Turn your Raspberry Pi into a photo booth and more this weekend (August 14 - 16)

Published Aug 13, 2026, 11:00 AM 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, six years ago, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published there 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 a youth pastor at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. Are you ready for this weekend's Raspberry Pi project roundup? Well, ready or not, here are three projects you can try that take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to complete, including building your very own photo booth. Build your own file-upload and link-sharing service with Zipline Have you ever wanted to send a simple file link to a friend, but didn't want to have to upload it to a public site like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Imgur? Well, Zipline was made just for you then. This simple web app is built to act as a self-hosted file upload and link sharing service. You can upload a file directly through the web interface, via API, or through services like ShareX or Flameshot. It also supports Apple Shortcuts and other clients, making it a pretty well-rounded service overall. Zipline doesn't require a lot of power to run, making it perfect for running on your Pi. Deploying only takes a few minutes with Docker Compose, as the stack just has Zipline itself and PostgreSQL. While Zipline can function in a local-only capacity with IP address links, it is best used behind a reverse proxy or with something like Cloudflare Tunnels. This is because that would give Zipline a publicly accessible URL so friends and family could access the files without having to be on your network. So, if you're tired of uploading every little screenshot, video, or document to Google or another cloud service that's harvesting your data, take back control and deploy Zipline in your homelab. It's easy and puts you in the driver's seat of privacy when it comes to quickly sharing files. Be the life of your next party with a Raspberry Pi-powered photo booth All you need is a camera, display, and Raspberry Pi to make this iconic experience come to life I remember going into the photo booth at Chuck E. Cheese as a kid with both friends and family alike. I know there are other photo booth experiences out there, but that's mine. The thing is, I don't go to Chuck E. Cheese anymore, but I do think photo booths are super fun. It's actually relatively easy to build your own photo booth with a Raspberry Pi. This type of project definitely requires a bit more effort than just spinning up a Docker container, but it'll be well worth it if you've been missing this nostalgic activity. You'll start with the PhotoboothProject on GitHub, which is designed with Raspberry Pis in mind. It's made to turn a camera and display into a self-contained event photo booth. It has everything that you'd expect from a production photo booth, including a live preview, countdown, individual or collage photos, filters, a local gallery, and even optional printing. The best part about the PhotoboothProject is it doesn't require any cloud services or connectivity to function. It will run entirely offline, meaning you can bring the photo booth setup anywhere you want and it will just function like normal. To set up the PhotoboothProject, you'll need a Raspberry Pi 3 or newer, a camera, and a display. It supports the official Raspberry Pi Camera Modules, as well as gPhoto2-compatible camera systems or webcams, depending on what quality you're wanting. There is a setup wizard that you can run, which installs the PhotoboothProject and all its dependencies on your Pi, configures permissions, and can even create a kiosk-mode startup function. Now's the perfect time to build a photo booth ahead of holiday parties, where I think the photo booth trend would really shine. Hot cocoa, pumpkins, leaves, and more would all make perfect props for holiday photo shoots in your very own photo booth. Create unique miniature movies with a stop-motion animation station Your MiniFig is the star Have you ever seen a stop-motion animation video? I'm sure you have, and if you're anything like me, then you've wondered how they were made. The thing is, stop-motion animation is actually fairly simple. All you need is a way to capture each frame and then stitch it into a video at the end. Just move the subject or props little by little each time you take a picture. Stop-motion animation isn't the same as time-lapse photography. With a time-lapse, the camera is taking a picture at a specified interval. With stop-motion, you're only taking a picture when you're ready for the next capture. This might mean a simple scene change only goes a few seconds between captures, and a more complex change might go minutes, hours, or days between captures. Just make sure the point of reference and camera position don't change too much scene to scene, or your stop-motion video will be pretty jarring. Building a Raspberry Pi-powered stop-motion rig is actually fairly simple. All you need is the Pi, a camera, and a way to trigger the capture. I'd recommend using a button wired to the GPIO pins of the Pi or a keyboard so you're not touching anything that could move the camera. From there, use software like FFmpeg to assemble the numbered stills that you capture into an MP4 and you're ready to go. This type of project will take some time to get right just on the hardware side of things. Figuring out how to properly position the characters for stop-motion is a completely different ballgame that takes years to master. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Brand Raspberry Pi CPU Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) Memory 2 GB With the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, you can create all kinds of fun projects, and upgrade gadgets around your home. Alternatively, install a full desktop OS and use it like a regular computer. Your Raspberry Pi is the perfect testing ground for a number of projects Let's take the photo booth project as an example, real quick. It can be a relatively simple project, with just a Pi, monitor, and webcam aimed at a wall. It can also be a complex project with a DSLR camera, full booth enclosure, printer to print out the pictures, and more. The Pi can be the central point of both styles of projects, but one takes a few hours to get running, and the other can take weeks to build. The great part is, the hardware stays relatively the same. You don't have to spend the time building the full project to know if you like it, and that's what's great about the Pi—it's customizable to what you want and need. So, take some time this weekend to deploy some new Raspberry Pi projects. They're a fun way to pass the time and tinker at the same time.