This was my first big project with a Pi and it feels so satisfying. I was in over my head in the beginning but I learned along the way. Had to improve my soldering skills and had a headache trying to figure out all the Spotify permissions to make this simple enough my kids could use it without my phone needing to be connected. I also need to learn more about 3D modeling and product design. So for all the frustrations it was fun to really get locked into this for a couple weeks.

I don’t play much retro games and wanted to repurpose this. I saw some people creating games and apps on these and wanted to try it out. I have pi OS lite running and I use a bluetooth keyboard for when I’m in the terminal but I mainly use the game buttons for navigating the menu and apps. I’m used the same config settings from recalbox config.txt to get the screen working.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a tool I built to control my headless Raspberry Pi directly from Telegram. I've used this as a personal script 2 years ago for my own setup, this has been in my head for so long to share. Got the courage/time now, I refactored with assistance of AI it to be fully generic and configurable for anyone to use.

If you run a headless Pi and don't always want to fire up an SSH terminal just to check temperature or restart a crashed app, this might be useful for you.

Key Features:

• Boot alert: Sends a message with your local IP and Wi-Fi SSID the moment the Pi boots up and connects to the network (runs before user login).
• Periodic health reports: Automatically sends CPU temp, RAM, and disk usage updates at configurable intervals (e.g., every 2–3 hours).
• Service & script management: Start, stop, or restart your custom scripts or systemd services
• Log inspector: Preview the last 50 lines of your application logs or download the full .log file straight to your phone (with an option to auto-truncate to save SD card space).
• Process inspection: View active Python, Node.js/JavaScript, and Java processes.
• Power controls: Reboot or shut down the Pi

Everything is driven by a simple config.yaml file, and there is a 1-step installer script (install.sh) that sets up the systemd service and virtual environment automatically.

Repo: https://github.com/rinavolu/pipilot

Feedback, suggestions, or contributions are very welcome. Hope someone finds it helpful!

Thank you

Yesterday I posted the first real test of my Raspberry Pi-powered scrolling ticker with one of its screensaver modes. I got the sports ticker code working tonight, and I'm really happy with the way it's coming along. The apparent flickering is a an artefact of recording the video. IRL it looks really good.

The display consists of four 128x64 pixel P2.5 LED panels in a custom printed case. It's run by a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB of memory and an Adafruit Triple LED Matrix Bonnet. The panels are powered by a Meanwell LRS-200-5 power supply, while the RPi is powered by a separate RS-15-5 power supply to isolate it from any potential voltage drops from the LED panels.

Still more display modes to implement, and ultimately, I plan to control it with a phone app.

Open sourced at https://github.com/prtk1910/RPi-Simple-Camera

A compact digital camera for a Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi Camera Module, 1.14-inch IPS display, and UPS-Lite. The display provides a live viewfinder, while a single physical button selects a film style or captures a full-resolution JPEG. Supports 10 film profiles, a single click cycles through them and a long press takes a photo.

I’m terrible at 3D design but if there’s enough interest for the STLs I will clean them up and upload them to the GitHub repository.

Thanks for checking this out!

Hi all! OpenRig is an open source multi-effects I've been building. It's a small Linux OS that boots straight into a touch UI and runs NAM captures, IRs and LV2 plugins. (GIF above, it's the real UI.)

Performance on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Focusrite :

• It boots in about 3 seconds.
• It chains 6-7 NAM standard models/IR without dropouts.

What you get:

• TONE3000 built in: sign in and download captures straight from the pedal, no computer needed.
• Rack view: the whole chain on one screen, with A/B, Mix and left/right splits.
• Live: 8 scenes per preset, stomp mode, setlists, tap tempo, tuner, looper.
• MIDI: preset and scene changes, clock, CC learn.

Hardware: it runs on the Pi 5 (arm64) and on x86_64 mini PCs. I've tested it mostly on the Pi 5 and in QEMU. [Images are in the Releases / For now you build the image yourself, it's one command, see docs/OS.md.]

Next: ready-to-flash images with packaged updates, and GPIO footswitches so it becomes a real floor pedal.

It's a young project. Feature requests, issues and test reports on other audio interfaces are very welcome!

https://github.com/Siryu6/OpenRig

My latest Raspberry Pi project has come to life! I'm building a scrolling ticker that will eventually display sports, news, weather, flight information, an audio-based frequency spectrum display, and whatever else I can come up with and find APIs for. In the meantime, it can run a few different screensavers.

I'm sure some of you older nerds will recognize the first screen saver.

Made a dog / animal detector that plays deterrent sounds when entering a selected area.

I got so annoyed not being able to leave things on the kitchen counter when leaving the house so I made this lol.

Runs YOLO26n on a Pi 4 Model B at around 2fps, which is plenty for what I'm doing here.

Privacy focused with a firewall that only allows local network traffic apart from updates and training, if turned on.

It also has the ability to self improve if you add a free Modal account. It collects frames, automatically labels what it can, and lets you review the uncertain ones. Every training run gets evaluated against the current model and only replaces it if it's actually better. Pretty neat :)

There's also a dashboard to adjust detection zones, sensitivity, sounds, check what the dogs have been up to, etc.

More info on the GitHub repo tho :) https://github.com/devjerry0/watchdoggy

We also play soothing sounds through the speaker, feels like a spa when we enter the kitchen xD

Anyways if y'all have any feature requests or feedback I'm all ears. Some more pics etc from the actual app: https://github.com/devjerry0/watchdoggy/blob/main/MANUAL.md

Hey everyone I know I've been putting this off for over a year but I finally finished the perfect OS for my little Pico W and wanted to share it.. Enjoy!

tl;dr summary: When my raspi reboots or restarts my e-ink screen goes black. Hoping to either get a white screen or an image.

Hi All,

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. I'm sort of shooting in the dark here but maybe I'll get lucky.

I'm trying to build an e-ink writing terminal with a raspi (this one is a raspberry pi 5) and one of those Sanmeow 10.8" e-ink panels from Aliexpress. Most of it has gone pretty well, I'm using it in non-gui mode and I've been able to set the screen white for the terminal as well as in emacs (the writing program I'll use). I ran into an issue with font sizes and extra screen real estate being written as a black bar but we got around that by just writing black to that part of the screen on startup.

The issue I'm running into is on shutdown. I've added a service to write a white screen on the raspi pi's reboot or shutdown, I've also added a script to the system-shutdown folder which does the same thing but, inevitably, once the raspi cuts power to the screen it turns black. I don't know if it's an issue with the raspberry pi's hardware or possibly the screen's. I was hoping someone else might have come across this before and knew of a solution. Does anyone know if the Raspi 5's hardware automatically send a black screen when power is cut?

I've asked the manu and I'm waiting to hear back but there is a language barrier so fingers crossed. I'm also going to ask over in the raspberry pi sub.

Threw some parts and made this with a zero 2W, 1.69in lcd, 2.13 e-ink display. It’s a small desk pet that keeps me posted and comments throughout the day. This was inspired by pwnagotchi.

My Onkyo receiver has no streaming, but it does have an RI jack: the port Onkyo's own iPod docks used to switch the receiver on and select the dock input. So I built Phonkyo, a pHAT for the Raspberry Pi with a PCM5102A DAC and an RI port.

The Pi runs raspotify, shairport-sync and Plexamp. When something starts playing, Phonkyo tells the receiver, over RI, to power on and switch to DOCK. After five minutes of silence it switches it off again, but only if it was the one that switched it on.

Some details:

• Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi OS Lite 64-bit
• PCM5102A DAC to a 3.5 mm line out, same chip as the pHAT DAC and HiFiBerry
• ID EEPROM, so the sound card comes up without editing config.txt
• Tested with an Onkyo TX-8020. Power and input switching work; volume and TV input aren't possible over RI on that model

Everything is open under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: KiCad files, software and setup notes are at https://github.com/fabiomsouto/phonkyo

I'm also making a small batch of assembled boards for anyone who doesn't want to build their own: https://obcecado.com/phonkyo/ (EU shipping only).

Feedback is very welcome, especially if you have a different RI receiver and can tell me what works.

My band always gets stuck at the same point when writing songs: finding a chord progression that isn't the same four chords we always end up with. So I turned an old Raspberry Pi 3 with the official 7" touchscreen into a little songwriting helper that lives in our rehearsal room.

What it does:

Circle of fifths as the main UI: tap a major or minor key and the seven diatonic chords light up with their Roman numerals (I, ii, iii, IV...) and are color coded by function (tonic, subdominant, dominant)

Pick how many chords you want (3, 4, 5, 6 or 8) and hit "new progression"

Two modes: a library of well-known progressions (I-V-vi-IV, vi-IV-I-V, Andalusian cadence and so on, each with a name) or a free generator that builds new progressions with weighted transitions based on functional harmony, so the result actually sounds like music and not random chords

Lock icon on each chord: keep the ones you like and only reroll the rest

Changing the key transposes the current progression

Built-in synth playback with adjustable tempo, loops the progression so you can jam over it

Bottom half shows the scale and a fretboard up to the 12th fret with the notes of the selected chord highlighted, plus a pentatonic toggle for solo ideas

Save progressions you like, optional seventh chords, harmonic minor dominant, and German note names (H instead of B, because Swiss)

Tech side:

It's a single HTML file, no dependencies, no internet needed. Sound is generated with the Web Audio API, saved progressions go into localStorage. The layout is fixed at 800x480 for the official display and scales to other screens. Chromium starts it in kiosk mode on boot via an autostart .desktop file. I set up the autostart over SSH from my phone through its hotspot, since I didn't have a keyboard at the rehearsal room.

Runs smoothly on the Pi 3, even with the animation during playback.

Next ideas: a piano version for synth players (already built one for my Roland J-6 that suggests matching chord presets)

I have been a raspberry pi user since model 3 came out. but only used it mainly for pihole and retro emulation.

Now that AI, specifically claude have reached mainstream status, I was able to make a payphone work using nothing but a raspberry pi zero 2 w. Originally coded with opus, it required a raspberry pi 4 to work. Then Fable came out and was able to fit the entire project to work on a pizero 2w.

you can read about the project on the payphone subreddit!

I decided to post here since im simply amazed on what the raspberry pi can do. I have zero coding experience, but having claude as a sidekick and improving my soldering skills made me finish this project in about 4 months.

I learned a ton and it was really fun creating a working payphone.

here is the link to my original post! I hope im not breaking any rules here:

I have a working payphone in my backyard. :) : r/Payphone

For anyone running a NAS with their pi be aware that Ubuntu 24.04 LBM 6.8.0.1061 and above has an issue with the JMicron based SATA HAT devices. I’m using a Radxa one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if any JMB58x AHCI SATA controller had the same issue.

Symptom: write failures and checksum failures. I noticed it first because the pi froze when I attempted to copy a large file over the network, hard froze. The dmesg was loaded with write failures to every drive. smart status for all drives was clean. ZFS reported equal checksum errors for all drives and thousands of unreadable files. Eventually the pool degraded and the write errors and stalls added up to a full system freeze.

I went through many iterations of debugging. Enabling and disabling NCQ, power management, pcie3, and limiting read/write bandwidth. After replacing the hardware and power supply and not seeing the errors clearing up I finally tried software. Rolling back to 6.8.0-1060 fixed the issue immediately.

Note: all kernels after 1060 require the dtoverlay=pcie-32bit-dma-pi5 flag in config.txt so it was enabled for my tests with 1061-1064 and removed for 1060.

Nothing else on my system has changed. 1060 just completed the first clean scrub on the pool all week, and successfully cleared all the ”damaged file” lists ZFS keeps after encountering an error.

This points to a serious regression in the 1061 and above kernels, so if anyone has been running up against a wall on this give 1060 a try.

I have been trying to make the PCA control servos but it just refuses to, i have tried the official adafruit pca library and code examples, servokit library and code examples and it just doesnt work

scl, sda, vcc and gnd is connected to the pi, v+ is connected to an external power source(pi and pca are powered by two separate buck converters)

im using the default 0x40 address and a mg996r servo motor that is connected to pins from column 0 on the pca

also the i2c is turned on on the pi and i2ctools does detect the pca9685

i would really appreciate some help(if i didnt share something, please ask and not report my post lol🥲)

I’m not a professional in either embedded programming or woodworking — which probably shows — but I put together a little project for my son. Maybe it’ll give someone else a bit of inspiration too!
The hardware:
• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
• MFRC522 Mifare RFID reader
• USB speaker
• Power bank
• USB switch from Temu
• A simple wooden box
• KRF-1356-ISO RFID cards
The software:
Built entirely from scratch. It hosts a web dashboard on the local network where you can see which MP3 is assigned to each card. If a card is still “unused,” you can upload an audio file through the interface; the system downloads it and stores the RFID-to-MP3 pairing.
The next time the card is tapped, it immediately plays the assigned music or audio story. The pairings can be changed to anything you like at any time.

I’ve been building BN-USV V1, a small unmanned surface vehicle using a Raspberry Pi and an ESP32.

The Raspberry Pi runs the higher-level navigation stack: GPS processing, heading and IMU estimation, battery monitoring, waypoint navigation, and logging. It sends throttle and steering commands to the ESP32 over serial.

The ESP32 handles the lower-level control layer, including RC input, differential propulsion, and failsafe behavior if commands from the Pi stop arriving. I deliberately kept the safety/control layer separate from the Pi so that loss of the higher-level navigation process does not directly remove basic control and failsafe behavior.

Main components:

• Raspberry Pi 5
• ESP32
• GPS
• IMU / magnetometer
• Battery monitoring
• Dual-thruster differential propulsion

V1 is an experimental reference prototype, not a commercial product or a ready-to-build kit. I’ve released:

• Raspberry Pi navigation and control software
• ESP32 firmware
• V1 hull STL meshes
• A FreeCAD reference assembly made from the released STL meshes

The hull requires significant bonding, fitting, and waterproofing, so I’ve documented it as a reference design rather than presenting it as an easy DIY build. It has been tested on the water, but I don’t consider the mechanical design a polished or performance-guaranteed platform.

GitHub: https://github.com/Brillnova/BN-USV-V1
Short on-water video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz2eOEANyZo

I’d be especially interested in comparing this architecture with other Pi-based robots or boats that separate high-level navigation from low-level MCU control. If you spot anything unclear in the architecture or documentation, I’d appreciate specific feedback.

Happy to answer questions about the Pi-side architecture, serial interface, failsafe design, or testing process.

A while ago I posted here about a Raspberry Pi 5 powered camera I built with the IMX477 sensor. I managed to port it over the the Pi Zero with a redesigned body and integrated battery! Code has been optimized to run better on the Pi Zero considering the Zero 2 prices have skyrocketed.

Old post: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/s/JCh5yz91UG

GitHub: https://github.com/prtk1910/rpi-film-simulation-camera

I built AutoPiOverclock, a project that finds each Pi's boundaries, recovers from failed candidates, backs off conservatively, and applies clocks only after final validation:

https://github.com/p1r473/AutoPiOverclock

Normal use is 2 target-explicit commands:

autopioverclock prepare pi@pi-host

autopioverclock overclock pi@pi-host

The controller can be another Pi or any Linux PC, server, or VM. It stays available when the target crashes or reboots.

What the automatic run does:

- Checks the stock clocks, protected boot configuration, power/throttling, cooling, SSH, watchdog recovery, and Raspberry Pi tryboot.

- Tests candidates through tryboot.txt, returning failures to the protected normal configuration.

- Searches CPU first, refines its boundary in 25 MHz steps, backs off 50 MHz, and qualifies it for two hours. It then searches GPU, backs off 25 MHz, and qualifies the pair for two hours.

- Tries CPU another 25 MHz higher during a 24-hour combined CPU/GPU/I/O test. If that edge is known unsafe or safely rejected, it instead runs a fresh 24-hour validation at the guarded pair.

- Performs three more candidate/normal boot cycles, applies and verifies only a complete result, and retains the evidence. Repeating 'overclock TARGET' continues the latest eligible run.

Testing temporarily uses maximum fan cooling without replacing permanent fan or unrelated boot settings. Headless Raspberry Pi OS/Debian systems need no display or audio hardware.

Profiles currently support 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS, Debian, compatible Ubuntu Pi boot layouts, and Batocera

I'm pretty happy with it but we don't really use it that often.

I plopped a monitor in there and I tapped into the (annoyingly and needlessly complicated) wiring for the buttons. I connected the buttons to zero delay usb encoders and then setup fruitbox to accept those button presses as letter/number/button inputs.

After getting a 10" rack and populating it with a screen, I decided I wanted to create a nice Dashboard.

This originally started as a dashboard directed at my Pi-Hole and tiny rack-mount touchscreen. What ended up happening was that I built a plugin based dashboard that works on any screen.

The best part about this project is the plugins. Easy to create, drop into the plugin folder, and a new tab is added to the Dashboard with your new Python plugin... cool.

Rackdash can auto-update plugins independently from RackDash itself. It is built with plugins at the forefront.

Recently got it to sync plugin status with WLED.

Overall a fun project!

Quick demo of the infrared capabilities for the WLV-01. This is a DIY build using the raspberry pi 5 and Sony imx294 micro 43 sensor. UI is running on python.

Boredom pushes me to do these things