116 thoughts on “raspberry pi plus arduino equals something something”

1. hackaday.com (http://hackaday.com/category/raspberry-pi-2/) has some fantastic projects and things you can do with your devices. I don’t have any projects there but it certainly has helped me dream of ones I would love to do.

   1. Oh neat! Thank you!

2. I started with a Samba Active Directory server for my home. Now I am on https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5ez0yb/cheap_diy_ambilight_tutorial_for_a_windows_pc/ and a HDMI version from the comments.

3. I just bought a raspberry pi zero and gonna try to build a motion detector to record when people/dogs come & go in private dog park. I’m going to initially test in the house to see how many times the dog goes into the kitchen ( or wherever).

   Like you just trying to stretch myself into different areas.

4. Wil, try PlexBMC if you want to use Plex on your Pi.

5. I made a RetroPie. That was kind of fun to get me acquainted with the pi, but I’m ready for whatever would be the next step.

   1. I was thinking about that. I have a USB NES controller and …. Hmmmmmmm

      1. Me too! The best part of the system is how portable it is. Bored in a hotel? Time for Mario!

6. Hey Wil,

   Raspberry Pi can be turned into an Amazon Echo pretty easily – which can then lead you down a bunch of home automation stuff (phillips lights, or other small things you build yourself with andrino and some sensors). I heard of someone doing a cool project with a raspberry pi and a webcam that would take pictures and idenify birds that landed at their backyard birdfeeder… I really need to do something cool with my raspberry pi as well now that I think of it.

   Best of luck!

7. http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/21862/raspberry-pi-top-22-projects-to-try-yourself

8. Ada Fruit has a ton of awesome tutorials and lessons for both Raspberry Pi and Arduino. Really easy to follow and definitely good for learning.

   1. I’ll second the Adafruit recommendation. Their tutorials are second to none for this type of stuff, and most of them are aimed at your skill level.

9. You might enjoy and appreciate a fun package I created in Ubuntu, called “hollywood”. It takes your command line environment, and chops it up into a bunch of fun, silly panes, each running a different Linux utility, aiming to make your machine look like that movie hacker’s melodramatic terminal 🙂 Start by installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on your Raspberry Pi 2. http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/20/howto-classic-apt-based-ubuntu-16-04-lts-server-on-the-rpi2/ Then, “sudo apt install hollywood”, and run “hollywood”. http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/12/hollywood-technodrama.html

   1. This looks like so much fun! Will it work with raspbian?

      1. Hollywood isn’t in the Raspbian archive, but it can be installed manually with:

         #!/bin/sh
         sudo apt-get update
         wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/hollywood_1.12-0ubuntu1_all.deb
         sudo dpkg -i hollywood*.deb
         sudo apt-get install -f
         sudo updatedb
         hollywood

         Note: It’s kind of resource hungry, so the rpi struggles to keep up sometimes 🙂 Ctrl-C to quit. Post a screenshot if you get it working!

10. I’m so excited you posted this! My SO and I are currently almost finished with a programmable light pixel matrix that we are going to use outside for a neat holiday display this year. Unfortunately the tutorial website is giving me a 500 error right now but the website is aoakley.com. It’s pretty simple, but it needs a ridiculous power supply, which is making it a bit cantankerous. I’m still excited though, it looks really cool (I will send pictures when it’s complete if you like!) Here’s a slightly different tutorial for basically the same thing: http://www.lighthouselogic.com/christmas-light-pixel-matrix/

    PS, I’m putting together a raspberry pi kit for my SO for Christmas. He already has all the basics, are there any other cool things you can recommend to put in it that would be fun to play with?

11. Have you tried Calibre to get those books on your Kindle? I sideload all my books with it, including those pesky Humble Bundle Make books.

    As for Arduino, I’m currently building a vu meter disguised as an owl for my wife’s elementary school library. It flaps its wings and the eyes look around when they are getting too loud. If you really want to stretch your wings try building a drone using the Arduino as the brains. That’s probably my next project.

    1. Ditto Calibre. I use it on my Ubuntu laptop and Calibre Companion on my tablet. They can talk to each other and send books over your WiFi.

       I have a raspberry pi but I just use mine as a media center – its hooked up to our TV and 3 terabytes wish of hard drives.

       1. Oh wow I had no idea I could turn Calibre into a server!! I’ve only used it to edit metadata and do rudimentary conversions on some things.

          I just started the server, and used it to put these books I’ve been dying to read onto my Kindle, and I never would have even thought to look into doing that if you hadn’t posted this comment. Thank you!!

12. see all the arduino stuff at Know How (on TWiT.tv) and the Ben Heck show (on element14)

13. I would mod your coffee roaster. Projects that can be useful with your current interests are way better then some blinky led exercise. There is arduino roasting software to log and control your 1600. Here is one idea http://blog.soemarko.com/post/109402505018/behmor-mod-phase-2-heat-control-with-arduino

    I am working on a similar ardunio setup but with a hot air popcorn coffee roaster.

    TAS

14. I used the Mel Grubb tutorial from start to finish to set up my media server (I made three of them). I detail my experiences in the link below; it includes links to the Mel Grubb tutorial. I understand that he is re-writing it for the Pi3. My experiences (on Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Reviews site, which I web-guy) http://chaosmanorreviews.com/a-raspberry-pi-media-server/ .

15. My friend @DianaProbst built a drawing robot/plotter with a Raspberry Pi as the control unit. https://www.instagram.com/p/BGZy8BcpQ_0/

16. I’ll second the hackaday.com or adafruit sites for examples and tutorials. But my vote is for a murderkillbot!

17. I still have my old Radio Shack 300 in 1 Electronic Test Bench, Wil.

    I’ve been licensed as an Extra Class amateur radio operator for many years. My call sign is WK2B.
    I still spend time on the shortwave bands and I’m a Morse code fanatic. Having a background in music made the code easier for me because I’m relaxed with the timing and rhythmic elements.

    Joe Walsh, the Eagles guitarist is an old friend. When he lived in Memphis we’d get together occasionally just to have some laughs and talk about home-brewing (building) our own stuff. Joe’s amateur call sign is WB6ACU and you can read about our radio stations at http://QRZ.Com by typing our call signs, WB6ACU & WK2B, in the search box.

    Here’s a neat site:
    http://foxdelta.com/

    And this one:
    http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/

    Your post awakens inspiration and creativity.

    Hope you’re having a great evening, Wil.

18. You could try something a little retro. Turn a RPi into a 1968 DEC PDP8 complete with blinking lights..

    http://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence

    1. Thanks for the link! I’ll try to give it a try.

19. In another life, I think we would have been awesome friends! With the raspberry pi, I set up a print server for my printrbot with OctoPi. It’s really nice to be able to slice on my computer and then just send it to print. The Amazon alexa on pi is a fun project too.

    With the arduino, what types of things are you wanting to be able to do? I started with robotics and built a robot that could traverse a minefield of mouse traps using some brush sensors on the front for a work competition. It was a good introduction to robotics on arduino. We also had a sumobot competition (detect your opponent with a ultrasonic ping sensor and push them out of the arena). Lastly, a nerf turret was pretty fun. You could use the pi for that too and use some OpenCV for target detection. Here’s a list of all the competitions we did at my last job if you’re looking for some fun projects.
    http://robotics.pjhayward.net/#/home

    Have you checked out the particle photon? It’s another nice board similar to the arduino but has wi-fi connectivity. It’s great for smart home uses.

20. Did you know you can use Simulink to program the Arduino and Raspberry Pi using model-based design? As someone who used Simulink to develop a control system for a prototype automotive air conditioner using CO2 as the refrigerant, I can tell you that the combination of Simulink and software development can lead to some pretty great results. Following that project, I was hired by MathWorks (developers of Simulink) to be a corporate trainer – I’d be very pleased to see you in one of my introductory Simulink classes! 😁

21. Wil,

    Several years ago I made a Portal Turret with Arduino (Video Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z0CRfBR7MY). I kind of enjoyed working with Arduino because of its simple, low level, port toggling, goodness. Combining components lights and sensors without an OS getting in the way is appealing to me. In any event, I have the full project as well as the sketch here if you are interested in trying to replicate or draw inspiration from it (http://www.themadhermit.net/geek-out-build-your-own-arduino-portal-turret/). Either way I look forward to seeing what you build.

22. Thanks for the link. Revisions to the home server series are just about to be published, actually. If there’s anything you need help with, let me know. I would avoid CrashPlan for now. It’s terminally broken at the moment, which is sad. It was one of the major “selling points” for building the server in the first place. You can totally get Plex working by the way. I’ve stuck with MiniDLNA for the lower resource usage, but I have complete instructions for doing a Plex install too.

23. Here’s a pretty cool project. It’s a Raspberry Pi and Arduino dog treat dispenser.

    https://youtu.be/PAHrBA0jYAo

24. If you want to feel like you live in THE FUTURE, try this Magic Mirror project. It’s incredibly fun!

    http://lifehacker.com/build-a-magic-mirror-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-an-old-mon-1750468358

25. The other day during your choose your own adventure the idea of an IRC bot came up. One of these little devices could be perfect for such a thing as connecting to the Twitch IRC (see https://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1302780-twitch-irc) to tally the totals, while simultaneously allowing only your internal machine to access a real-time AJAX web UI front end in order to view/reset/manipulate/etc. the totals. Python or Perl I bet are great on the PI too.

    Anyway, just a thought. Cheers o/

26. For what it’s worth, I see the Raspberry Pi as a tiny Linux Computer able to do all the usual computer stuff, but at a fraction of the size, cost, and power consumption. The Arduino I see as a way of connecting computer commands to the real world and vice-versa. The two together make a powerful combination-a tiny computer that can connect to the real world.

    Right now I’m still doing a full time job (I still have a son in college, and a daughter in high school), which interferes with my inventive desires. I’m a ham radio operator, so I also have the option of communicating with such devices–sending commands and receiving telemetry. If you know about Cubesats (10cmx10cmx10cm satellites) you may think–wow that’s awesome. However, with the same pi and Arduino you can do some of the same neat things down here. Some interesting sites include Projects (http://duino4projects.com/audio-input-to-arduino/) and Fritzing.org. Adafruit, a maker of pi accessories, and its founder are fascinating in themselves.

    Happy tinkering.

    1. Thank you!

27. Neat stuff! I’m glad you’re still posting. I don’t have any neat things to recommend I’m looking forward to doing those electronic kits with Claire someday soon, though. I’ve seen them on amazon. Husband turned 44 today and we took the littles to their first movie, Moana, and it was beautiful. So I can recommend Moana. 🙂

28. Trying taking a dump. dump1090 actually.
    http://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/dump1090.html
    Plane spotting.

29. I’ve been experimenting with making an FX board for lightsabers using an Arduino. There are two main threads about this topic that can get someone ~95% of the way there.

    http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=261980.0
    http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=361566.0

    I hadn’t programmed since the the late nineties, but picking up the Arduino IDE was pretty easy and it’s super rewarding to build something as iconic as a lightsaber.

    Keep us posted on what you come up with!

30. Totally random… Last January when I was visiting a friend in Ghana, Africa, she also hosted a man from L.A. that was coming to Ghana to upgrade some of the schools there to the latest version of Raspberry Pi. I’m not even sure that last sentence is technically accurate, but I ended up getting to visit several schools with him in the Cape Coast region and see what their technical classes looked like… it was truly like a step back to my junior high days and early computing, only with wifi technology. Even in its early stages, it was nice to see technology taking root in developing countries and even better was the minimal cost that schools had to invest to make technology available to all of their students. Yeah Raspberry Pi!

31. My 9 year old son is getting a raspberry pi and arduino board for Christmas. He really wants to become a videogame programmer. Shhh…the gifts are a secret.

32. Here’s a walkthrough of a remote sensor project I did a while back using a Raspberry Pi, Arduino Uno, Node.js, and Plotly. Nothing extraordinary here, but it does give a pretty decent high-level view of tying all of the pieces together. It’s probably a bit dated by now, but hopefully it will still be of some value. https://goo.gl/ywxmuJ

    1. …and those Radio Shack catalogs: What a wonderful walk down memory lane! I too spent many Christmas mornings putting together those kits.

       I sure miss the days when you could get a proper chemistry set…

33. You should build a MAME cabinet with your PI.

    I have a couple of Raspis and several arduinos. One Rasp Pi runs my home weather station. I was inspired by this guy and the fact that the software that shipped with my station was pretty crappy. http://www.desert-home.com/2014/11/acurite-weather-station-raspberry-pi.html

    I have another Rasp Pi that I use with a salvaged laptop screen as a digital picture frame. I might build a kitchen proof container for it with a waterproof keyboard/mouse for recipes, note taking, and shopping lists. Of course a $50 android tablet would do the job just as well.

    The most interesting thing I’ve built with an arduino is a chicken coop door opening robot. They are fun gadgets and remind me of building heathkit kits with my dad when I was a teenager.

34. As a Family Practice Doc/Nerd, when we had a lot of LCD monitors laying around after everyone moved from desktops to laptops, I used RPIs to run medical tips and info slideshows in the exam rooms for patients to view during their hopefully short waits. The graphic of how many teaspoons of sugar are in various soft drinks is a great conversation starter.

35. You seems ok with the software side but how are you about analog electronic?
    For the arduino I’d start with something simple like a few blinking LEDs and/or servo. My first “ambitious” project was a laser turret (two sg90 servos, a laser led and some cable tie) connected with a cheap analog stick (total parts cost: about $7). You can probably get this working in a weekend.
    If you want to do something more advanced, since you have a 3d printer you can get a “smaller” arduino (nano or pro mini), get some movie prop file from thingiverse and modify them to include the arduino, some LEDs and sound effects into it (hint: SNG tricorders seem like a good candidate 😉 ).

36. I use an Arduino board to make Halloween decorations. Fairly easy to use motion or sound sensors to activate LEDs and queue sound effects and activate motors to scare trick or treaters when they walk near your door. I suppose you could also do the same sort of thing for Christmas, if you wanted to scare the crap out of some carolers.

37. Hi Wil,

    If you’re feeling up to the challenge at some point, Dmitry Grinberg put out the plans for a really cool 8×8 LED matrix pendant using the same microcontroller as found in the Arduino Uno (http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=13.%20Greyscale%20LED%20matrix%20pendant%208×8). In fact it can be done with an Arduino Uno with some code changes.

    Oh, and I can second the Retropie thing. I built one for my wife as a Christmas present with a custom case and vinyl decals. It was like reconstructing my childhood.

    I know you’ll open that box with jumper wires and solderless breadboads one day and not panic. All I can say is, I had the same reaction about a year ago, and now I’m confidently hacking away with barebones ATMega processors with embedded C. And while I’m not a soldering god, I’ve overcome a lot of my own self-inflicted FUD about being able to do it as well.

    Good luck in your endeavors!

38. I’m actually doing similar stuff at the moment. My 9yo is getting an Arduino Uno for his birthday (on Christmas day) so I figured i’d have to learn how to drive it to show him. ; )
    The first project I have created to teach him is an ultrasonic-brother-has-been-in-my-room-alarm. I haven’t done any electronics in decades but I got this thing to go in about an hour of playing. Code available if you’d like it.
    Second project is a sensor for my remote garage door. I can’t tell if its open or closed when i’m in the house. I’m a big fan of home automation type stuff. I may do a sprinkler timer later.

    I did a bit of catch-up learning with this tutorial…https://www.lynda.com/Arduino-tutorials/Up-Running-Arduino/197594-2.html

    I also have a Raspberry Pi. I have it operating but haven’t started any projects yet but the plans include:
    Mame console
    Media server https://twit.tv/shows/know-how/episodes/31
    Weather station https://www.raspberryweather.com/your-weather-station/
    Web server/wiki for keeping household data
    I figure that if it doesn’t do something cool and interact with the world, I could have done it on my PC.

    Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

39. The Question is: are you more into a software project, or more into a hardware project?

    i will show you two of my projects. one Arduino and one raspberry pi project. First the Arduino project:

    I’ve done this project years years ago:
    It is a ambient light for the table. It changes its color based on its magnetic position.

    This are basically just some opal acrylic glass cubes (side length of 15cm). Its powered by a few componennts. An Arduino uno (you can also use a pro mini or nano), a battery pack, a compass modules (GY-273) a little transistor board and 4 pieces of a led stripe. On the software side its quite simple. I readout the informations of the compass module and translate the degree value into o color value. I use this color value to generate a PWM signal to set the color of the RGB LED Stripe.

    If you are interested in building this: i can send you some pictures of the inside of the cube and the source code.

    Second a raspberry pi project:

    I just finished this project. Its a mobile Arcade cabinet. It contains a laptop Display panel with a controller board, a raspi 3, a 12v battery, some cheap speakers connected to a cheap amplifier board, a few arcade buttons and a joystick.
    On the software side its running recalboxos. Its some sort of a better retropi.
    And this is how it looks:

    https://cloud.stenders.info/index.php/s/3FI6kz4UBfCQwPU

    The case is custom made. i draw it by myself and milled it with my cnc mill. its made of 3mm High Density Fiberboard, but you can also use acrylic glass, PVC, fiber glass and so on.

    I can send you the digital drawing for that case if needed. (maybe you need to adjust it a little bit, to fit a different display panel.)

    Both projects are really fun.

    best regards

    1. The Question is: are you more into a software project, or more into a hardware project?

       It’s a very good Question, and I’m not entirely sure what the answer is. I’m going to try my hand with some simple projects in both disciplines, and I guess I’ll know which one excites me more.

       But thanks for these links! Both projects are inspiring and super interesting.

       1. I forgot one Project: https://cloud.stenders.info/index.php/s/f1e58e6717717bcd12dcee10e99d6a07

          This is a word clock. (german version of it)

          Basically its an arduino, a led multplexer and a lot of wiring. But i think those clocks look fantastic. Its a lot todo and maybe something for a future project after the first steps.

          You should also have a look at the volumio software. Raspi + DAC shield (HiFi Berry for example) + volumio = awesome wlan audio receiver. I use it to stream my music with my smartphone into my bedroom when i’m to lazy to get up on a sunday morning.

40. Hi,

    A while ago I found this tutorial to build a multi room wireless temperature and humidity sensor network: https://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/building-a-wireless-sensor-network-in-your-home–cms-19745

    Building it was really fun and I learned much about the Arduino as well about the Raspberry Pi. The tutorial uses a cloud service for plotting the data, so I hacked together my own small local webgui, which you can find here: https://github.com/zeratul2099/home_sensor_network

41. Those Radio Shack / Heathkit kits bring back a lot of wonderful memories of childhood – Thank you for that.

    I haven’t had time lately to get my command line fix lately, so I don’t have any interesting recent projects to share. But if you want a suggestion of cool things that an arduino can do… but this comes with the warning that it’s not just a “weekend project” is Linux CNC. If you’re into 3d printing, well, this is the Yang to 3d printing’s Ying.

    To give you a flavor of the cutting edge in home CNC – I know nothing about this other than I just saw it today and on first blush it looks incredibly cool… it’s a handheld CNC router that works like a Ouija board with an onboard vision-system to guide the router precisely as you move it over the piece by hand. Sounds a bit too good to be true, but the way it works is so innovative that it made every nerd-gland in my body simultaneously gleek. And – it’s WAY more portable than my benchtop CNC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_wk3q8jWcs

    More traditional approaches to CNC which involve LinuxCNC, Meshcam & etc…

    Again, CNC is not a weekend project by any means – its more of a hobby. You’ll need to learn 3d modeling software like Rhino3d or SolidWorks, CAD software, CAM software. It’s very fun and useful, but will take up a chunk of your garage and wallet. In return, you’ll be able to prototype things out of wood, foam, light metals – cut your own custom PCBs, make furniture, engrave things, etc.

    http://linuxcnc.org/
    https://buildyourcnc.com/Item/control-SOFTWARE-linuxcnc
    http://www.grzsoftware.com/users/linux-cnc/
    http://www.probotix.com/
    https://vimeo.com/probotix
    http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-PCBs-on-an-inexpensive-desktop-CNC-m/
    http://hackaday.com/2013/12/23/software-advice-for-anyone-thinking-about-a-cnc-router/
    http://www.maslowcnc.com/

42. Speaking of the quarterly boxes, what happened to box #4, and why was there never a video of it like there was for the others?

43. I’ve had an arduino sitting in a box waiting to be used for something for ages, and this year it’s finally been built into an arduinoboy so that I can use an old Game Boy as a MIDI synth.

    I’m just putting Raspberry Pies in my parents massive house to act as a multi-room PVR, and there’s one that sits under my TV with Retropie that has all the NES, SNES and Scumm I could ever want.

44. Here’s a link to a youtube video. I designed and printed the USS Sally Ride, and added lights and sounds. The root was an Arduino Mega2560, plus lots of parts from adafruit. 🙂
    https://youtu.be/dQIqDhbm9yk

45. I second the comment about the Amazon Echo. I bought my first Pi to try it out using these instructions(https://github.com/alexa/alexa-avs-sample-app). I wound up using a better microphone than they mention, but otherwise, it’s very easy to do. Now, I’ve started replacing light switches with smart switches so Alexa can control them. Also, my kids love to ask her who is the fairest of them all. Usually, it’s them…

46. a robot

    OK, if that suggestion didn’t grab you hen the rest of this is tl;dr …

    I’ve been learning to build a low cost robot over the past couple of months. I am using ROS (http://www.ros.org) as the foundation.

    The most basic feature is that all of the “movement” can be handled by RC servos. It can use other types of motors but servos are inexpensive, available, and not too crazy.

    If you are still with me, you can read the progress – and decide if it’s along the lines of your interest – with the various posts at: http://elder.ninja/blog/p/category/robot

    (I attempted to avoid too many parenthesis.)

47. Entertainingly, LifeHacker posted exactly what you needed. CodeMade (www.codemade.io)

    Here’s the article if you haven’t seen it already: http://lifehacker.com/codemade-is-a-big-collection-of-open-source-electronics-1789750030

48. I have built loads of things:

    Twitter powered tardis: https://vine.co/v/5F3QQ29ewV6
    Flashing lights for my window at Halloween: https://vine.co/v/5dzaJvHleIO
    Photobooth (posting a gif to twitter): https://www.flickr.com/photos/raspberryjamberlin/30076058596/in/dateposted/
    Endurance game: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raspberryjamberlin/30026531351/in/dateposted/
    Bubble machine (twitter controlled naturally): https://www.flickr.com/photos/raspberryjamberlin/30075594246/in/dateposted/
    Robots (small ones): https://www.flickr.com/photos/raspberryjamberlin/29997223832/in/dateposted/

    So much more really! But my 2 most favorite projects are:

    360 degree horazontal panorama camera called ‘Zero360’: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raspberryjamberlin/albums/72157670149384610
    Timelapse photography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYVfJtET9xs

49. One of the first big projects I did with an Arduino was a reverse geo-cache. I suppose you could integrate a Pi in there somehow, but that might be a waste of it’s resources. http://arduiniana.org/projects/the-reverse-geo-cache-puzzle/

50. Never heard of the Quarterly boxes before – very kewl! Would definitely get yours!

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