Top 10 Raspberry Pi Creations

Thanksgiving Week Deal Watch

Just a heads up, there won’t be a LIVE show this Friday because of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States. BUT don’t you worry… we won’t leave you hanging! John P and I will be working all week to make sure you know where the good deals are for Black Friday and Cyber Monday! So be sure you’re checking your G+, Twitter and Facebook feeds. Cause when we find good deals, you have to act fast!

Another Chance to Win Damson Jet Speakers!

You also might be able to get something free. Damson is giving away 5 MORE Jet Bluetooth speakers. And everyone can enter! No matter where you are in the world. Go to geekbeat.tv/giveaways

Raspberry Pi: The Biggest Thing in Tiny Computers

Raspberry Pi has been the hit of the hacker slash Makerspace community! It’s a tiny little computer about the size of a credit card. You plug it into a monitor and a keyboard… it’s not the most powerful computer on the market, but it has enough capability to play HD video and games, and can do simple tasks like spreadsheets and documents.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is out of the UK, and their goal in building it was to help teach young kids basic computer science. It’s inexpensive and could be used in small gadget and electronic projects.

3.8 million of them have been sold in under 3 years. And a lot of people are doing VERY cool things with them!

The Raspberry Pi Tablet

Like Michael Castor who created a tablet from the Raspberry Pi. He wanted to create something that looked good, and he made that happen! The frame is made out of carbon fiber and Baltic Birch Plywood. He used a 10,000mAh battery to give it 6 hours of battery time. It’s running Linux, has USB, Bluetooth, WiFi… all the stuff you’d expect from a tablet!

The Raspberry Pi Phone

If you’re looking for something a little smaller than a tablet, Dave Hunt made a PiPhone. It’s a little smaller and bulkier than most phones these days, but c’mon! It’s cool! And cheaper. Only $158 in parts, and all the parts are off-the-shelf! So you don’t have to worry about soldering or anything! For example, he used the Adafruit Touchscreen, a 2500mAh battery, a SIM900 GSM radio module… and it’s available on GitHub if you want to make your own!

Supercomputer Made of Raspberry Pis

Or you could go CRAZY and build a SUPERCOMPUTER made out of 40 Raspberry Pi’s like David Guill did right here from our local Dallas Makerspace! I told you about this earlier this year, and it’s just so freaking awesome! 20 gigs of RAM. 5 Terabytes of storage… upgradeable to 12 TB. 440 GB of solid state storage. And even better, he built it with a clear case and lots of different colored cables to make it look like a piece of art! And it only cost $3000.

Raspberry Bullet Time Rig

Andrew Robinson from the UK decided he wanted to see if he could use Raspberry Pis to create Bullet Time photography. You know… the way they made the Matrix? These are usually very high tech and complicated setups. Andrew used 48 Pis with camera modules, 48 PiFace Control and Display modules, 500 meters of cabling, two 24-port network switches and a wireless router. He placed all the cameras in a 10 foot stargate shaped loop and voila! What if schools could implement something like this to give young adults the ability to learn this stuff! It’s certainly a lot cheaper!

3D Printing with Raspberry Pi

How about a Raspberry Pi 3D printer? Why not? Owen Jeffreys designed this and built it entirely from scratch. It’s controlled entirely by the Pi, runs C++ and runs at ¼ of the speed of a commercial 3D printer, but that’ll get better in time.

Raspberry Pi Audio Book Player for the Visually Impaired

I love it when people put technology to good use! Villem van der Yat designed an audio book reader out of a Raspberry Pi for his almost-blind 93-year-old grandfather. He’ll load a few books onto the device at a time. Each book file is tied to a DVD case that has an RFID card inside. So when he puts the DVD case on the player, it’ll know which file to play. And grandpa is still using it a year later!

Raspberry Pi-Powered Robot Tank

You know how I love my robots! So of course I love the DoodleBorg. It’s a robotic tank controlled by a Pi. Specifically, it uses the PiBorg Motor Controller! There are 6, 350 watt motors to give it 3 horsepower. You can control it with the Dual Shock 3 controller from a PS3.

Raspberry Pi Car Computer

If you do spend a lot of time in the car, you’ll love the Raspberry Pi in-car entertainment system! It uses a WiFi dongle to connect to a hotspot, has 7” screens for watching content, and connects to the car’s DVD player. It runs a media center operating system, but you can swap out SD cards to switch to a desktop oriented OS.

Judd the Dog’s Raspberry Pi Treat Machine

Awww! This next one warms my heart. Judd is a dog and now has a Treat Machine named after him! It’s a box controlled by Raspberry Pi that watches out for emails sent to Judd’s very own email address. Yes… Judd the dog has an email address. When he gets an email, the box will show “Woof Woof I’m about to get a treat!” on the LCD screen, then dispense a treat using servo motors and take a picture using the built in webcam. It’ll send the emailer a picture of Judd enjoying his treat. So sweet!

Raspberry Pi Arcade Game

And lastly… how about having some fun yourself with the Porta Pi Arcade Kit!? It started out as a Kickstarter project but you can get one for $280. The cabinet is laser cut from oak plywood or see-through Acrylic. You can get a 7” or 9” screen, and OF COURSE it has a joystick plus 10 arcade buttons. And it’s fully run by the Raspberry Pi.

Let Us Know What You Think

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! We’d love to get your feedback on what KIND of content we produce here at Geek Beat. And what you want more of from us – geekbeat.tv/survey. That’ll help us make YOU happier! Thank you for taking the time to fill it out.