Top 10 Uses for a Raspberry Pi (400th EC video!)

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers explainingcomputers.com this time it's the 400th explaining computer's video and recently the raspberry pi celebrated its 10th birthday and so i thought to mark both of these events i'd make this video of my top 10 uses for a raspberry pi because i'm always getting comments in the comments with people asking what can you use a raspy pie for so this video will give you 10 things you can use a raspberry pi for and i want to stress from the start that whilst this is a top 10 video there is no implied ranking here everything i'm about to talk about is of equal importance ten years ago the very first raspberry pi 1b could be used for word processing as well as for some light web browsing fast forward to today and a modern raspberry pi 4 or pi 400 is a very capable low-cost desktop computer many different desktop operating systems are now available for the pi as well as several cases that turn the pie into a rather stylish small computing device office applications work very fluidly on a modern pie and the browsing experience is also pretty decent with a little patience it's even possible to edit video and to run sophisticated 3d and compositing packages including blender indeed back in early 2020 i spent a week using a four gigabyte raspberry pi 4 as my only computer and this included editing that week's 19-minute 1080p explaining computers video on the raspberry pi many people use a raspberry pi as a media player often this is achieved by installing a media center operating system such as osmc or libra elec both of which boot directly into a player called kodi this is very easy to configure and provides a clear straightforward interface that works well on a raspberry pi that's used lean back connected to a television and operated with a wireless remote content can be played from local drives accessed from a home network or streamed over the internet using a wide variety of add-ons that include youtube for users who want to store and exchange files a raspberry pi can be used as a nas or network attached storage device popular nas software includes open media vault otherwise known as omv which is pretty easy to set up as i've detailed in several videos over the past few years more broadly a raspberry pi can be used as a small server for example by installing next cloud which can run groupware and which allows files to be exchanged over the internet a raspberry pi can also be set up as a plex server for sharing media files and may even be used to host a website the general purpose input output pins on a raspberry pi can be programmed to control motors servos and other electrical and electronic devices this allows a pi to be used for robotics and automation with many hobbyists myself included having adopted a raspberry pi as a robot controller examples include robots operated remotely over wifi bluetooth or another wireless link as well as independent droid machines whose actions are determined by their own sensors and program code in a similar fashion a raspberry pi can be used for home automation allowing remote or programmed control of everything from light bulbs to watering systems the limit really is the maker's imagination and indeed once i built a hamster feeder controlled by a raspberry pi zero a raspberry pi can be used to connect all manner of sensors to a network and more broadly to the internet so allowing it to function as an iot or internet of things device not least a raspberry pi is great for streaming video from a camera which can for example allow you to monitor activity in your garden or the latest withdrawals from your fridge the brilliant software motion ios can even be used to trigger recording and alerts when motion is detected other sensors that can be hooked up to a pie include those for monitoring temperature pressure humidity and air quality so allowing a pie to be used as a remote weather station and last year in my favorite ever raspberry pi project i even added a homemade anemometer to a pie to enable it to report the speed of the wind back inside a raspberry pi can be used as a printer controller this includes connecting a conventional inkjet or laser to a pie so allowing a printer without an ethernet or wi-fi connection to be accessed over a network alternatively as we saw very recently on this channel octopi may be installed to allow a raspberry pi to control and monitor a 3d printer right now i'm not aware of a raspberry pi being used in a 4d printing process where 3d objects transform after printout but i'm sure it's only a matter of time before our favorite single board computer gets involved in that too a raspberry pi is powerful enough to emulate many classic micro computers and games consoles so making it excellent for retro gaming popular emulation software includes dosbox which i personally use to play pac-man as well as retropie which brings together emulation station retro arch and similar projects that enable a raspberry pi to run all manner of arcade home console and classic pc games for ardent retro gamers there are even specialist cases that allow a raspberry pi to look as well as play the part which facilitates the ultimate retro gaming experience a raspberry pi even provides a potential platform for machine learning and artificial intelligence and in this context a pie can be put to work as the brains of a smart speaker over the years on this channel i've demonstrated a pie running amazon's alexa as well as google assistant accessed via a smart speaker built with a google aiy kit more recently on this channel we've seen how a raspberry pi can be used to make a pie craft which provides a voice interface to the mycroft open source voice assistant mycroft have also created their own smart speakers and like many other commercial products these are based on a raspberry pi with the mark ii specifically containing a 2 gigabyte raspberry pi 4. there are as you may be aware a lot of people who use a raspberry pi without even knowing it now a very important thing you can do with a raspberry pi is to use it as a learning platform i know from thousands and thousands of comments and interactions with people here on this channel over the years that lots of people have used a raspberry pi to learn about coding to learn about linux to learn about networking to learn about iot and controlling external devices reading sensors all that kind of stuff and the raspberry pi remains an exceptionally good piece of educational hardware now okay you could say well any computer can be used as a learning platform and that is true but i do remember when the raspberry pi was launched one of the things that was part of that launch was saying that the raspberry pi is a computer you can experiment with without messing up any computer you really rely on to do other things so if you really mess up a raspberry pi in terms of its operating system you can just re-flash the micro sd card start again and yes you can reinstall the operating system and software on any other computer but it's probably a lot less convenient so the raspberry pi is very useful and has been very useful and will continue to be useful to many many people as a learning platform finally the last thing on my list and i said this wasn't a ranked list but maybe it should be because i think the most important use often at least to use a raspberry pi is to make people happy people seem to be obsessed sometimes in the comments on this channel with what's the particular importance and relevance and use of that and if people enjoy buying a raspberry pi and setting it up and and using it that's great it's a fantastic hobby i know many many people again through the comments on this channel who've got a raspberry pi just because they like single ball computers they like the idea of this small computer they can set up and use there's a lot of people out there who just like single ball computers and like raspy pies and having one and using one gives pleasure to their lives and we shouldn't miss the importance of that you know some people like to climb mountains or to drive cars or to play computer games whatever it is that's all cool some people like single ball computers and having a single ball computer and we shouldn't ignore that as a really important use of the raspberry pi anyway those are my top 10 uses of our favorite single ball computer but i'm sure i've missed many so please let us know what you put on this list down in the comments section but now that's it from the 400th explaining computers video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 237,179

Keywords: Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 4, Things to do with a Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi uses, Raspberry Pi applications, what is a Raspberry Pi for?, 400th EC video, 400th ExplainingComputers video, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, Raspberry Pi robotics, Raspberry Pi camera, Raspberry Pi NAS, OMV, OpenMediaVault, OctoPi, motionEyeOS, OSMC, LibreELEC, Kodi

Id: bw48kYqxHIo

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022