1. 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!
makezine.com/2014/01/07/how-i-built-a-raspberry-pi-tablet
2. 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!
davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone
3. 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.
4. 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!
raspberrypi.org/blog/frozen-pi-bullet-time-photography-with-the-raspberry-pi
5. 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 ? of the speed of a commercial 3D printer, but that’ll get better in time.
3dprint.com/16060/raspberry-pi-3d-printer
6. 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!
gigaom.com/2014/08/14/using-a-raspberry-pi-rfid-tags-man-builds-audiobook-player-for-his-nearly-blind-grandfather
7. 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.
raspberrypi.org/blog/doodleborg-a-three-horsepower-robot-tank
8. 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.
flamelily.co.uk/2013/05/raspberry-pi-car-computer
9. 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!
10. 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.
retrobuiltgames.com/the-build-page/porta-pi-arcade-kit
