of different home-automation tasks. It works with many sensors alongside various external hardware. The software is still early in development, but if you’re curious, you can find it on the PiDome site at pidome.wordpress.com.

Monitor everything in your house: If you’re interested more in monitoring what’s happening inside your house, you’ll likely want to step up your system to also include an Arduino. Instructables user Eric Tsai did, and his system monitors for water leaks, notifies you when the washer is done, tells you if the garage door is open, notifies you when new mail arrives, monitors for dog waste in the yard, keeps an eye on the temperature, monitors the door locks, and even tells you if a fire breaks out.

It’s a pretty intense system that’ll likely require a few weekends of hard work to put together, but if you’re interested, you can find his guide on Instructables at instructables.com/id/Uber-Home-Automation.

HARDWARE HELPER

The real key with home automation is understanding how sensors work. The best way to learn is to buy a few and give them a try. They’re usually very easy to set up, and once you can see the type of data they collect, you can decide what types of uses you might have for them.

With home automation, it’s usually best to play around with a few different options, do some research about what’s out there, and adapt a project to fit your particular house. The nice thing about most of these projects is that you can easily add accessories and sensors or remove what you don’t need without messing up the whole project.

Portable Raspberry Pi Projects

You might not think it when you look at it, but the Raspberry Pi makes a great little portable device, if you know how to use it. Obviously, you need to add a battery pack and a screen of some kind, but from there, your options are just about endless.

In most cases, these portable projects require a lot of work on your part. The software portion is usually easy because it’s most often just Raspbian, but building the case can be a tricky task that requires either a 3D printer or an understanding of constructing with plastics.

Still, if you have the resources, you can make some pretty cool portable stuff with your Raspberry Pi, including a tablet, a laptop, and even a handheld gaming system.

Turning Your Raspberry Pi into a Tablet

When you look at your Raspberry Pi, you probably don’t think “tablet,” but it’s completely possible to make one with it. Obviously, it’ll be a little thick and require a decent touchscreen, but if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can take your Raspberry Pi with you anywhere.

The most elegant solution for a Raspberry Pi tablet was created by DIYer Michael Castor. It comes in a wood case, features a battery pack meant for an Android phone and an LCD touchscreen, and runs Raspbian. It’s not nearly as thin and simple to use as an iPad, but the fact you can build it yourself for around $300 is still pretty amazing. You can find the full guide for doing so on MAKE at makezine.com/2014/01/07/how-i-built-a-raspberry-pi-tablet.

PI POINTER

Most of the portable projects require a 3D printer, but if you don’t have one, you can check out a local hackerspace to see if you can use one for a specific project.

Turning Your Raspberry Pi into a Tiny Laptop

The Raspberry Pi makes a perfectly good little personal computer, so there’s no reason why it wouldn’t also work as a laptop. Like the tablet, you need to track down a battery pack, pair it with a screen, and find a way to create a case for the laptop, but it’s not as difficult a project as it might seem at first glance.

However, building a full-scale laptop doesn’t tend to be very cost-effective. You’ll probably want to go for something a little smaller. DIYer Nathan Morgan built a tiny mobile Raspberry Pi computer that includes an LCD screen, a battery pack, a powered USB hub, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a keyboard, and a touchpad mouse. It’s then packed inside a 3D-printed case. The end result is a pocket-size Raspberry Pi laptop with a 10-hour battery life that you can take with you just about anywhere. It’s a bit costly to make at around $300, but it’s incredibly useful.

Find the full tutorial to build it on the Parts-People blog at blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry-pi-computer-build-your-own-portable-rpi-to-go.

Making a Portable Gaming System

If portable computing isn’t your thing, perhaps a portable gaming system is. Using the same RetroPie operating system I introduced earlier in the chapter, you can create a powerful little portable gaming machine, if you’re willing to put in the effort.

You have a variety of options to do this. One of the best ones is to build your portable gaming system completely from scratch. Adafruit has a guide that walks you through printing out a 3D case, modding an old Super Nintendo controller, adding your own buttons, and attaching your own little screen. The end result is a portable game system that you built yourself entirely from scratch. You can find the guide at learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-raspberry-pi-gameboy.

If you’d prefer to go more retro, you can build your portable gaming system into an old Game Boy. As you’d expect, this method requires a lot of modification and some serious work on your part to get it working, but the end result is a retro game system inside an old-school case but loaded with the modern conveniences of the Raspberry Pi. Find the instructions for making one on XodusTech at xodustech.com/projects/raspberry-pi-gameboy-pocket.

Making Your Own Mobile Phone

Your smartphone is pretty powerful, and “dumb” phones are pretty inexpensive, but if for some reason you want to turn your Raspberry Pi into a phone, you can. You’ll get a large, clunky, and hard-to-use phone out of the project, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

Using a Raspberry Pi, a touchscreen, a lithium battery, a GSM module, and some miscellaneous cables, blogger David Hunt built a fully capable little cell phone. It’s not pretty by any means, but it makes calls. You can find the lesson for building one for yourself on Hunt’s blog at davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone.

You can do a ton of stuff with the Raspberry Pi, and not every use is obvious at a glance. The more you dig around online and look at other people’s projects, the more ideas you’ll have for yourself. Take a look at what’s available, and adapt it to suit your needs. Especially with portable projects, what you need and what someone else needs are likely completely different.

The Least You Need to Know