6 cool uses for a Raspberry Pi cluster

Several people in the maker space have created clusters using the miniature Raspberry Pi computers. The small form factor PCs are extremely popular for these types of projects as they are compact, affordable and relatively easy to use. Raspberry Pi products are also supported by a huge community of developers sharing open source software. This allows Pi owners to use it in all sorts of projects without having to pay expensive licensing fees. Clusters are created when you connect two or more computers together so that they can be controlled together as if they were a single unit. The official Raspberry Pi website has step-by-step instructions that will walk you through the process of putting together one of these clusters using its mini PCs. However, you may be wondering why you would want to create such a cluster and what tasks you would use it for.

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The uses for a Raspberry Pi cluster are somewhat varied. Connecting one PC to another doesn’t automatically double processing power or memory for individual tasks, but it does create a system that can handle a higher multitasking load than any single computer could handle alone. This is particularly useful for expanding the capabilities of your home network. It’s not what most people would normally use a Raspberry Pi for, but it opens the door to some interesting applications.

Cloud storage has become an integral part of modern technology, but it can be expensive and sometimes frustrating. Many people have also lost confidence in the security of many major cloud services as hacks and data breaches wreaked havoc and resulted in users’ private data being compromised.

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Fortunately, there is an easy way to use a Raspberry Pi cluster to create your own private cloud system. Instructables and Pi My Life Up both offer detailed instructions on how to create your own personal cloud storage network using a Raspberry Pi. The steps are slightly different, but both methods are based on the open source cloud platform ownCloud.

ownCloud is cloud server software that allows you to share and sync data across multiple platforms while protecting that data. It enables global collaboration but also acts as a watchdog, monitoring and controlling who has access to prevent unwanted breaches. It is designed to bring together connectivity tools that make it easier to store and access data across multiple devices, with increased security that helps protect your information from those who want to access it.

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Are you interested in having your own website? Maybe you have a blog, own a small business, or need to maintain an online portfolio. Whatever the case, there are several ways you can go about it. You can pay for an all-in-one service like Squarespace, or split the hosting and development services between two different companies like WordPress and Siteground. But you actually don’t have to pay for a host at all. You can use a Raspberry Pi cluster to host your own personal web server. This allows you to host multiple websites using your own hardware, so you don’t have to pay other companies to use them.

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There are various services you can use to achieve this. Tom’s Hardware has an excellent guide that walks you through all the steps of setting up a web server using the open source Apache2 HTTP server on your Raspberry Pi. Alternatively, you can use the Amazon Web Services Applications, which offer a wide range of free and paid applications to host, support and scale your website. AWS itself has a guide with step-by-step instructions for setting it up on a Raspberry Pi. Both methods work; It’s just a question of whether you prefer the freedom of an open source program or whether you prefer Amazon’s security, scalability, and broad network of tools.

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Raspberry Pis aren’t exactly high-end gaming computers, but they are surprisingly capable servers for network gaming, as long as the game itself isn’t too demanding. Most modern games have public networks that allow you to play online with your friends, but private networks also offer benefits. Stability and faster loading times are attractive benefits in certain retro games like Quake or Doom, but there are other games where you can see much broader benefits. One of the best examples of this is “Minecraft”. By setting up a private Minecraft server, you have full control over the game configurations and can build your own world together with your friends – a world that you cannot access at all from outside your network.

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Electro Maker provides instructions for setting it up on the Raspberry Pi. You’ll need to set up a Debian-based Linux operating system and do some tinkering with the console before downloading the Minecraft: Java Edition server from the game’s official website. However, it’s okay if “Minecraft” isn’t your thing. There are also instructions for downloading a “Quake” and an “Assault Cube” if you’d rather have a more traditional party-style LAN gaming session.

Smart home automation is incredibly convenient. It is becoming increasingly popular as the technology that makes it possible is cheaper and easier for manufacturers to produce. Automatic lights, smart thermostats, and home-brewing coffee pots have become so common that we’re no longer surprised to find them in our friends’ and neighbors’ homes. Smart home speakers such as Amazon’s Echo Dot or Google’s Nest are often used to cope with these tasks. These are good enough for most smart homes as long as the owner combines them with compatible off-the-shelf products, but they don’t always work well with some of the more esoteric DIY automation that can be run by a Raspberry Pi.

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If you’re the type of person who likes to create your own automations or download open source software from DIY developers, using a Raspberry Pi cluster to manage your automations may be more suitable to avoid compatibility issues. Smart platforms like Uber Home and Home Assistant can run on a Pi and be used to control your automations. Running them on a cluster allows you to manage a variety of different automation tasks simultaneously without fear of experiencing the same processing bottleneck as a single-board system.

Another practical use for a Raspberry Pi cluster is to set up a file sharing network. Instead of uploading and downloading files to a shared cloud, networked computers can share files directly, saving time, storage space and bandwidth. There are several ways to make this connection using the Pi Cluster. Samba is one of the better options. This is free software based on the SMB (Server Message Block) network protocol that allows you to connect multiple computers by turning your Raspberry Pi into a NAS (Network-Attached Storage) unit. This offers lower operating costs and is arguably much safer than using third party services. Better yet, Samba is compatible with all versions of DOS, Windows, OS, Linux and several other platforms. This means you can share files across all your devices, even if you own both Mac and PC computers and run a Linux-based operating system on your Pi cluster.

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Pi My Life Up provides detailed instructions on how to turn your Raspberry Pi into a Samba server. All you need is your Raspberry Pi cluster with a hardline connection to your router and a sufficiently large external hard drive with its own power supply. You can then create a shared directory that all networked computers can access.

Digital media has become more and more important over the years. Movies, TV shows, music, e-books, audiobooks, comics, podcasts and more can be stored as digital files that take up no physical space while providing the same quality as CDs. However, these can take up a lot of space on your computer and constantly downloading, transferring and deleting data from multiple devices can be tedious. A much better solution is to have a single networked media server that you can access from any connected device – and that’s exactly what you can do with a Raspberry Pi cluster.

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There are a few programs that allow you to do this, such as Stremio and PlayOn, but the most popular option is probably Plex. It’s easy to create and share a Plex streaming library, and you can easily set one up on your Raspberry Pi cluster. All you need to do is download the Plex Media Server client app for free from the company’s website and then set it up on your cluster to turn it into a server. You can do this with the regular Raspberry Pi OS or deploy it using Docker. Then all you need is a large enough external drive to store your media, and you can stream it remotely to any device at any time using the login credentials!