The Raspberry Pi first rose to prominence as an educational tool before it was catapulted into the mainstream by hobbyists. Several hardware revisions later, this single-board computer has its own actively-maintained operating system and features prominently as the go-to pint-sized project computer.
Here's how your other interests can be better with the world's most famous single-board computer.
3D printing
Tim Brookes / How-To Geek
OctoPrint is an open-source project that lets you control almost any 3D printer using a web interface . This includes the ability to send jobs to your printer using a browser, monitor jobs that are in progress, view connected cameras, inspect gcode, monitor temperature and other sensors, and even directly control the print head.
It's completely free to use, with a plugin repository that expands what the software is capable of. It pairs beautifully with a Raspberry Pi thanks to the OctoPi project, which runs on the Raspberry Pi 3B or Zero 2 and above. After a brief setup process, you'll be able to access your printer using any web browser on the same network.
Bambu Lab printer owners might not see much point in OctoPi, considering how fleshed-out the Bambu Lab ecosystem already is. Unfortunately, it's also heavily locked down , which is where Bambu Lab-specific OctoPrint alternative Bambuddy comes in.
This open-source tool lets you use your Bambu Lab printer locally in developer mode, which disables the company's own remote access features and replaces them with a self-hosted, offline-friendly version. Even if you prefer Bambu Lab's own apps and services, having Bambuddy installed for internet and remote server outages means you always have an easy fallback option.
Homelab
Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek
A homelab is a playground of servers and networking equipment in which you can build and experiment. The term has evolved over the years to encompass all manner of self-hosting projects. This includes anything from hosting your own web server and setting up VPN access for your network to rolling your own cloud storage and replacing Spotify with an open-source alternative.
The Raspberry Pi has made its way into many homelabs over the years. Though a mini PC typically represents better value for new homelabbers looking for more performance, storage, and the x86 architecture, a Raspberry Pi is still a solid option that can do everything from hosting a DNS sinkhole to backing up your local computers .
Pi-hole is the perfect starting place, but you'll also want to familiarize yourself with Docker and then get started with a few containers .
Retro gaming
Tim Brookes / How-To Geek
Even an older Raspberry Pi has enough grunt to be turned into a multi-system retro gaming emulator. The newer the Pi, the more platforms you'll have available to you (and the more you'll be able to play with options like increasing render resolution). Even 3D games for platforms like the PlayStation and Dreamcast are playable on a Raspberry Pi 5.
If you're interested in retro gaming, you might also be interested in building something somewhat period-appropriate. The Raspberry Pi has close ties to the vintage computing movement , with turnkey Linux distributions like Recalbox designed specifically with the Pi in mind. There's little wonder these tiny computers power so many full-sized arcade cabinets.
But there's more. DOSBian-X essentially turns your Raspberry Pi into a DOS (or early Windows) PC from the 90s, or you can turn any Raspberry Pi into a 486 by installing DOSBox-X on any flavor of Linux. And that's before we get to the many retro-themed 3D-printable enclosures that you can print for your Raspberry Pi…
Building computers and other gadgets
Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | carboncomputers
Unlike a standard desktop PC, which uses a separate motherboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, and other components, the Raspberry Pi comes preassembled and soldered ahead of time. You can perform a few limited upgrades, like adding HAT modules, solid-state storage , and active cooling , but the performance is largely fixed.
Thankfully, you can still get down and dirty by building something else that uses the Raspberry Pi at the heart of the operation. One of the biggest examples of a flex in this regard is a cyberdeck, retro-futuristic mobile computer modules that are inspired by hackers in cyberpunk literature and movies.
But the Raspberry Pi has found its way into many advanced projects over the years, and the determining factor here is how far you want to push it and your appetite for learning. You can build ADS-B plane trackers , weather stations, smart home dashboards, and more.
Smart home and automation
Sydney Louw Butler/How-To Geek
The most obvious use for a Raspberry Pi in the smart home is as a Home Assistant server. The Open Home Foundation's own Home Assistant Green turnkey server closely resembles a Raspberry Pi in a box, and the fact that Home Assistant is included as a two-click download in the official Raspberry Pi imaging tool makes it especially easy to get started with.
But there are other uses for a Raspberry Pi within the smart home. For example, if you use an MQTT broker to communicate with devices on mesh and Wi-Fi networks, you could move your MQTT server to an external device like a Raspberry Pi so that everything doesn't stop working when your server reboots ( just make sure it's not publicly accessible ).
For more complex automations, you can install Node-RED on your Pi to build detailed flows in a visual manner using local and remote data.
Home audio and home theater
If you're an audiophile, you're probably not going to rely on a Raspberry Pi as your primary amplifier. But if you're enthusiastic about home audio, you might be interested in learning a bit about building your own receiver (or "Pi-Fi") for around $20 and the price of a Pi .
Beyond this, you could use a Raspberry Pi to add Bluetooth or AirPlay to an older receiver that lacks it, adding wireless connectivity to vintage stereo equipment so they can be used with the smartphones of today that lack 3.5mm stereo ports.
The Raspberry Pi can also improve your home theater experience, with LibreELEC being the ultimate Roku replacement . This media-focused Linux distro boots quickly into Kodi, one of the most versatile media center platforms you could ever hope to use. You can even use the aforementioned Pi-hole to set up a DNS sinkhole and block tracking servers and advertisements from appearing on your smart TV .
The Raspberry Pi might not be quite as compelling as it once was given the rise of dirt-cheap microcontrollers and a healthy second-hand market of mini PCs, but they're still fantastic little devices—even the older models.
