5 unexpected things you can do with a $100 mini PC

Published Nov 5, 2026, 7:30 AM EST Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. A cheap or secondhand mini PC might not be powerful enough to run demanding games or large AI models, but you can use it for a lot more than just browsing the web or running common homelab services. There are plenty of things you can do with a mini PC that you might not have considered. Identify the birds near your home by their songs BirdNET-Go uses machine learning to recognize different species Have you ever wondered what type of bird it is that keeps making that strange call right outside your bedroom window at 5 AM every morning? Would you like to know what types of birds are found around your home? If so, your mini PC can help. BirdNET-Go is free and open-source software that can monitor audio from a connected microphone and use the BirdNET machine-learning model to identify different species of birds based on their songs. The BirdNET model turns the audio into spectrograms, which can then be compared to known bird calls. I have the software running on a Raspberry Pi, but it can run on Windows and Linux computers, including mini PCs. All you need is a suitable USB microphone that you set up to capture the audio from outside your home. I even set up a game that tests me on the bird calls to help me learn them more easily. Turn your mini PC into a guitar effects processor Guitarix can replace multiple pedals If you play the guitar, then you'll know that without any effects, an electric guitar can sound pretty dull. It's by using effects pedals such as distortion or delay pedals that you can get the classic electric guitar sounds that you recognize from popular songs. You can use a mini PC instead of physical guitar pedals to achieve the same sounds. Using a USB audio interface to connect the guitar to the mini PC, and software such as the free and open-source Guitarix, you can turn your computer into a virtual guitar amp and effects processor. There are simulations of effects such as reverb, chorus, and wah that you can use instead of buying the physical pedals. Even a cheap mini PC should be enough to provide real-time audio processing with relatively low latency, so that the sounds aren't playing a second after you hit your power chord. You'll still need to output the audio to headphones, a speaker, or an amp. Make your smart lights match what's on your TV in real time HyperHDR makes LED strips react to what's on screen Credit: Vigonotion You may have seen videos of TV setups that use smart lighting behind the TV that can match the colors of whatever the TV screen is currently displaying. When there's a big explosion, for example, the lights around the TV can change to oranges and yellows and then switch immediately to blues as the scene cuts to an ocean view. Often, you need to buy dedicated hardware such as a Philips Ambilight TV to achieve these effects, but with a mini PC and software such as HyperHDR, you can create a similar effect on a standard TV, using some addressable LED strips mounted behind your TV. HyperHDR analyzes the video and tells the LEDs which colors to display to match the content of the screen. The software is lightweight enough to run on a cheap N100 mini PC. Capturing video from smart TV apps can be problematic, and DRM-protected content can also cause issues. Get weather images directly from space SatDump can decode transmissions from satellites Credit: Corbin Davenport / GPS.gov Satellite weather images are a powerful way to see weather systems that can give a strong indication of upcoming conditions. These images are beamed to Earth from satellites using radio waves. Using a software-defined radio (SDR) and a suitable antenna, it's possible to capture these radio signals. By running software such as SatDump on your mini PC, you can then convert these signals into satellite images that you've received directly from space. The results depend on the quality of your receiver and antenna, the satellite you're capturing data from, and the operational status of the satellites. Build an in-house telephone system Asterisk lets you call between rooms using your own network Old-school landline telephones feel like ancient technology these days. Everyone is carrying around a powerful computer in their pocket, and making phone calls isn't even close to the top of the most common ways to use it. Phones can still have their place, however. With a mini PC, you can set up your own private telephone exchange that lets you place calls to compatible SIP phones around your home over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Software such as Asterisk can give each phone its own extension number, so you can make calls from room to room like your own hotel telephone system. You can even place a call to every phone in your home if you want to tell people to come down for dinner, for example. I have a SIP phone set up as a way to speak to my smart home's voice assistant, and Home Assistant can call the phone and play voice messages instead of sending notifications to my smartphone. Do more with your mini PC There are some excellent but well-trodden ways to use a mini PC, such as a small home office computer or running a Plex server. You don't need to stick to the same old options, however; there are plenty of weird and wonderful ways to put your mini PC to good use.