Bring back radio knobs and home intercoms with these Raspberry Pi builds (October 2 - 4)

Published Oct 2, 2026, 6:13 PM EDT Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses. With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, in 2017, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published during his time there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more. In his free time, Patrick loves to create projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also the media director at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. Are you looking for some fun hardware-based projects to try with your Raspberry Pi this weekend? Well, then I have the projects for you! Today, I'll show you how to make an internet radio with a tuning knob, a home intercom system, as well as a backyard scoreboard for get togethers. Internet radio with tuning knob Just because we live in 2026 doesn't mean we can't act like it's 1996 I still remember going into restaurants with my parents when I was a kid and there being jukeboxes to listen to music on. I also remember normal radios in stores sitting on a shelf playing the local radio station with tuning and volume knobs. With a Raspberry Pi, you can actually recreate that old experience but using new technology. Instead of tuning through AM/FM radio stations, you can have your Raspberry Pi "tune" through internet radio stations. The build is honestly quite simple: it takes just a Raspberry Pi, some potentiometers, and an analog-to-digital converter. You start the build with Raspberry Pi's official internet radio tutorial. It walks you through step-by-step for building your internet radio portal. The station knob from the tutorial will select preset URLs, so it's a bit different than how FM tuning worked in the past. However, there's another project called the Raspberry Pi Retro World Radio that could be really fun to follow, too. But, since it "tunes" through preset URLs, you can customize what it plays making it an ideal option for kids to use. From there, you can attach a display to the Pi, like a small OLED panel, and have it show the "frequency" it's tuning to. You can have this display whatever you want based on the selected channel, and it can be a fun way to customize the experience. Room-to-room intercom Easily tell the house when dinner's ready Credit: Martin Mander | YouTube When I was a kid still living at home, my parents bought a fixer-upper house that had a built-in intercom system from the 1980s installed. I wanted it to work so bad, but we never could get the Nutone working. However, these days you don't need in-wall wiring or expensive systems to add a room-to-room intercom to your house. All it takes is a few Raspberry Pi systems and some tinkering ability. You'll start with talKKonnect, which is an open source headless Mumble client designed to be used as an intercom/walkie-talkie. It utilizes the GPIO pins to add things like buttons and dials. You'll want to start with a Mumble server with a minimum of two Pis with microphones, speakers, and a network connection (preferably wired over Ethernet, but Wi-Fi works well too). Definitely follow the talKKonnect installation guide though, as it walks you through everything step-by-step, including using USB audio and microphones. This weekend, start off with just two Pis talking to each other from separate rooms. Once you have that set up, adding additional Pis is trivial. Before you know it, you'll have the whole house wired together for talking to each other at the press of a button. Backyard game scoreboard Who's really winning that cornhole game? Credit: Mike Tan | Hackster If you're like me, then you're already the resident geek (I mean, you're reading How-To Geek after all). So, why not put that geekiness to use and build a backyard game scoreboard with a Raspberry Pi? The build centers around the rpi-rgb-led-matrix project, which connects RGB LED matrix panels to the Raspberry Pi. Depending on what Pi you're using, you can actually run quite a few of these panels at one time to make a pretty large scoreboard. You can then take and program the Pi to display whatever graphic you want on the screen. I would wire up some buttons to GPIO pins to increase the score incrementally depending on what game you're playing. You'll probably want at least four buttons, one to increase each team's score, and one to decrease each team's score. If you want to get more fancy, then I would connect another type of display to the Pi so you can see it from behind and a few more buttons to be able to select what game you're playing and have some logic on the Pi change what the displayed graphic is and what the default scoring options are. Raspberry Pis are best suited for hardware projects, not homelab uses While the Raspberry Pi was king of the homelab world for a long time, that reign has come to an end, and the Pi is returning to what it does best—hardware projects. It's perfect for creating an internet radio, outdoor scoreboard, and other similar types of things. So, if you have a Raspberry Pi that was pulling homelab duty and was recently replaced by a more capable system, try out a hardware project. Whether you're building one of the projects I outlined above, or another more complicated project, the Raspberry Pi is the perfect choice for your next build.