20 Raspberry Pi Projects for Beginners to Keep You Busy

Are you looking for a beginner-level project to keep you busy? With Raspberry Pi, you can create practical and helpful projects that work with your tech devices to bring you helpful tricks and hacks. Raspberry Pi projects for beginners are where you should start to get your creative mind going.

Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive, small computer that plugs in through USB to other computers, TV monitors and anything else with a port. It’s excellent for people of all ages who want to take a hands-on approach to computing and start exploring coding programs like Python. Raspberry Pi’s low cost also increases its accessibility.

By practicing with the following projects, you can become a well-seasoned user. 

1. Bluetooth Speakers

If you’d like to increase your audio experience, check out this Bluetooth speaker project. You can work with old and new systems to improve their functions and stream audio for just about anything. Spotify and Apple AirPlay support is also an option you can try.

2. Weather Station

Sometimes standard weather apps aren’t enough. You can use Raspberry Pi to create your very own weather station. From temperature to pressure measurements and humidity levels, you’ll get more information. You can even get historical details with this project.

3. Remote Controlled Car

This Raspberry Pi project lets you create a fun, IoT-based car. Using the Bluetooth from Raspberry Pi, you can follow the instructions and use your own smartphone as the remote control. 

4. Dropbox

Dropbox is the convenient file storage and sharing platform that allows you to organize your documents easily. Now, you can use it on your Raspberry Pi once you run Dropbox’s script using its API.

5. GIF Photo Booth

You’ve heard of a regular photo booth, but this project can turn those pictures into GIFs. It takes six images and compresses them as a GIF. This project is great for when you want to archive memories or get rid of boredom. 

6. Recognize and Automatically Mount a USB Drive

The potential Raspberry Pi uses range from purely fun to impressively practical. This one is in the latter category. You can program your Raspberry Pi to detect and automatically mount a USB jump drive. That’s especially helpful if you often use the Raspberry Pi as a media device or to exchange files. After finishing this project, you can also mount and unmount the USB drive from the command line.

7. Surveillance Camera

A surveillance camera is a handy tool — whether you’re using it for fun or home security. With HD video and motion detection, you can use Raspberry Pi to view your camera from anywhere, even on your mobile device. You can then store it as a file.

8. Smart Home Assistant

If you’d like to automate or simplify certain processes in your home, you can turn your Raspberry Pi into a smart home assistant. This project uses cloud services as well as Hass.io as its base for the home assistant. 

9. TV Streaming

The world is headed away from cable and towards streaming. Now, you can use Raspberry Pi to get open-source TV streaming. It can record TV and retrieve live programs as well. It will also accept input from various sources. 

10. Digital Library

Libraries have adapted digital platforms in recent years. With this project, you can share your library with other people. Whether it’s books or magazines, you can connect like never before.

11. Make a Wireless Print Server

If you have an old wired printer and want to experience the freedom of printing things wirelessly, try using your Raspberry Pi as a wireless print server. This project requires using a wireless print dongle with the Raspberry Pi, plus a printer with a USB port. You’ll also need to install a couple of software titles to assist with this endeavor. Other than that, the step-by-step process is easy to follow.

12. Retro Gaming

Are you feeling nostalgic? Sometimes you just need to pop in an older video game. Raspberry Pi gives that idea a new twist as you use this project to run older games. You can then create cases and controllers to match. 

13. VPN

A VPN is a personal private network that you can bring anywhere with you, thanks to Raspberry Pi. VPNs come in handy when you’re using public Wi-Fi, which isn’t always secure. You can use this project at home, too.

14. Minecraft

One of the most popular games in the world is now playable with Raspberry Pi as its platform. Though it’s an older version and only supports creative mode, you can play it for free. Creating the platform and game will be a unique experience. 

15. Build a Robot Buggy

The Raspberry Pi appeals to tech lovers of all kinds. Many of them aspire to have robotics careers someday. If that sounds like you, there are Raspberry Pi projects for beginners that let you build robots. One of them involves making a robot buggy that moves with Python commands. Although you’ll have to invest in some physical parts for the robot, this project could be an especially fulfilling one.

16. Camera Controls

If you have a DSLR camera, you can check your compatibility for this project. It allows you to use Raspberry Pi to control your camera in different ways — taking photos, configuring settings and downloading files. 

You can also use it to create a time-lapse camera setup — and it only has four steps. After setting up the hardware and software, you can write the code to make the camera take hundreds or thousands of pictures across a specified span of time. Having that option could work particularly well if you want to capture the progress of newly planted seedlings or a flower that only blooms during a short period, for example.

17. Write a “Pong” Game

Want to get a blast from the past when working with your Raspberry Pi? Fortunately, there’s a way to go back a few decades and learn to program a “Pong” game. You can do it using Pygame, a set of programming modules to assist people with writing computer games. Fortunately, it comes installed on your Raspberry Pi.

Also, while doing this project, you’ll learn the programming responsible for every part of the game, such as the movement of the paddles and how the game calculates scores.

18. Alarm Clock

The creator of this project wanted to make an alarm based on sleep cycles. It can also track sleep movement to wake you up at just the right time. 

19. Control LED Lights

If you purchased a Raspberry Pi primarily to learn to program, you probably know that most Raspberry Pi resources relate to the Python language. But, you can also work with Raspberry Pi while using C++. It’s a versatile and valuable programming language that stands the test of time. If you know C++, there’s a way to operate three LED lights with your Raspberry Pi.

This project requires setting up a circuit board and accomplishing the whole task could help you feel proud and give you a way to impress friends due to the visual feedback it gives.

20. Netflix

You can use Raspberry Pi to stream Netflix anywhere and at any time. Give it a try!

Raspberry Pi Projects

These Raspberry Pi projects for beginners are helpful for those looking for neat things to do. They bring you practical uses while advancing your skills. Put your time into something you’ll be proud of and have fun doing it.

Originally published 6/11/2020 — Updated 10/23/2024