The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic device and the fact that it’s open source means that all kinds of great accessories exist for it. These are some of the best Raspberry Pi accessories for your DIY projects.
Photo by Sergio77 and Magliyve
We’ve talked about the Raspberry Pi a lot because it’s so easy for everyone to use. Since its initial launch, heaps of accessories have come out for it. Some of these add basic functionality like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi; others incorporate crazy features such as a camera. These are some of our favourites.
The PiTFT Mini Kit
This accessory adds a tiny 2.8″ touchscreen to your Raspberry Pi. It sounds kind of goofy, but it’s actually a great way to instantly see what you’re doing, and it opens up possibilities for lots of additional projects.
Raspberry Pi Camera Board Module
As you’d expect from the name, this adds a 5 megapixel camera to the Raspberry Pi. It’s not powerful enough to stand in as a full-time camera, but it does work for things like time-lapse photography and home surveillance. I also just like the fact that we live in a world where making your own digital camera — even a junky one — is a possibility.
Adafruit Prototyping Pi Plate Kit
I’m not the greatest solderer in the world, so this breadboard style plate that attaches to the Pi makes it easier for me to test out weird projects that actually attach the Raspberry Pi to real-world tools.
Mini Wireless Keyboard And Mouse Touchpad
I don’t really want to keep my Raspberry Pi attached to a normal keyboard and mouse all the time, and this mini wireless keyboard means I don’t have to do that. Obviously, I’m not going to type out a lot of text on this thing, but it’s great for a few sudo commands here and there and the occasional mouse movement.
Know of a good Raspberry Pi accessory? Tell us about it in the comments.
Comments
One response to “The Best Raspberry Pi Accessories”
An extra bit of hardware I’ve recently attached and fallen in love with, is the Pi Crust by Ninja Blocks (http://ninjablocks.com/pages/picrust). This lets you hook up 433mhz stuff to your Raspberry Pi (e.g. motion and door sensors, temperature sensors and even doorbells) and with the Ninja Blocks software / dashboard, you can do home automation for under $100.
I’ve got mine set to turn on the front light when I open the front door at night, email me when someone rings the doorbell and turn on my house lights when I press a (433mhz) button. I’ve also hooked up a webcam to it (and planning to add an IP camera too) so I can keep an eye on the house when nobody is there.
You can get the adafruit TFT LCD and other RPi gear locally from tronixlabs.com.au 🙂