10 Raspberry Pi Projects For Learning IoT
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The Internet of Things (IoT) is, arguably, the hottest topic in IT. Every organization wants to participate in the IoT, and many IT professionals want to know how to add IoT skills to their resume. There are lots of options for learning about IoT, but nothing really beats the hands-on experience.
One of the key learning platforms for IoT is the Raspberry Pi. The RasPi is a popular platform because it offers a complete Linux server in a tiny platform for a very low cost. In fact, one of the most difficult parts of using Raspberry Pi for learning about IoT is picking the right projects with which to begin.
If you go out and look on the Web you'll find thousands of projects based on the RasPi. Some are ambitious, many are silly, and some are great for learning about both the Raspberry Pi and common components of the IoT. I went out in search of projects in that last group.
What makes a great IoT learning project? In my opinion it takes a few things. The first is the use of some common sensor or controller types. I like custom-built hardware as much as the next geek, but for an education project you don't really want to go wild with the hardware builds.
Next, the project should have something interesting going on in the control software. While I don’t think you need an epic development project for a meaningful learning experience, you should really do more than just call pre-existing scripts and applications.
Finally, the projects should be interesting and, dare I say it, fun. There's nothing worse than training that feels like drudgery. Good training projects should make trainees really want to move forward with their education.
That's what I went looking for, and I found a variety of projects that met my requirements. Here are 10 of the ones that I thought were best. We start with one that takes the RasPi to new heights.