The Raspberry Pi came onto the scene on February 29, 2012. The first model released was the Model B, for $35. I was eager to get my hands on one, and it wasn’t long before I had one to play with. My initial reason for owning one was to use it as a streaming platform, much like the modified X-Box I had running XBMC. The Xbox had a 733 MHz Intel Pentium III, 64 MB of DDR SDRAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 3-based custom NV2A GPU. I worked ok, but I wasn’t as thrilled with it as I once was. The Raspberry Pi Model B had a 700 MHz single-core 32-bit ARM11 CPU, a VideoCore IV GPU, 512 MB RAM and a 26-pin GPIO header, which meant I could do other neat things with it. All-in-all, the Pi worked better for my use case. It had real USB ports, not misshapen ports that made you have to buy only MS products. There were only 2 USB ports, but they were more useful. It used an SD card for the OS, which ran much faster than the HDD in the Xbox, had both an HDMI port and analog video out. It used a LOT less power, didn’t generate any heat to speak of, made no noise, and seemed more stable overall.
Flash forward 3 years, and the Raspberry Pi had evolved to the Raspberry Pi 2, which now had 4 USB ports, a 900 MHz Cortex-A7 CPU, and 1 GB of RAM. It now had a 40 PIN GPIO header instead of a 26 pin, which meant it could control a lot more devices. Now the platform was REALLY starting to take off. More and more projects were being dedicated to the Raspberry Pi platform, and the projects just kept getting better and better.
Below are some of my current favorite Raspberry Pi projects. These are the ones I have had the most fun with, found the most useful, or were just flat out something I had to try once because it looked cool.
Raspberry Pi Imager
Before you get started with any of these projects, I strongly advise you download and use the official Raspberry Pi Imager to install an OS, ISO, or other programs onto your SD Card.
Media Centers
LibreELEC (KODI)
Kodi, which started off as the XMBC (Xbox Media Center) was by far the best platform for streaming for a VERY long time. I would argue it still holds it own with any of the others, depending on what features are important to you. For me, I wanted to be able to stream videos, pictures, and music from my network server. I tried PLEX, but found it lacking in a lot of ways.
If you want to try Kodi, you can check out their website at Kodi.TV. However, I suggest you use the Raspberry Pi Imager to install LibreELEC, which is a slimmed down version of Linux, so you only have the things you need to run Kodi already installed. LibreELEC’s motto is “Just enough OS for KODI”. Open Raspberry Pi Imager, select your Raspberry Pi device from the first dropdown list. Under Operating System, scroll down until you see Media Player OS and select LibreELEC. Follow the prompts from there.
OSMC
OSMC (Open Source Media Center) is a free and open source media player based on Linux. Whether you like this one or Kodi will mainly come down to preferences, but it is worth it to try them both to see which one fits you use case and style better. Once again, the best way to load this is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager. Open Raspberry Pi Imager, select your Raspberry Pi device from the first dropdown list. Under Operating System, scroll down until you see Media Player OS and select OSMC. Follow the prompts from there.
OpenMediaVault (OMV)
OpenMediaVault lets you turn your Raspberry Pi into a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It works great, has an easy to understand and use GUI, makes all of the boring technical Linux stuff easier to use, and can be built for well under $100.
Ad Blocking
Pi-hole
Pi-hole is an Open Source network-level ad blocker. Once you have it setup, and change your router so that all your clients use the PiHole server as their DNS server, all requests will go through it, where it tries to filter out and block any known ad servers/services. It has a nice GUI that is easy to navigate. There are tons of articles online on how to use it and configure it. The best way to install Pi-hole is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager, and install Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit) first. This is all the OS Pi-hole needs to run smoothly without any overhead. If you want a GUI for your Linux OS you can install any of the full versions, but keep in mind they will use more system resources. Basically, you just install Pi OS Lite, then login (either locally or using Putty) and you can use the automatic install script located on GitHub, which is linked directly from Pi-Hole’s website. Check out the tutorial on installing Pi-Hole here. Remember, when you install PiHole, it will automatically assign a Pi-Hole web admin password. Write it down, take a picture with your phone, whatever you need to do, but try the password on the Web Admin page before you leave that screen. Or better yet, do that just in case, and once you leave the screen, from the Linux command line, use the command “sudo pihole setpassword” without the quotes to set a new password that you can remember for the Web Admin.