Some inspiration for your own Raspberry Pi project.

If you are looking for a muse for your project on the Raspberry Pi , then I recommend paying attention to the creations of the participants of the first Raspberry Pi Design Contest festival in the world, recently held under the wing of MCM Electronics. All projects are divided into four categories: artistic, educational, shell-shell, and household. Participants competed for the top prize - a Printrbot Jr 3D printer and public recognition. Although there were actually a lot of gifts.

Less than a year since the release of the Raspberry Pi, enthusiasts have already collected a lot of interesting devices using it. Pi has become the brain for many home security systems, he is responsible for collecting and displaying all sorts of data, and is even used as an educational tool in mathematics and geography. Artists create interactive installations based on it, and enclosures for Pi's internals range from primitive to complex and intricate. Pi can also manage various home and office systems ... Yes, there is no end to this list.
')


As part of the competition, the judges studied the descriptions of the projects, evaluated their success and uniqueness, and chose the winners. I propose to scoop up more inspiration and get acquainted with the five winning projects. If you want more ideas - you can get acquainted with all the participants of the festival .

So winners

1. Intonarumori
The main prize was taken by the urbanSTEW team with its interesting project Intonarumori .



The urbanSTEW team has assembled several interactive “noise boxes” in the spirit of the creations of the futurists of the last century. As part of this movement, a whole series of noise-producing machines was created, which inspired urbanSTEW to build its own “music” boxes based on the Raspberry Pi with a multitude of sensors. The boxes are self-sufficient and ready to work - they just need to be plugged in and you can start playing. Intonarumori was even presented at one creative festival, where more than 2000 people were interested in boxes.

As the main winner, the urbanSTEW team received a Printrbot Jr 3D printer and a bonus package from MCM Electronics, which included: Pi Face, Pi View HDMI to VGA adapter, Wi-Pi wireless adapter, digital soldering iron and other useful stuff. The same sets, worth more than $ 20,000, were received by the other winners from this article.

2. Lobbyist Meter
The leader of the art category is Tom Lee and his project Lobbyist Meter , counting the number of participants during registration.

Tom Lee: “I took a vintage voltmeter, which I found in the shop of unusual things, and Irenil the range of its voltages to a more suitable for Pi. In addition, I had to additionally calibrate the device so that it could show the information as accurately as possible. And already with the help of designers, we managed to turn the old voltmeter into the original counter of participants, which are registered with us every week. ”

3. State Poster
Among the educational products stood out State Poster - an electronic map of Vermont, USA.

Scott Bennet: “Every year, in my daughter’s school, second-graders are given the task to independently create a map-poster of a certain state. Before that, she had already participated in such events a couple of times, and recently just mastered the work with a soldering iron. After a small brainstorming session, we thought it would be great to add a bit of electronics and Raspberry Pi to this typical work. The daughter is interested in engineering, and using Pi has allowed her to learn a lot during the work on the project. ”

4. Walnut Raspberry Pi Enclosure
The best container for Pi was a neat, solid Walnut Enclosure walnut box.

Chris Krampacker: “Sometimes there is enough wood waste for inspiration. I just had a little nut from the past project, and indeed I like working with wood. I saw a lot of wooden cases, but they all consisted of 6 parts glued together or joined together. I also wanted to make a body of solid wood for the Raspberry Pi. ”

5. Cat Feeder
From the household category, the judges noted the extremely useful project of an automatic feeder for cats - Cat Feeder .

David Bryan: “Back in February, I began to study the Raspberry Pi in The Hack Factory courses. After the very first lesson, Pi firmly sat down in my brain, and my girlfriend and I were just going on a small week-long journey. She had a couple of cats and she was going to leave them at home for the trip, in company with a huge bowl of food. I offered to assemble an automatic feeder for cats. The project is already completed and fully operational. ”

From translator

It is interesting to observe the flight of engineering in a large theater , even simply out of curiosity. Especially when it is not something far-scientific, but quite a household and often useful. Of course, the automatic coloring of eggs is unlikely to drastically change someone's life, but it will obviously be useful before Easter - and where have you ever seen geometrically correct patterns on a chicken egg?

[Vadim Sinitsky]