At Vilros, one of the most rewarding parts of our work is hearing about the incredible things our customers make. In this post, we’re highlighting two 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.
Project #1 - Outdoor Monitoring
Riley Troyer lives in Alaska, and developed two outdoor monitoring systems using Raspberry Pi. One of them is a birdsong tracking system, and the other system tracks the night sky. We're excited to see that the Raspberry Pi is finding arctic applications!
Q: Tell us about what you built - what components did you use?
This project was actually two devices in one enclosure that I built as a Christmas present for my parents. One of the devices was a Raspberry Pi 4B 1GB connected to an HQ camera module with an attached ultrawide lens and running the opensource Allsky Camera code (
https://github.com/AllskyTeam/allsky). My parents live in Alaska and the purpose of this was to be a personal aurora/northern lights observatory for them. The other device was a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB (this was likely overkill, but it was what I had lying around on short notice) with an attached omnidirectional microphone running another opensource project BirdNet-Pi (
https://github.com/Nachtzuster/BirdNET-Pi). The purpose of this was to listen to bird songs and automatically identify birds based on the opensource machine learning model developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornothology and display this data in a web interface. Because both projects were outside based I thought they'd be good candidates to house in the same enclosure.
Q: What was your inspiration for this project?
My day job is as an aurora scientist and so I've used data from a lot of aurora cameras, but always wanted to build one myself. My parents often look at a the public webpage of a local scientific aurora camera to see if they should go outside, but scientific cameras are calibrated to see much dimmer aurora than the human eye. Building them a personal camera allowed me to calibrate it so that aurora in the camera corresponds to aurora visible to the human eye. My parents are also into birding and so when I learned about the BirdNet-Pi project I had to see if I could include that as well!
Q: What were some of the technical challenges you overcame?
The most challenging part of this build was trying to figure out how to fit all the pieces into a reasonably sized enclosure that will hopefully be able to survive the harsh Alaskan environment. Thus far it has survived several months, made it through several snow storms, and even a week of -30F. In the enclosure I included a USB camera lens heater and fan to prevent moisture and frost build up. Understandably, I couldn't find much data about how well Raspberry Pis and microphone stand up to these conditions. I was a bit apprehensive if the system would even turn on, but so far they have performed flawlessly.
Project #2 - Ice Cream Maker
Tyler Ivory has developed one of the tastiest Raspberry Pi projects we've seen yet... an ice cream maker!
Q: Tell us about what you built - what components did you use?
For my daughter's birthday I got her a KiwiCo, The Science of Ice Cream, kit. In this kit it included a couple jars that you make the ice cream in, one jar goes in the other with ice surrounding it. As part of the process you need to roll the container on the floor for around 15 minutes. I thought it would be fun to make something that could rotate the ice cream jar for us. What I designed was essentially the same thing as a rock tumbler. Where there are two horizontal shafts that can spin with one attached to a servo to provide the rotation. To control it I created a simple web app hosted by the pi that allows the user to start and stop the machine. I 3d printed the pieces that held the shafts, gears, end caps, and structure to hold the servo in place. I used a spare995g servo, raspberry pi zero w, and Sparkfun Servo pHat.
Q: What was your inspiration for this project?
My inspiration was to have fun mostly. My daughter thinks robots are cool, so I have been calling it the ice cream robot. I wanted to show her that you can build things and to be creative.
Q: What were some of the technical challenges you overcame?
I had challenges along the entire way, the first I encountered was getting the servo to function properly, as it would short out and have issues when switching directions, eventually I was able to find the true middle and have it work.
Going from CAD to functional 3d print is always a challenge and I probably printed 10 gears to get it so that it engaged the other gear properly.
There was also an issue with the lack of friction between the wooden rods and plastic jar. No elegant solution for that because I simply wrapped the jar in plastic wrap and put duck tape on the rods! If I could improve on this design I would like to print some large gear rings to glue to the jar and then have some gear on the rods, so it would engage and spin and a consistent rate.
Project #3 - Autonomous Robot
Dan Holsapple used Raspberry Pi to build an autonomous robot, complete with obstacle detection and wayfinding.
Q: Tell us about what you built — what components did you use?
The build is an autonomous mecanum wheel robot powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico W. The main components include a Kitronik Robotics Board for motor control, a VL53L0X Time-of-Flight distance sensor mounted on a servo for directional scanning, a US-100 ultrasonic sensor as a secondary range finder, and IR sensors for close-range edge and obstacle detection. Beyond the electronics, I also designed the chassis and component mounting hardware myself in TinkerCAD and printed everything on my 3D printer — so the whole physical structure is a custom design built around exactly how I wanted things laid out. I'll get you a full parts list shortly — I want to make sure it's complete and accurate before I send it over.
Q: What was your inspiration for this project?
I'm a pilot by profession and a maker by passion, and I got into robotics as a way to explore programming and electronics — and to share that journey with my son. The mecanum wheel design specifically caught my attention because of how it moves: true omnidirectional control is just fascinating, both mechanically and from a software perspective. I wanted to build something that would challenge me across hardware, firmware, and autonomous behavior all at once.
Q: What were some of the technical challenges you overcame?
Plenty! Getting the obstacle avoidance logic to feel smooth and reliable took a lot of iteration — early versions would oscillate or get confused by sensor noise. I spent a good amount of time tuning motor trim to get straight-line travel right with mecanum wheels (they're unforgiving if your speeds aren't balanced), and I worked through some real challenges getting the ToF sensor and ultrasonic sensor to complement each other rather than conflict. On the hardware side, designing the chassis in TinkerCAD and iterating through prints until everything fit and sat where I needed it added another whole layer of problem-solving to the project.
