The Raspberry Pi is a budget computer that can be coerced into doing all manner of things. I own a few an original Raspberry Pi B, two Raspberry Pi 2's and two Pi Zero W's and have installed and used a few different distributions over the years in the end I've settled on using a solid and robust, yet plain uncostomised version of Arch Linux ARM as I realised I now know enough about GNU/Linux to not need my hand holding and that I could install and do all of the configuration I needed to myself. As I tried different distributions I wrote up what I was doing and specific pages can be found below.

• Arch Linux ARM on the Raspberry Pi2
• Arch Linux ARM on the Pi ZeroW
• RaspBMC

  • Volumio
  • RuneAudio
  • Moode
  • Archphile
  • Project Things

  If you want to try out what I've been doing you're likely best of reading the Arch Linux ARM page. Listed below are some of the things I've turned the Pi's to.

I've used the of Raspberry Pi's to make a home audio streaming system. This is a lot cheaper than buying pre-bundled hardware and provides much greater flexibility. It works pretty good and thanks to Snapcast there are now multiple Pi's deployed around the house playing synchronised audio, which is pretty sweet in my view.

A simple use of Raspberry Pi's is to attach external USB drives and use them for backing up your system. Read how to do that here.

You can use Pihole to turn your Raspberry Pi into a DNS server for your home network that automatically blocks ad serving, massively reducing wasted bandwidth and improving your browsing experience exponentially.

I wanted to get this running on my Raspberry Pi2 which took a little tweaking so I documented the process. These days I have off-loaded the work to a Linksys 1900ACS that runs OpenWRT so that all devices in the house automatically have adverts blocked. Was fun working it on the Pi though.

I've got an external HDD with a load of ripped movies and TV and wanted to make these available to cast/stream to the TV. Here's how I went about this.

Very cool instrument that can be made with a Raspberry Pi, see Ultrasonic theremin - Introduction | Raspberry Pi Projects (see Dr Who Theme played on a Theremin if you've no idea what these are).

Our details of making a Theremin are here

At some point (likely when I upgrade my music streaming box) I'll stick FreedomBox on my exiting Pi2 so I can start contributing to decentralised network services.

• Magic Mirror
• Gentoo on Pi3 64-bit
• Cross compile gentoo for Pi3
• Android 7.1.2 for Pi3
• Substratum on Raspberry Pi
• Ultrasonic theremin - Introduction | Raspberry Pi Projects
• How To Set Up a Raspberry Pi 4 with Archlinux 64-bit (AArch64) and Full Disk Encryption (+SSH unlock), USB Boot (No SD-Card) and btrfs

• TV-Hat
• PiMoroni
• miniBoss i2s dac for PI Zero

• Power Consumption Benchmarks | Raspberry Pi Dramble
• Pi4 has faulty USB-C design

linux raspberrypi2 volumio mpd bash audio streaming networking