4 Fun and Simple Raspberry Pi Projects

So you’ve bought or received a Raspberry Pi. Did you get it with intentions behind it, a project in mind? Or were you simply intrigued by what it could offer?

I know personally, I got mine as a gift. I went and set it up, looked around the desktop, and enjoyed the novelty of messaging people using it. But then it sat there for a while, I didn’t have anything major I wanted to do with it. I thought about setting up RetroPie on it, but decided I wanted to save it for something different.

Eventually, I figured out what I wanted to do. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much the Pi can handle at once, and how good the projects out there are.

1. Network Attached Storage (NAS) 💿

Some of you may wonder what a NAS is. Basically, it’s a storage device (think a USB stick or external hard-drive) that’s connected to your network rather than your computer. I have found it to be very handy.

I found PiMyLifeUp to be a great source for Raspberry Pi projects, and I will likely be linking to either their website or YouTube channel for most entries in this article. The NAS is no different. The simple and straightforward tutorial will see you setting up a Samba server on your Pi in no time at all. This will allow you to access the files stored on it from the other computer(s) on your home network as if they were stored on the computer itself!

2. Home Media Server 🎥 📺

I think we can all agree that Netflix, and other streaming services, has been one of the greatest developments for consumable media in recent times. But what about all your DVDs, TV shows and movies you may have downloaded? It seems pretty cumbersome to watch these in the days of smart TVs and Chromecasts that let you use Netflix comfortably in front of your TV. Well, a Pi can help you get more use out of all that ‘old’ media you have lying around.

Cue the Plex Media Server. This couples very nicely with the NAS described above. Plex has a companion app that can be installed on your smart TV or smartphone and lets you navigate through your media library with an interface very similar to Netflix.

It even checks your media library (using only the file name to go by) against a database to find out the list of actors, the genre, ratings from the likes of Rotten Tomatoes, and the list goes on. One of my favourite features is that it will suggest something from your library to watch next based on all that information!

3. eBook Library 📚

Okay, maybe you’re happy enough to stick with Netflix for your movie fix. Maybe we’re looking for something a little simpler. Have you a collection of eBooks knocking about? (I know I’ve collected a few over the years thanks to HumbleBundle) After I had Plex setup I wanted to know if there was something out there to handle these in a similar streaming fashion.

A quick Google search showed me there are quite a few options. So naturally, I went with the easiest to set up while making sure it had a nice interface. Nothing quite as nice as Plex, but you can only get so lucky. Ubooquity was my service of choice. It’s been knocking about a while; no major bugs, and I found no issues with setting it up. Mainly due to this very nice run through here (probably the only non-PiMyLifeUp tutorial I’ll list!). Be sure to read the comments though, there were two lines (goodness no!) that needed to be changed to have it all working.

After logging in to the admin page for it (note it’s “your.pi.ip.address”:2203/admin, and not 2202 as the tutorial states), I played around with the settings a little to know how it all worked. I found it to be nice and user-friendly. Do double check that your eBooks are the right file type as Ubooquity cannot handle everything, but does support the most common file-types.

4. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Server 💻

So we’ve looked at the NAS for local file storage. But what about when you want to access your files from outside of your home network? Well this will be a two part setup. Don’t worry though, neither is too tricky!

First you’ll need to port forward your Pi to make it accessible from the internet. Personally, I didn’t use any of the dynamic DNS aspects mentioned in the video — I’m the only one who needs to be able to access the Pi so I’m the only one who needs to know the IP address. But there’s no reason for you not to if it’s closer to what you want to make of your Pi!

After you’ve set up your port forwarding, you’ll want to setup your Pi as an FTP server. Once that’s achieved you simply need to install a file sharing client on another computer, I used FileZilla, to allow you to explore and download the files on your Pi!

Do You Need To Pick and Choose? ❓

It may or may not surprise you to learn that I have all of the above (and a little more) running concurrently on my little Pi computer, and it’s been giving me no issues to speak of! (Outside of my own slip ups when I try to introduce my own little scripts).

Raspberry Pi’s continue to be impressive little machines, and can do a lot more with a lot less.

I hope you found this useful, and enjoy turning your Pi into a home media centre! (or whatever you end up making!)

If you’d like to get in contact, find me over on LinkedIn!