The weekend is here, and that means it’s time for another round of Raspberry Pi projects! This weekend, I’ll be focusing on a mix of fun and productivity, with projects ranging from receipt printers to booting Windows 11.
These projects will vary in complexity, although some can be up and running in just a few minutes, leaving you with the rest of the weekend to tinker and play with your new services.
- Brand
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Raspberry Pi
- CPU
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Cortex-A72 (ARM v8)
With the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, you can create all kinds of fun projects and upgrade gadgets in your home. Alternatively, install a full desktop operating system and use it as a regular PC.
Ticket printer
There are Raspberry Pi projects that I don’t understand, and then there are projects where I think, “Why didn’t I figure that out first?!” This project belongs to the latter category.
If you want to let friends or family members send you encouraging messages without texting or emailing, this Raspberry Pi ticket printer project is perfect for you. Basically, it takes a Raspberry Pi and a thermal receipt printer and lets people type messages to send to you.
the GitHub repo It guides you step-by-step on how to deploy the project, including how to set it up netlive As a web front-end if you want to offload it to an external server instead of hosting the website on the Pi itself. Generally, the developer says that this type of project should be up and running within 10 minutes, but we both know that DIY projects rarely go according to plan, making this the perfect weekend job.
Once the ticket printer is up and running, the website will contain two text boxes, one for name and one for message, as well as a Google Captcha. Simply send the link to friends or family (or be brave and… Share it online Like the project author) and small notes will be automatically printed in no time!
- Brand
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Rongta
- He writes
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Thermal bill printer
The Rongta POS thermal printer is ideal for any receipt printing applications you may have. Whether you run a small business or do DIY projects on a Raspberry Pi, this thermal printer is sure to work for your application. It can be mounted on the wall, and can be connected to your computer via USB, LAN or serial port. Plus, the automatic trimmer means you won’t have to tear up your final receipts once you’ve printed them.
Install Obsidian to bring your notes wherever you go
Obsidian is a fan-favorite markdown editor in the home lab and enthusiast world for good reason: it actually lets you host everything yourself and keep it local. Installing Obsidian on a Raspberry Pi includes a few functions, all of which are great.
For starters, you can just keep your Obsidian vault on the Pi and bring the Pi everywhere you go to access your notes. This effectively turns the Pi into a mini laptop that you can use exclusively for taking notes. It’s very easy to install Obsidian using Flatpak, just run the command:
flatpak install flathub md.obsidian.Obsidian
However, you can also host a plugin called Obsidian Live Sync Which allows you to sync Obsidian instances with each other. simply Deploy the service on your Raspberry Pi Through Docker and set everything up. This project is known to require some configuration and modification, so make sure you have backups of your vaults before publishing it.
Whichever way you go, running Obsidian on your Pi is surprisingly useful. Although I mostly use Notion for my databases now, I still have a place in my heart for Obsidian and prefer it in some ways. If you haven’t used Obsidian to build your second brain yet, this weekend is a good time to give it a try.
- Operating system
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Windows, iOS, Android, Mac, Linux
- Brand
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Obsidian
Obsidian is a note-taking and database-creating app that lets you store notes privately, so others can’t see them unless you share them. It also has strong support for third-party apps, so you can customize everything the way you want.
Running Windows 11
Raspberry Pi computers had poor performance in the early days. However, with the Pi 5, the single board computer is actually quite powerful in its own regard. The downside (for some) is that it can only run certain Linux distributions. That’s all changed now.
Through the BVM (Botspot Virtual Machine) project, You can now run Windows 11 on ARM on your Raspberry Pi. The project takes advantage of QEMU to run a virtual version of Windows 11 instead of emulating it for better performance. Installing BVM is actually quite simple, and it was published in Pi Application Repository.
Don’t expect to be able to play games through this virtualization, but if you need to run some Windows applications on your Pi, this will work great. Best of all, the BVM project still runs inside Linux, so you won’t have to replace the Pi’s OS. Simply install BVM and Windows 11 on top of whatever operating system you’re running, and enjoy the benefits of running Microsoft’s operating system on a single PC.
These Raspberry Pi projects are sure to fill your weekend, but each task doesn’t have to take several days. Here are a collection of my favorite Raspberry Pi projects that take less than an hour to complete. From deploying a RetroPie instance to setting up Home Assistant or Pi-Hole, these Raspberry Pi projects are sure to get you plenty of use — without taking up an entire weekend.