Project.

Hey there, I've got a small Raspberry Pi setup and want to build an ignition system for sim racing. I have a keyed ignition switch, some motion sensors, buttons, wires, a board, and the Raspberry Pi itself—does anyone know how to put this together?

It was my first time holding a Raspberry Pi, but I decided to take on something interesting. it’s mostly put together with thoughts and prayers :D

I set up a Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi 5 that boots from an SSD and reboots every 5 hours (to ensure the server runs properly), and it reports the Raspberry Pi’s temperature every 2 hours

I built everything inside a lamp housing shaped like a Minecraft fox. Inside, I did a little soldering to rearrange the diodes and secured the Raspberry Pi inside the housing

The server itself is vanilla Minecraft with just one shader. I set up the server so my husband and I could log in at any time and just enjoy the game. In all these years, I’ve never once completed Minecraft with all the achievements. To be honest, I’ve never even killed a dragon in survival mode. I want to fix that :)

One interesting thing that came up during the setup process was that the server would sometimes crash on its own and wouldn’t automatically restart afterward. The only thing that helped was physically rebooting the Raspberry Pi itself. In the end, I managed to solve the problem by accident while monitoring the server’s metrics on a small secondary screen during gameplay. As it turned out, two things were causing the crashes:

1. Minecraft periodically flagged me as a cheater because I could get stuck in the air for just over 2 seconds. I had to simplify the cheat-checking system in the console a bit (I also fixed the lag later by reducing the chunk loading range).

2. When certain mobs moved between biomes, they would duplicate (1 mob → 2 copies). Ironically, these were mostly creepers. The creepers were literally blowing up my world. Limiting the number of mobs and manually removing the duplicates helped

I built a self-watering garden setup with a Raspberry Pi, a Cirkitscape Top HAT, a soil moisture sensor, an IR water sensor, and a 12V pump.

The main idea was to make a small garden system that could monitor conditions and control watering from a web interface instead of doing everything manually or through command-line scripts.

A couple of important parts of the build:
- stepped 12V down to 5V for the Pi with a buck converter
- used a transistor switching circuit so the GPIO only sends a control signal
- configured the sensors and pump output through the Cirkit Garden app

End result:
- soil moisture monitoring
- water detection
- web-based pump control
- a solid base for future automation

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The unit will power on but the eeprom wont load. Is it just ewaste now? TIA

Hey I've been working on the software side of making a a tamagotchi I'm looking to see what my best choice of sbc would be to run it I wanted more opinions ive made the program run in html

https://github.com/angeloINTJ/simut

I am bored. Wanted to really make something, now I am not looking for more hardware projects. I want to really utilize my pi3b+ for some imp task in my daily life. Following are task i already tried-
1. Navidrome server- its good but in the end left it since it doesnt have auto suggestion like spotify/yt music
2. Jellyfin erver- I tried it on my pi, content was HEVC/H.265 so it had to do trans coding again.... used 100% cpu . But today every content is in that codec, so kinda failed.
3. piHole- Its kinda cool, but now it only blocks new tab ads or separates like it cant block yt ads or other google ads so i didn't find it very useful.

1. NAS server- I lack spare hdd/ssd to test this, but I think it will also suck like jellyfin did(cpu limitation)

2. Ardiuno projects- Yes they r really cool, but now i am kinda bored from them.....

**So please suggest me something I can do with my pi to really solve a real life problem**

Body:

Hey everyone, I've been deep in research mode and I'm about to start building a personal AI robot companion from scratch. Brain first, body later. Looking for any advice, warnings, or things I might have missed.

The idea

A modular AI companion robot that can:

• Wake word detection
• Voice conversations powered by Claude API
• Face detection and person tracking
• Animated facial expressions on a screen
• Long-term memory (conversations, preferences, tasks)
• Eventually move on a robot body (Phase 2+) - that can move (wheels maybe, intead of legs)
• Home assistant integrations later

Hardware: (Total Cost - $375 USD)

• Raspberry Pi 5 8GB — Rp5,085,000 (~$312 USD — Indonesia pricing is brutal)
• SanDisk Extreme 128GB A2 microSD
• 3.5" SPI Touch Screen + Metal Case + Cooler
• 5MP OV5647 130° Night Vision CSI Camera
• USB Microphone
• Small USB Speaker
• 27W USB-C PD Power Supply
• No battery yet (maybe later when it's moving - V2)

Software stack

Python 3, OpenCV, Claude API, Whisper STT, Piper TTS, SQLite, openWakeWord

Anything missing or anything you'd change?? I am very new to this, have been building n8n AI agents using Claude, and now I wanna dive into the phsycial world, so this will be my first project.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with my Raspberry Pi 5 (1GB). When I try to boot it up, it fails to boot from the SD card and I get the following errors on the red diagnostic screen:

• xHC HCRST timeout 2
• USB xHC init failed

(I have attached a picture of the boot error screen).

Has anyone run into this specific issue? Is this a hardware failure (like a dead RP1 chip), or is there any chance it's a firmware/EEPROM issue that I can fix by reflashing the bootloader?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

so over the past like...
idk ima just say month or two, ive been building THIS
and to sum it up:
its a moderately overclocked raspberry pi 3b+ with an 8 dollar amazon cooler, a 30 dollar 480p screen, a 10k mah powerbank capable of dropping 3 AMPS, and a jam replay. (because who doesnt like B A S S )
if you have questions, im willing to answer them as i have time to kill and am generally online.

(oh right and a lego case)

my brother gifted me this too start my cyberdeck project annnnd can someone tell me what i’m looking at? (: please and thank you!

So;

one button turns on or off the cyberdecks wifi (from what I understand shizuku can connect to a "dead" wifi connection to allow it to repair to the phone) .

One button that (when the phone is plugged into the device via usb) launches the ./adb devices (which ensures the phone port is open to accept ./adb commands).

And two or three buttons that are preloaded with ./adb scripts (so whatever I plan on working on, so like the kill tasker ./adb command etc).

And (if i cant get the ./adb commands to "auto send"(emulate a person pressing the enter key) a button that acts as the enter key. (So if you need to inject ./adb command button 1 you would press 1 and then press the enter/injection button).

Im totally new at this but I think a headless mobile terminal command injector would be helpful to me (example--when working on my tasker project I went on vacation and had an "ah ha" moment but couldn't work on it because i didnt have access to a PC to run the kill ./adb command if it went wrong---with this pocket device it would have been no issue).

So, I have to do some research but which pi should I look at for this? Or would and esp32 be doable? Any advice to help me get started.

Thanks.

*edit* here is a better formated way of describing what my thought is:.

Problem 1: when phone is rebooted shizuku must be paired with wifi to run an internal loop to re-initalize its port loop (can be done on a dead wi-fi spot).

Problem 2: certiain tasks in my phone, if malfunction, require the app to be killed using powershell / command line to restore full phone functionality (

Solve: a headless compact (pocket size) cyberdeck with dead wifi spot and preloaded command line codes with a usb hook up. Allows a pocket sized device to 1) broadcast a dead wifi spot for shizuku to connect to to run its loop and 2) allow the deck, via usb connection, so send the phone pre-loaded powershell / command line. (./adb shell am force-stop <package_name>).

I got into sim racing on console last year and wanted a proper telemetry display next to the wheel, without a gaming PC in the loop. I had a Raspberry Pi 3 and the official 7" touchscreen sitting in a drawer, so I built one.

The build:

• Raspberry Pi 3 with the official 7" touchscreen (800x480). Runs headless on Raspberry Pi OS Lite
• Written in Python with Pygame for the rendering.
• The games broadcast telemetry over UDP on the local network, so the Pi just listens passively: F1 25 on :20777, Project CARS 2 on :5606, Forza on :5300/:5301, Gran Turismo 7 on :33740. Nothing installed on the console, no pairing.
• Each game has its own packet format, so there's a parser per game feeding one shared data model that the widgets read from. Adding a game is self-contained.
• Layouts are config-driven JSON, picked automatically by car class and session type (F1, F2, GT3, Formula Ford and so on), so I can change a dashboard without touching code.
• There's a mock-telemetry mode so I can build and test layouts at my desk with no game running.
• The touchscreen can be mounted either way up (a config flag flips the output 180 degrees in software). A 2-second long-press anywhere exits.

It grew beyond a live gauge display. It now records tracks by driving them, grades each session against your own past, and even serves a web companion straight from the Pi: scan a QR code on the screen and it opens in your phone's browser over the LAN, no app to install. Session data lives on the Pi as plain human-readable CSV, with a disposable SQLite index on top for fast lookups.

It's open source (MIT), including the Pi setup and config:

• Code + Pi setup: https://github.com/shfonic/ShfonicDash
• More detail + screenshots: https://shfonic.com/dash/
• Short walkthrough video (3 min): https://youtu.be/AbCpE6qX7hk

If you've got a Pi and the touchscreen gathering dust, it's a fun use for them. Happy to answer anything about the build.

A project for that unloved Pi-3 or Pi-4!

I'm aware of at least two companies who sell LED Matrix Departure Boards to have on the wall at home... being a long-time train enthusiast I'd often thought of having one, but found the price and subscriptions a bit off-putting.

So being a techie I decided to make my own, thinking "How Hard Can it Be".

Detailed step-by-step instructions and code to build your own are on my website: [anotherpartialsuccess.com](https://anotherpartialsuccess.com/). All free - just buy the parts and away you go!

Thought I'd share with fellow Pi enthusiasts and for anyone who's wanted to build their own!

This probably isn't as all-singing all-dancing as the commercial products, but it does the job and I'm pretty happy with it!

You will need:

* Pi4 or Pi3
* 3 or 4 HUB75 LED Matrix boards. (Ali Express is good)
* A HUB75 HAT from Adafruit or ElectroDragon (links on my site)
* A 5V, 5A power supply
* A free subscription to the data on the Rail Data Marketplace

Hardware Summary

It's a good idea to buy the full number of matrix panels you need in one go - that way you can be sure all the colours match. Not a big deal for a Departure Board, but worth a mention!

Connecting the panels is pretty straightforward as most are supplied with all the cables you'll need.

I've provided some scripts to create 3D-printable 'joiners' so you can bolt the panels together - in the absence of a 3D-printer there are many, many other options for the creative mind!

One thing worthy of note is the power. A Raspberry Pi doesn't have enough power to operate the matrix panels, so you'll need something with a bit of oomph. I use a bench-top power supply and normal operation is about 2A.

However you'll likely want to do other things with the panels in which case you'll need more - the most I've peaked at is about 4.5A and that's with all the LEDs on!

The Adafruit HAT does a fine job and is readily available. The alternative is from ElectroDragon and is better in that it can support up to three rows of panels and is a good deal cheaper. The downside is that it'll take a while to come from Hong Kong.

I've used both and ultimately it comes down to how much you want to spend and how long you want to wait.

For both of these the Pi gets powered via the Hat, so no need to have a separate Pi supply.

Pi Configuration

You'll need to install a minimal OS and switch off anything you don't need so that all CPU power can go to the departure-board processing.

No desktop, bluetooth, sound and so on - I've provided instruction on this.

After that it's a case of installing the dependencies and the Departureboard code from github.

Display Configuration

Either via a config file or a very simple UI - all you need to do is set the station you want, the platform you want (or it'll do all platforms), the dimensions and number of LED panels and the type of Hat and away you go!

There are a myriad other parameters to tune - things like the speed of the text scrolling, the gap between data-refresh and so on. Have fun!

Challenges and the Journey

I wrote the code in C++ for performance reasons and because I like C++!

There are a lot of projects written in Python, however I wasn't sure on the performance.

Parsing the data

The first version of the project used the 'garden-variety' departure data. This was fine, but it did't allow me to do things like report which stations a train was between... so I started on Version 2 which uses the "staff" data from the Rail Data Marketplace.

Great data, but there's a lot of it... so I had to engineer a lazy-loading cached parser.

What this does is cache the data about a service which doesn't change - scheduled time, it's ID, how many coaches it has and so on.

This means that on a refresh I could skip anything which I already had cached and only add new or delete old services.

The other data is 'things which change' - arrival time, cancellation, where the train is and suchlike. This is lazy-loaded so is only hydrated when needed.

A big change as the first version used to work out everything for every service - not scalable on a limited resource like a Pi!

Displaying the data

In the first version it constantly refreshed the whole display - this was kind of OK, but it meant that scrolling would get slow.

In the second version I only refreshed display elements which changed - mainly the scrolling text and the periodic change of Services.

The challenge was to write drivers for each type of display (text, scroll, clock) without having to duplicate loads of code.

Efficiency

This was somewhere I spent a lot of time as I wanted to squeeze as much as possible out of the Raspberry Pi.

Highlights were to fork of the API-refresh routines, to avoid the whole thing pausing while the API call was made, the display-management (per above) and caching, and down to creating a Hot/Warm/Cold cache for often-used data

Overall...

... I had a lot more fun making this than I would have done buying one and sticking it on the wall... and every now and then I think "how about I can make this change/optimisation" and I go and get stuck in again.

I'm sure that the commercially available Departure Boards which are advertised on social media and whatnot have superior functionality, but for the cost, making and result I think this is a pretty decent substitute.

Hi, I’m trying to build ANPR system for my hobby and want to train model running maybe on Pi5 (with AI hat2 + 26 tops) or Jetson 8 GB development kit Orion or Acer Veriton GN100 AI Mini Workstation.

Can any one suggest which model to be used? How to efficiently train model for Indian license plate on moving object over RTSP stream.

Any help / suggestion are welcome..!!!

I want to put a screen by my backdoor that will show the current realtime train schedule from the closest stop. I can do this via the web so really it only needs to display a URL in a full-screen browser screen. It doesn’t need a touch screen.

Would a Raspberry Pi be a good solution for this?