New Year, New You part 2

In part one of our New Years feature, we talked about how you can save money, help out charity or even lose wweight a little better thanks to the Raspberry Pi. Here are five more Pi projects to look at to help start your year with.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 41 and was written by Lucy Hattersley

Tweety Pi bird box

If your New Year’s resolution is to get closer to nature, then one project you should look at is Sam Webster’s Tweety Pi Bird Box. To be fair, there are lots of Raspberry Pi bird box projects out in the wild.

We really like Sam’s, though, because it takes things a bit further than most. Sam has fitted his bird box with a PIR sensor, and hooked it up to Twitter. Whenever a bird flits into the box, it automatically starts sharing updates to @tweetypibirdbox.

Solar powered Raspberry Pi

We’re big fans of eco projects here at The MagPi, and learning how to use solar power in your Pi projects is a noble aim for the upcoming year. Solar panels can be picked up for around £20, and can be used to provide direct power or charge up an attached battery. Veteran maker Koff has a great tutorial over on Instructables.

Raspberry Pi Wall-Mounted Google Calendar

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to be a bit more organised (ours usually is), then we have three great projects for you to take a look at. The first is a fantastic wall-mounted Google Calendar by Alex Pine. You can use it to create a shared calendar for yourself and your family, so everyone can see exactly what’s going on.

Inbox Zero Taunter

Our second productivity project is Michael Mitchell’s Inbox Zero Taunter. Email is a modern curse, but practising inbox zero can bring a lot of relief from mail overload. The bright light of a Raspberry Pi LED reminds you that you’ve got email in your inbox that needs to be dealt with. It’s a super-simple project – just one LED and around ten lines of code – but once configured, it’ll hassle you into clearing out an email account.

Raspberri Personal Assistant

Finally, if you’re in serious need of organisational help, then why not turn your Raspberry Pi into a voice-activated digital assistant? We love the Raspberri Personal Assistant by Jan Wante. He’s turned a 1950s Bakelite Televox intercom into a voice-controlled digital assistant (think Siri inside an old American radio). Inside is a Raspberry Pi with a USB audio sound card, running Steven Hickson’s Voice Command software.

You will undoubtedly learn something new from building any of these projects, and learning something new is the best New Year’s resolution you can make in any case. Whatever project you choose to build in 2016, make sure you have fun.