What else can I do with a pi?

[desmondttm123]

Hello, this is my first time
Posting here, I have a rpi model B for sometime now and honestly I have not found proper use of it yet... I use it so far as a computer but that's about it. I have read uses of rpi on the Internet or things u can do, but it does not seem to interest me that much.. How can I use the rpi in robotics ? Thanks !

[W. H. Heydt]

If you can't find a proper purpose...find an improper one. Annoying Bill Gates springs to mind.

Seriously...yes, you can use it in robotics and quite a few people do. One approach is to use an Arduino or something similar as the "muscle" and the Pi as the "brains".

[Heater]

Robotics is an excellent idea.

My plan is to hook the Pi up to a Propeller microcontroller from Parallax Inc.
http://www.parallax.com/
A simple serial link can be used either through a USB/Serial adapter or just direct connection from the serial port on the Pi's GPIO pins to the Propeller pins.

The Propeller then has 24 pins that can be used as:
1) Simple GPIO bit banging
2) or PWM drivers for servos, ESc etc. You can drive up to 24 servos from the Propeller.
3) Analog inputs and outputs (needs a couple of resistors and capacitors on the pins to do that)
4) SPI and I2C interfaces to accelerometers, gyros, or whatever devices.
5) Provide VGA or TV graphical or text output. (No HDMI required to talk to the Pi)
6) etc etc

The Propeller has eight 32 bit processors on board all of which can use any of it's pins so its easy to do many of the above at the same time and there is no worry about running out of processing power or messing with interrupts.

The Propeller can be programmed in C or it's own "Spin" language which is very easy to use. There is a lot of ready made libraries for all kind of interface functions available.

Just now I'm working on getting the compilers and IDE for the Propeller working on the Pi so that a Pi + Propeller combo is a stand alone, self hosting, development environment.

[mrpi64]

or you could turn it into a kind of home automation controller- intall remote control lights into the roof, connect it to a pi, add switches, a wireless mini keyboard, and you have a robotic home lights system!

[pjc123]

Here is just a couple of ideas:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comme ... use_it_for

[desmondttm123]

wow thanks for the replies, i recently got inspired by the pi a lot! btw the rpi only has 2 pwm right? one more thing, what OS are you guys using? cuz raspbian seems laggy to do anything....

[mrpi64]

Make your own OS (or is that a bit far fetched?)

[Heater]

In what way is Raspian "laggy". It performs as well as I expect for a 700Mhz machine using SD card storage. I only ever use it from the command line via ssh though.

[DaveDriesen]

Been thinking of making a hatchery, to use for hatching bird eggs.

The pi could read and control hatchery temperature and humidity, maybe even rotate eggs for X amount of days after incubation.

A temp/humidity sensor and a few relays could be all you need.

Dave Driesen
Linux dev and oldskool elite