The Raspberry Pi started out as an attempt to provide computing access to underdeveloped countries and schools, but it quickly turned into a whole new industry, a hobby and endless idea generator, while still fulfilling its original goal.
If you’re running out of ideas, here are some alternative uses for the little machine to help you perform certain tasks.
Configure network printer
Whether you have an old printer that doesn’t have a wireless connection, or one that won’t connect to your network due to an old WiFi standard or some kind of glitch, you can keep it from being a useless clunker by using a Raspberry Pi.
By combining the Samba file sharing software and the CUPS printing software, you will be able to make the printer wireless. Common Unix Printing System provides drivers for your printer and provides an administration console. Once this is set up, any computer on your home network can access the printer. You can even add AirPrint support to the Raspberry Pi, for iPhone and Android devices.
retro game console
In addition to streaming media, the Raspberry Pi is ideal as a retro gaming machine. Compact and powerful enough to be used in a variety of ways, the device is suitable as part of a full-size arcade machine, or even to create your own Game Boy-style handheld console.
There are several retro gaming operating systems available, all with controller support. Many classic gaming platforms can be emulated, from MS-DOS and 16-bit consoles to Commodore 64.
Create a Twitterbot
Although they are technically Elon Musk’s main enemies, while he is distracted by charging Twitter Blue to those who want a fake verification, we can set up a Twitter bot that automates certain posts.
Many Twitter accounts are bots, programs created with the intention of automatically posting messages. Some are useful; updates from your favorite websites, for example, and others are more focused on spam, and there we agree with Musk that they should disappear.
For the first case, there are some useful things you can do with a Twitter bot, and if your Raspberry Pi has a permanent connection to the Internet, you can create your own. You’ll need to register a Twitter app to get access to the Twitter API, and with some code (Python or Node.js), your bot is ready. It can tweet anything from your Pi’s CPU temperature to a randomly selected quote of the day or even a photo.
Solve Rubik’s Cubes
The BricKuber project uses the Raspberry Pi to directly solve the Rubik’s cube. BrickPi3 takes the unsolved Rubik’s cube and Raspberry Pi takes a picture of each side of the Rubik’s cube with the Raspberry Pi camera. Pi creates a text map of the colored squares showing where they are located on the cube.
When it has fully mapped the cube, the Raspberry Pi uses the kociemba Python library to map the moves needed to solve the Rubik’s cube.
