3 Raspberry Pi Projects I Use Every Day
After testing so many Raspberry Pi projects over the years, I have a pretty good idea of what works well, is genuinely useful, and what I would keep even if I only had one Raspberry Pi at home.
A Raspberry Pi can support many home projects, but the three I rely on most are a VPN server to access my home network from anywhere, a cloud service to sync files across devices, and a media server.
A VPN server may sound complicated at first, and it is often misunderstood. Many people confuse a VPN client with a VPN server. A VPN server creates a secure tunnel back to your home network. This lets you access services running on your Raspberry Pi from anywhere, almost as if you were still at home.
For me, it has become essential. Once you start running services on a Raspberry Pi 24/7, remote access makes everything much more useful. It also becomes more important as you experiment with more of the projects shared on RaspberryTips.
Running a file server at home is another popular project. It lets you share files between devices or family members, but relying on the Raspberry Pi alone for important files is a bit risky (unless you have a good backup system).
If you want a clearer path than jumping from tutorial to tutorial, my book gives you a step-by-step roadmap to really understand your Raspberry Pi.
Check the book hereConnecting from different devices can also be tricky, as each operating system handles network shares slightly differently.
A better way to achieve the same results is to host a service like Nextcloud. It works similarly to Dropbox and other services, but is more reliable and simpler overall.
You can keep copies of the same files on several devices, which gives you a basic extra layer of protection. It is not a complete backup solution, but it is much better than keeping everything in one place.
And the third project I use every day is Jellyfin.
It’s a media server where you can store all your media files, such as movies, music, photos, and books. You can access these files from any device with the appropriate client installed. With the VPN service I mentioned earlier, you can access the server from anywhere.
Jellyfin can replace some paid services such as Spotify or Netflix, as long as you already have the media files stored on your Raspberry Pi. It is free, works well on a Raspberry Pi, and may save you a few dollars each month if you no longer need some of those subscriptions.
Those are the three projects I would start with, and the ones I would keep if I had to choose. The list is far from exhaustive, though.
You can get my full list of favorite Raspberry Pi projects here. It includes links to the tutorials, plus the skills and materials needed for each one.
