12 DIY Raspberry Pi Projects That Are Worth Building

There’s no end to the purposes you can put a Raspberry Pi to. Here are 12 of our favourite DIY projects for the popular and tiny computer.

If you’ve got a few spare weekends up your sleeve, tackling these 12 fun projects is a great way to spend them. If you don’t own a Raspberry Pi and are keen to buy a kit, head to the bottom of the article for a link to the online store.

Build A Weather Station


Using a Raspberry Pi to power a weather station is one of the most popular projects out there, but Make tossed in a few extra details, including a handy display that shows how the weather’s changed.

Build A Dash Cam With Live Streaming Capabilities

We’ve seen a Raspberry Pi used as a dash cam before, but over on PubNub they took the same concept, but also have a live-streaming capability provided you can set up a hot spot on your smartphone.

Build Your Own Smartphone

You’ve got to temper your expectations here. Or to put it another way, you’re not going to be building a Samsung Galaxy S6 out of your Pi. But it can be done if you’re keen.

Build A MIDI Sampler


Samplers are an awesome way to have millions of different sounds at your fingertips. If you want to build your own, SamplerBox is a project that just requires a Raspberry Pi and a little free time.

Build A Smartphone-Connected Door Lock


You can purchase a smart lock that you control with your phone easily enough, but it’s much more fun to actually make one yourself. YouTubers Hacker House make one with a Raspberry Pi.

Build A GoPro


OK, not quite a GoPro. It’s a trademark, for starters. But it is feasible to use a Raspberry Pi as the brains of your very own action camera.

Build A Wi-Fi Drone Disabler


If you’re looking for an interesting project to work on this weekend, you can turn a Raspberry Pi into a device that will drop Wi-Fi controlled drones right out of the sky with just a tap of your finger.

Build A Network Analyser Tool


Network problems getting you down? A Raspberry Pi can make a great network analysis machine.

Build A Picture Frame That Automatically Rotates To Match Photo Orientations


Digital photo frames are great, but when you’re using one to display a slideshow, it tends to look terrible when it displays photos in the opposite orientation of how you have it set up. Over on Hackaday, Tim made a frame that automatically rotates to show the best picture.

Build A VPN Router


We’ve previously shown you how to use a Raspberry Pi as both a Tor proxy and a personal VPN. Here’s how to do both in one unit for truly anonymous browsing everywhere.

Build An Animated GIF Camera


A camera that only shoots GIFs might sound a little ridiculous, and it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun use for a Raspberry Pi Zero.

Build A Talking Radio


The idea of a machine that talks to you intelligently might be a ways off still, but Instructables user MisterM wanted to make a radio that would announce general details throughout the day. To do this, he wired up a Raspberry Pi Zero to a text-to-speech engine, then tossed in a dose of If This Then That.


Don’t have a Raspberry Pi? You can buy the Raspberry Pi 3 in Australia from RS Components. Click here for details.


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