This was a fun, hacky project that I worked on in my free time last year, to finally put my Raspberry Pi to use. If you're not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, it's basically a small Linux computer on a board just bigger than a credit card (see picture below).
The project included a Raspberry Pi, a number pad, a speaker, and an internet connection to together make a sort-of butler application. How it works is that you enter a number sequence on the number pad, press Enter, and then it will speak the weather forecast for the day through the speaker, or speak my schedule for the day from Google Calendar, or speak any other random pre-programmed lines like "That was easy!" or "Welcome to Jason's apartment. I am Timmy, the butler", or play Pandora radio. A demo video is shown below.
It was really nice to be able to enter a code and listen to the weather forecast and my schedule for the day while I got ready to leave my apartment in the morning. I would enter the code and then listen as I tied my shoes or got some breakfast out of the fridge, and then decide if I needed a jacket or if I needed to bring something for a meeting later. It was also very convenient as a Pandora Radio player in the living room, thanks to a pretty good sounding speaker.
The code is up on GitHub, at https://github.com/jasonrchaves/RaspberryPiButler. On that page, the README describes the Python scripts that make the application, and the other programs such as pianobar and gcalcli that were installed on the Pi for accessing Pandora and Google Calendar.
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