Looking for something to build that uses both Raspberry Pi and Arduino? Here are the best Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects around.
Galaga Arcade Cabinet
Galaga. That 1981 arcade game of champions. While you can play Galaga in your browser, nothing beats the look of a light-up arcade cabinet, complete with sticks and giant buttons. In fact, Hamburg’s Alex Weber went even further, rescuing an old CRT television from a skip to connect to a Pi running
MAME through RetroPie.
Internet of Lego
An entire city, built from Lego and controlled by Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and bundles of sensors. All the parts interact with each other, with myriad sensors placed around the blocky cityscape to track events within the city and in the real world. The whole connected city is powered by a Raspberry Pi running the Node-RED Internet of Things manager (nodered.org).
Hammond Smart Home
For his ‘HAMMOND’ smart home system, Paul Sieradzki used an Arduino Mega to manage everything from motors that roll blinds, temperature sensors and PIR motion sensors, to relays to control power, IR blasters, and RFID readers. There’s a Pi on top to gather weather information, add web access, and manage Alexa-based voice recognition. A second Pi serves video and music.
Piano Stairs
As part of a HackPrinceton hackathon, Bonnie Eisenman created stairs that play a tune. Each step is fitted with a light on one side and a light sensor on the other; when a foot breaks the beam, an Arduino passes the number of the step to a Raspberry Pi, triggering a specific note to be played through a set of speakers.
Smart Jukebox
Tijuana Rick (aka Ricardo Cortez) used an Arduino Mega to transform a 1969 Wurlitzer 3100 jukebox into a digital retro music box. He had to go the digital route because, while the jukebox still worked, the previous owner kept all the vinyl records. The Arduino monitors the jukebox buttons, sending a serial output to the Pi, which handles the music playback.
FlipFrame
FlipFrame solves the problem of showing a slideshow of mixed-orientation images. Obviously, black bars are insufferable, so Tim Giles uses a Raspberry Pi to analyse his slideshows. If the resolution indicates a landscape image, the Pi tells a motor-governing Arduino to turn the FlipFrame’s 27-inch screen from landscape to portrait mode. It is a sight to behold.
