Raspberry Pi projects to try this weekend (November 14-16)

The weekend is here, and that means it's time for another round of Raspberry Pi projects! This weekend, I'm focusing on a mixture of fun and productivity, with projects ranging from receipt printers to running Windows 11.

These projects will vary in complexity, though some can be up and running in just a few minutes, leaving you the rest of the weekend to tinker and play with your new services.

Ticket printer

There are Raspberry Pi projects that I just don't get, and then there are ones that I think, "Why didn't I come up with that first?!" This project belongs in the latter category.

If you've ever wanted to let friends or family members send you encouraging messages without texting or email, then this ticket printer Raspberry Pi project is perfect for you. Basically, it takes your Raspberry Pi and a thermal receipt printer and lets people type in messages to send to you.

The GitHub repo walks you through step-by-step on how to deploy the project, including how to set up Netlify as the web front-end if you want to offload it to an external server instead of hosting the website on the Pi itself. Overall, the developer says this type of project should be up and running within 10 minutes, but you and I both know DIY projects rarely go according to plan, making this the perfect weekend task.

Once you have the ticket printer up and running, the website has two text boxes, one for a name and one for the message, plus a Google Captcha. Simply send the link to friends or family (or get brave and share it online like the author of the project) and you'll have little notes printing automatically in no time!

Install Obsidian to bring your notes everywhere you go

Obsidian is a fan-favorite markdown editor in the homelab and enthusiast world for good reason: it actually lets you self-host and keep everything locally. Installing Obsidian on a Raspberry Pi has a few functions, all of which are fantastic.

For starters, you could just keep your Obsidian vault on the Pi and just bring the Pi everywhere you go to access your notes. This effectively turns the Pi into a little portable computer that you could use exclusively for note-taking. It's pretty easy to install Obsidian with Flatpak, just run the command:

flatpak install flathub md.obsidian.Obsidian

However, you could also host an Obsidian plugin called LiveSync that allows you to sync Obsidian instances with each other. Simply deploy the service on your Raspberry Pi through Docker and get everything set up. This project is known to take some configuring and tinkering, so be sure to have backups of your vaults before deploying it.

Whichever way you go, having Obsidian running on your Pi is amazingly useful. While I mostly use Notion for my databases now, I still have a place in my heart for Obsidian and do prefer it in some ways. If you've not used Obsidian to build your second brain yet , this weekend is a great time to give it a shot.

Run Windows 11

Raspberry Pi computers were notoriously underpowered in the early days. However, with the Pi 5, the single board computer is actually quite powerful in its own regard. The one downside (to some) is that it can only run certain Linux distros. That's all changed now.

Through the BVM project (Botspot Virtual Machine), you can now run Windows 11 on ARM on a Raspberry Pi . The project leverages QEMU to run a virtualized version of Windows 11 instead of emulating it for better performance. Installing BVM is actually pretty simple, and it's even published in the Pi Apps repository .

Don't expect to be able to play games through this virtualization, but if you need to run some Windows apps on your Pi, it'll work great. The best part is, the BVM project still runs inside of Linux, so you're not having to replace the Pi's operating system. Simply install BVM and Windows 11 on top of whatever OS you're running, and enjoy the benefits of having Microsoft's operating system running on your single board computer.

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These Raspberry Pi projects are sure to fill your weekend up, but not every task needs to take multiple days. Here are a handful of my favorite Raspberry Pi projects that take under an hour to complete. From deploying a RetroPie instance to setting up Home Assistant or Pi-Hole, these Raspberry Pi projects are sure to bring you lots of use—without taking up your entire weekend.