Overview
At Vilros, one of the most rewarding parts of our work is hearing about the incredible things our customers create. In this post, we're highlighting three standout Raspberry Pi projects from the Vilros community.
Whether you're just getting started or looking for your next challenge, we hope these builds spark your imagination and inspire you to Make Something Amazing.
Project 1: Boat Chartplotter
Maker: Albert Yao
Hardware: Raspberry Pi with touchscreen
What he built
Albert created a marine navigation solution for his boat using Raspberry Pi and OpenCPN (open source chartplotter software). After being shocked by the price of proprietary marine chartplotters, he built his own with open source maps.
Why Raspberry Pi?
Commercial marine mapping devices are expensive. Albert wanted to build his own chartplotter with open source maps and save money while having a backup navigation device.
Goals
Create a backup navigation device and explore commercial viability of chartplotter kits (though that may not be viable).
Technical challenges
Configuring OpenCPN was the biggest challenge - mapping the touchscreen correctly in landscape mode and loading the right maps for Puget Sound. Assembling the complete device was relatively straightforward. The Raspberry Pi Touchscreen 2 is hard to read in bright daylight, which remains an unresolved issue.
Project 2: Home Assistant Garage Door Opener
Maker: Scott Friend
Hardware: Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant, ESP32, relay
What he built
Scott developed a garage door opener controlled by Home Assistant running on Raspberry Pi. The system allows garage door access from phones and provides remote access for package deliveries.
Why Raspberry Pi?
The project was inspired by Home Assistant setup for home automation. Scott chose Raspberry Pi because of its low power consumption and cost-effectiveness for managing home automation tasks like controlling lights, cameras, and video doorbells.
Goals
Enable garage door access from phone since the current garage door opener is older and only supports two RF remotes without Bluetooth or WiFi. With more than 2 people living in the house, everyone needed easy access. Since the camera sends motion alerts, Scott can see when deliveries arrive and open the garage door remotely.
Technical challenges
There weren't any major technical challenges. The only initial uncertainty was whether the relay could connect to the existing switch contacts while still using the manual wall push button. Testing confirmed it worked perfectly since switches and relays operate similarly. The only minor challenge was modifying a 3D-printed case to house the ESP32, relay, and power jack.
Project 3: Voice-Activated Multilingual Robot
Maker: Vasu Renganathan
Hardware: Raspberry Pi with camera and motors
Project website: multilingualrobot.com
What he built
Vasu developed a voice-activated robot that works in multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Tamil, and Hindi. The robot can move around the house, deliver information, conduct quizzes, translate between languages, tell stories, and retrieve information from online sources like Wikipedia and BBC.
Why Raspberry Pi?
Google's extensive research in speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies, combined with the Raspberry Pi Foundation's work in accessible single-board computing, inspired bringing these two ecosystems together. The goal was creating a low-cost, flexible robot capable of natural human interaction in the user's language of choice.
Goals
Enable meaningful human-robot interaction in the user's native language. The robot is designed not only to communicate but to assist - by teaching new languages, carrying messages within a home, conducting interactive learning activities, and responding to users' emotions through sentiment analysis. With an attached camera, the system should capture routine moves and combine them with voice commands.
Longer-term goals include enabling the robot to remember and manage user to-do tasks, provide reminders, and adapt behavior based on past interactions. The project aims to make AI-driven assistance more personal, approachable, and accessible through a physical, voice-enabled platform.
Technical challenges
One major challenge was integrating multiple technologies seamlessly on Raspberry Pi. This included combining Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech APIs with Python-based control logic, motor control, battery power, sensors, and real-time audio processing.
Achieving human-like interaction required coordinating three core capabilities: listening to natural language speech, processing it intelligently, and responding both verbally and physically through movement. Ensuring these functions worked reliably together on resource-constrained hardware was significant.
Additionally, Vasu developed a web-based dashboard using Apache and MySQL database, allowing users to configure and control the robot's behavior through a browser interface. This made the system more flexible and user-friendly while maintaining real-time interaction performance.
The project is constantly being improved and the current stage of work is featured at multilingualrobot.com with sample videos, detailed descriptions, and images.
By Zachary Strong