No time to Pi? 5 Raspberry Pi projects that can be completed relatively quickly

The miniature computer known as the Raspberry Pi has many merits — including its affordability and portable size as well as the ease with which this little machine can be programmed.

There are various wonderful things that can be built with a Raspberry Pi, too — and you don’t necessarily need huge amounts of time to make many of them them, either. Here are just five examples of Raspberry Pi projects that are beginner-friendly and, as a result, time-effective as well. 

Adding a button to a Raspberry Pi

When you obtain a Raspberry Pi, it resembles little more than a circuit board to which you are expected to attach various pieces and accessories in order to bring your Pi-based creation to life. 

The Pi doesn’t even have its own built-in button; you power on the Pi by plugging it in, enabling you to boot the operating system. You can, however, add a button yourself — a task “best done using a breadboard and additional wiring, resistor, and the RPi.GPIO library”, according to MUO.

Creating a Pi-powered motion sensor and alarm 

One advantage of the button project is that it entails using some of the Python programming language. You can use even more of it when you integrate a Pi as the ‘brain’ of a simple motion sensor and buzzer alarm setup, which also teaches how to use external hardware with the Pi. 

Any Raspberry Pi model will suffice for this project, which also requires a passive infrared sensor, a piezo buzzer and a single resistor along with some wires. 

Constructing a computer 

Of course, a Raspberry Pi is already, by definition, a computer. However, through connecting a set of USB peripherals to it as well as installing Linux distribution software, you can turn the Pi into something capable of running word processing, spreadsheet and calculator software. 

You could even purchase a pre-packaged kit that includes many of the pieces and components you need. One good case in point would be the Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit available from The Pi Hut’s Raspberry Pi Store. 

Building your own cloud storage unit 

If you have kids, heed that Pocket-lint cites this particular Pi project as one you could complete with your little ones. It would have various benefits in this context, including introducing children to the concept of digital files and where they are stored. 

To assemble this storage compartment, you can insert a high-capacity SD card, microSD card or USB drive into the Pi and use the freely available Samba network sharing protocol to set up access.

Making a device that will submit time-lapse videos to Twitter

When you connect a Raspberry Pi to a 5-megapixel ZeroCam FishEye camera, the completed amalgam of technology will be able to build time-lapse videos and send them to Twitter, allowing other people to view the clips. 

MUO provides instructions for equipping a Pi with a camera in this way — and goes into some of the technical nitty-gritty of how the finished device both captures and uploads footage.