Happy Pi Day everyone! Celebrating the 3rd month and 14th day to give us 3.14 (it makes more sense to Americans).

With so many things we could talk about relating to our favourite math related international day of celebration, we thought we would bring you some local projects using our favourite maker friendly computer – the Raspberry Pi.

Digital Radio

Michael Carden in Canberra took a standard Raspberry Pi and with nothing more than a dongle was able to get his Pi running Linux to be a fully functional digital radio (who uses analogue amirite?)

Full instructions can be found on Michael’s personal project page if you want to build your own low cost Digital Radio.

HD Video Player for Exhibition Displays

The two person team at Monash University of Jon McCormack and Nikolas Skoufis put together this project for a simple way to create digital signage for museum or gallery displays to display video and that can also be managed remotely.

While there are commercial options that exist this is a very maker solution bringing the cost way down while still producing a high quality result.

Air Conditioner and Window Blinds Home Automation

Chris Rieger in Brisbane definitely has a need to cool down after the last few months and put together this definitely useful home automation solution. Using a Raspberry Pi Chris is not only able to control his AC remotely but also able to close window blinds automatically to help the cooling.

You can read more about it on Chris’ personal project page or you can checkout his video below.

Plane Tracker

Lastly, Simon Aubury has combined several data sources and used a camera with his Raspberry Pi to track aircraft as they fly over his home in Sydney.

This super clever project records a short video of planes as they pass, labelling them with their flight number, origin and destination in addition to the standard time-stamp. If this wasn’t enough Simon also leveraged a cloud based Amazon instance to split the load for the more heavy work.

If you think this is pretty cool you should checkout Simon’s project page where he has more details on how exactly he designed and implemented his Pi based project.

This is only a handful of the things you can do with a Raspberry Pi, which is a super cheap way to build more complex projects when a simple Arduino microprocessor just wont do.

If you want to get your hands on one in Australia, you can order one online easily via Little Bird Electronics for a Pi and Guides (and they can also give you advice if you aren’t sure what to buy to get started) OR Alternatively if you have one and not sure what to do next, checkout your local Makerspaces for any upcoming workshops to help you get started.

Got a Maker Project or Event you want to share? Let us know in the comments below or hit us up via social media!