Adventures In PI: Initial Project Ideas!

A Recent purchase for me has been a Raspberry Pi. The $35 Credit Card computer, that can be used for a whole manner of projects. This purchase marks the start of my jump into IoT development. So I started to work out what I am going todo first. Questioned and Questioned, until I reached an answer:

Thats right, our first project consisted of a breadboard, 3 LEDs, 3 330K Resistors, a push switch and 9 jumper cables. We built a traffic light, that had timed triggers and random turn on/off funcitons. A fully functioning single traffic light. But the point?

If all I can build with this tiny machine is a traffic light or other simple gizmos, is it really worth it? The answer I found is yes, the potential for this machine has already been realised with just the B+ board selling over 11 million units. This little machine has great potential and here are the top 4 uses I have planned for it:

With the Pi Camera and other such accessories (such as Motion Sensors), the Raspberry Pi can act as a basic security system, streaming video, alerts and other such information over the Internet to our phones etc., allowing us to keep tabs on our offices and equipment at all times.

Our current project at the minute is turning our office chairs (specifically 1) into a Mech Suit controller for a game in the Unity Engine. This may be done along with an Arduino and in a couple of months you will start to see my Dev Logs on this project.

But in general, this project is our experiment into how the Raspberry Pi and Micro Boards can be used in the world of "Augmented Gaming" and the IoT in general.

With addons, such as SenseHat, I want to look at getting our own realtime weather stations setup around the office. This project will hopefully lead to a project creating some pretty cool IoT Clocks that will show us the weather data from our Pi's.
This type of Pi technology is already being used in projects such as the NYU's Noise  Pollution project* etc. to monitor pollution levels etc.
I hope to implement a weather and pollution station within the next 2 years. A project that will hopefully be well documented and I may turn into a tutorial if requested.

During development projects, sometimes I need a quick and easy hosting platform. Buying a server through a hosting company is obviously quite easy and is what I do for many projects, but often upload times can hinder development and if I lose Internet connection I cant access the files. So my answer I think is to use the Raspberry Pi as my in house prototyping server. Although ARM based, most software used in servers will work on it and so within 3 months, this will be my sole Prototyping server that can help me work on my projects without having to deal with server companies and large bills.

If you are a small company that just wants a basic site, a Pi could be the best option. For the cost of a domain name, a good internet connection (that you probably have already) and a few pounds a year for electricity, you can have a fully functioning website on the internet. So instead of paying £70 a year for basic hosting, you can pay just £20 and get the same product. The Pi, isn't built for this role, but it serves as a basic server perfectly (and due to its portability, it can be moved with very little down time for your site).

SHiggy

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