Single-board computers, or SBCs, are quite popular among students, enthusiasts, and developers who love to tinker with tech. One of the most common SBCs that most people use for this purpose is the Raspberry Pi. Right from the first generation of the Raspberry Pi, the computer has been used to run electronic projects that don’t require too many resources while occupying less space. Thanks to its modular and open-design solution, a Raspberry Pi can be used for several purposes, like making your home smarter, building a digital photo frame, and even automating your entire house. Someone even built their own smartphone using a Raspberry Pi more than a decade ago!

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The essence is that possibilities are endless. If you have a Raspberry Pi lying around at home, there are a ton of useful projects you can build with it. If you’re not sure where to begin, we’ve accumulated some of the best Raspberry Pi projects that can make your home more secure. These are projects that add value to your everyday life by allowing you to be stress-free. Moreover, you don’t even have to spend top bucks on the latest doorbell camera or smart home hub if you have a Raspberry Pi already. All you need is some additional components like sensors, cameras, and connectors. If that interests you, here are some cool projects to get your hands dirty and secure your home!

Smart doorbells are becoming increasingly popular since they add more security to your house. While you can pick one up from a variety of brands simply by heading to the nearest Walmart, that’s not fun, is it? Well, you can make your custom video doorbell with a Raspberry Pi, a camera, a speaker, and a few other components. The video by Hacker Shack portrays how you can assemble all the required components into a working circuit before programming the Raspberry Pi to send a notification to your smartphone every time the bell rings. Along with a notification, you will be sent a link to a video meeting where you can see the camera’s live feed outside your door. How cool is that?

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The circuitry can be tucked away inside a 3D-printed case to look more sophisticated. Every time someone presses the button on the doorbell and you join the video meeting, the LCD display attached to the Raspberry Pi shows them your video feed using your smartphone’s camera. Thankfully, Hacker Shack was kind enough to link to their GitHub repository for the code required to execute the project. Simply follow the instructions in the video carefully, and you should be able to build your smart doorbell in a couple of hours. It’s one of the most practical projects that will definitely come in handy for most people.

It’s vital for some individuals to always stay in ideal weather conditions. A few people may face difficulties breathing or staying in more humid environments for long durations, whether the temperature or humidity. Moreover, some regions in your house should not be too humid as it may ruin electronic devices. The same applies to temperature, too, especially during summer. If you want to keep constant track of the weather conditions inside your house, it’s best to build a weather station using a Raspberry Pi that can monitor the weather, humidity, air pressure, and air quality.

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These are all essential factors that determine the living conditions of any room or house. You can even use the device outdoors to gauge the wind speed, wind gusts, and precipitation in millimeters when it’s raining. Essentially, it can also behave like a rain gauge. The best part is that measuring all of these parameters on the Raspberry Pi is quite simple since all the sensors required for this project are easily available. All you have to do is plug them in and use the Python code mentioned on the Raspberry Pi website to set up your personal weather station at home. This is a good starter project for those who want to learn about interfacing different sensors with the SBC.

You may have security cameras outside your home on the porch, in your driveway, and probably at the back of the house. While these cameras can keep you safe, have you ever thought of installing a camera inside your home? If your office or a certain room in the house has sensitive information that you don’t want others to access, you can set up a Raspberry Pi motion detection camera to alert you every time someone enters the premises. It’s also a nice way to be alerted when your kids enter a certain section of the house you don’t want them to. It involves using a webcam, a rechargeable battery, and a Wi-Fi connection. Using SSH, commands are issued to the Raspberry Pi remotely via Wi-Fi.

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Then, all you have to do is set up your email ID. This is for the computer to send you the video file as soon as any sort of motion is detected. The best part is that you can use any cheap webcam lying around at home, so you don’t necessarily have to invest in a Pi camera or a specific accessory. The folks at Instructables have also provided steps for troubleshooting in case you get stuck somewhere in the process. It’s a nice project to build if you have a safe at home in one of the rooms and you want to monitor the area to keep it safe from intruders.

While we’re on the topic of cameras, what better way to enhance your existing security cameras with superpowers? We’re talking about facial recognition. Imagine a scenario where your security cameras can identify known faces so they stay completely normal when they detect you, your spouse, your kids, or any person with whom you’re familiar. However, if there ever comes an instance when they see someone they don’t recognize, they automatically notify you on your smartphone so you can take relevant action if required. Most security cameras have motion detection features, but that gets triggered when anyone walks into the frame. It isn’t ideal if you stay in a crowded locality or if you have multiple people staying at home.

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Building a facial recognition system on a Raspberry Pi can help solve this issue since the mini-computer can clearly differentiate between recognized faces and unfamiliar ones. The project used Python and OpenCV — an open-source vision library to carry out this task. Build the hardware, program the SBC, and train the camera to recognize members of your family. If your camera detects a stranger, you can set up the alerts to be delivered directly to your smartphone. This is an excellent way to enhance the security at home. Moreover, you can also link additional hardware to this setup and create automation like opening a door automatically when the camera sees a familiar face.

Once you start tinkering, the possibilities are endless!

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A full-blown security camera may be quite intimidating, especially when used indoors. However, if you still want to protect your house from intruders, consider building a burglar alarm using a Raspberry Pi. It’s one of the simplest projects you can make and even requires limited hardware in terms of both the Raspberry Pi board itself and the components you need to build the right setup. For instance, you only need the Raspberry Pi Pico and not the full-blown version. Additionally, a PIR sensor and a buzzer make up the rest of the breadboard when building the circuitry. Thanks to this, it’s also one of the most inexpensive projects to build on this list.

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Once you have all the components in place, you only need basic accessories like jumper wires, a hot glue gun, a power bank, and a couple of LEDs. The way it works is that the PIR or Passive Infrared sensor detects when anything obstructs its path. As soon as the PIR detects motion, it triggers the buzzer, which creates a loud alarm to alert you. Once you build the contraption, place it strategically in a location where it stays out of sight from an intruder. It helps that the Raspberry Pi Pico is already tiny, so you don’t have to put much effort to miniaturize the model. It’s also a good way to keep kids away from certain objects or areas within the house.

A smart door lock is a perfect companion to a smart doorbell. It’s a combination that completes your secure home ecosystem and makes your life much easier. While the doorbell shows you who is at the door, a smart lock makes it convenient for you to enter your house without ever worrying about physical keys. There may have been instances where you might have forgotten to carry your house keys with you. This is a massive inconvenience, as you have to wait for someone with a spare set of keys to show up. If you stay alone, you may even have to dial up a locksmith to break your door open. A smart lock saves you all that hassle.

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Just link an RFID card to the lock and keep it in your wallet. Every time you’re home, simply tap the card on the lock and your door will unlock. Of course, there are plenty of smart door lock brands selling multiple times of locks on Amazon. However, building your custom lock with a Raspberry Pi, an RFID reader, an electric strike, and a relay switch is a whole new experience. The best part is that you can link multiple RFID tags to the reader. So, if you stay with family or roommates, you can give each of them a card to enter the house.

Here’s a simple door and window opening alarm that you can set up to alert you every time someone opens a door or a window. Again, this is sort of a burglar alarm that’s more suited for entry points into your house. If you stay in an isolated area where trespassers may have easy access to your house windows, this is a good solution to keep yourself safe. Two magnets act as switches. One of the magnets goes on top of the One of the magnets goes on top of the door/window pane, while the other one needs to be stuck exactly below it on the door/window itself.

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When these magnets are nearby they complete the circuit and the buzzer attached to the Raspberry Pi starts outputting a blaring alarm. You can also program the Pi to send you an email notification whenever a door or window is opened. Since the mechanism is quite simple and the contraption doesn’t take up much space, you can use this trick to notify you not just when doors/windows are opened but even for cupboards, safes, etc., where you may have stored valuable items. Another use case could be to keep your kids or pets away from a certain section of the house.

Most people may already have a security camera outside their house that faces the driveway. While it captures all the movement near your house, it’s more of a surveillance system where you can either monitor the feed constantly or reference it later on in case of a mishap. The former isn’t practical, and the latter doesn’t really help with preventing an untoward situation. That’s where this car license plate recognition system built with a Raspberry Pi comes in handy. The idea is that every time a vehicle passes by or approaches your driveway, the camera will capture the license plate details and match them with an existing database that you provide.

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If the details match any of your car’s information, things will function normally. However, if the camera recognizes a vehicle that is out of the ordinary, you can program the Raspberry Pi to notify you instantly. You can take this a step further by setting it to open a boom barrier or a garage door when a known car approaches the driveway. This way, you won’t have to manually open the garage door every time or invest in an expensive garage door opener. The process is simple. Use the camera connected to the Raspberry Pi to capture a photo of the license plate, use OCR to extract the text, and match it with the database. 

If you’ve read Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, you’ll certainly know the reference ‘Open Sesame’ and what it means. Imagine how cool would it be if you could also unlock your door by saying a fancy phrase like that? Guess what? You can do exactly that if you have a Raspberry Pi, a microphone, and some spare time over the weekend. The Raspberry Pi voice-activated smart lock uses speech recognition to decipher what is being spoken. Once it detects a phrase that is the same as the one you’ve programmed, the mechanism will unlock the door.

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The best part is that the hardware isn’t too complex, and the software can be coded using Python libraries for speech recognition. This is an excellent solution for those who are visually impaired or handicapped since it limits your movement and solely relies on your voice. It can also be used as a cool party trick to show off to your friends. Moreover, you don’t necessarily have to use it for your main door. You can implement it on your bedroom door, wardrobe, or even a small closet, for that matter. While writing the code, ensure you enter the right phrase that you want to use to unlock the door. 

Monitoring your network for potential issues and security threats has become more important than ever. Internet scams and threats are through the roof, so setting up a network monitor for your home using a Raspberry Pi is an excellent way to put the mini computer to use. Apart from keeping you safe, this particular project requires very little extra hardware or peripherals, so it’s also easier to execute and light on your wallet. You just need to pick up a network switch, and the rest of the items required will probably be lying around at home already. Once you have everything in place, you just have to install and configure Wireshark to monitor your network in real time.

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You can get an overview of the packets being transferred while everyone at home uses the network. Apart from security, you can also use this system to figure out issues in your network or troubleshoot them. If you’re facing connectivity issues or low throughput, you can asses the stats on the network monitor to see which devices are consuming higher bandwidth, or if there is a problem with a certain IoT device.

Think of this project as an alternative to the burglar alarm. Instead of using an IR sensor to detect motion, you can repurpose a laser emitter as a tripwire. Essentially, anyone who passes the laser will cut through the beam, raising a flag for the Raspberry Pi, which will then send an alert. The alert can be in the form of a buzzer or alarm or a smartphone notification when you’re away. Assembling the Laser tripwire circuit on a Raspberry Pi isn’t too difficult since the required accessories and peripherals are quite basic. Of course, you need a laser emitter, a breadboard, some jumper cables, and a few LEDs.

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The required code to enable the detection is also provided, making the job a lot easier. As soon as the laser beam gets interrupted, the Raspberry Pi that’s connected to your home network — automatically triggers an email to the set email ID in the Python program. This way, you’re alerted of any intruder instantly. Ensure you strategically place the tripwire out of the vision of any potential intruder.

One of the things to know about the Raspberry Pi is that it doesn’t work too well by itself. You need a bunch of accessories, peripherals, and components to attach to it to extract the full functionality. However, some projects can be executed with the standalone SBC, thanks to software magic. One of them is the Raspberry Pi smart home hub. Instead of relying on external accessories to work, the smart home hub makes other smart devices work with it. You can link your smart lights, speakers, curtains, and whatnot by using the Raspberry Pi as a hub. This eliminates the need for purchasing an external hib — something that’s required for quite a few smart devices to function.

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The best part is that the smart hub also works with Apple HomeKit, so you can use your iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, and even HomePod to control all the devices that you connect to the hub. While there’s no hardware circuitry to be worried about, the process of installing Pi OS Lite and configuring it to work as a smart hub may seem slightly daunting for beginners. 

Follow the steps closely and you should have your completely homemade smart home hub ready to use!