You might be yearning for a computer you would be able to use for work-from-home (WFH) purposes. For example, perhaps you already have such a computer but it no longer meets your specific needs, or you would appreciate having a secondary desktop on your WFH desk.
In any case, you might not have realized that a Raspberry Pi with Raspberry Pi OS installed on it can serve as the brain of a DIY work computer.
How to Set up a Raspberry Pi for Work-from-Home Use
In order to boost the work productivity while working from home, you can set up Raspberry Pi with your home based desktop by following these steps
1. Connect a Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse to the Pi
For example, The Pi Hut can provide you with not only a high-definition monitor but also the official Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kit. This contains a Raspberry Pi 4 unit as well as a keyboard, a mouse, a power supply, and cables.
2. Set up Wi-Fi Connectivity
If you already have a desktop computer, you can actually use this to set up wireless networking on the Pi. Alternatively, after burning Raspberry Pi OS to the SD card you use with this Pi, you could edit a file on that card’s boot partition before you initially boot the Pi.
If all of this is starting to come across as worrying technical to you, rest easy; the official Raspberry Pi website has the easy-to-follow instructions you need for this particular stage.
Unique Raspberry Pi Uses
A Powerful Web Browser
This browser can be the free, open-source application Chromium. After using the Pi to load this up, you could log into the relevant website to check your emails.
Similarly, you can access productivity apps on the Pi by heading to the Microsoft Office website and — using login details of a Microsoft account — loading free, cloud-based versions of such esteemed Microsoft Office apps as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
The Google-made alternatives — Docs, Sheets, and Slides — also work well in a web browser.
Raspberry Pi a Machine for Videoconferencing
To do that, you need to ensure that the Pi can produce audio, take in audio, and enable people to see you on camera.
The first of those boxes can actually be surprisingly easy to tick, and necessitate little more than plugging headphones into the Pi’s audio jack.
Meanwhile, you can add audio input to a Raspberry Pi by inserting a USB microphone into it. The same plug-and-play approach can work well for adding a camera, such as a USB webcam.
Naturally, you will need some video conferencing software as well. Example include but are not limited to Zoom and Google Hangouts, since they can be used in a web browser.
Also Read: Video on Demand vs. Live Streaming
What other Raspberry Pi Creations might you Need?
This will depend on what your home-based work entails. However, TechRepublic has shared a few ideas for useful devices you could make with a Raspberry Pi.
Conclusion
By following these steps, you could assemble, say, a Wi-Fi extender that strengthens your Wi-Fi coverage, or a wall-mounted digital calendar that syncs with Google.
