From DIY weather and radio stations to a distro-hopping machine, there’s no shortage of fun projects you can build with a Raspberry Pi. That said, many of these ideas require some extra devices, sensors, or HATs for maximum efficiency. Having built dozens of practical, cool, and downright deranged SBC projects over the years, here are some devices I always carry with my Raspberry Pi.

5 Sensors, LEDs, and a bunch of circuit components

Don’t forget the breadboards

The Raspberry Pi SBCs aren’t the best for circuitry and robotics projects – that honor goes to inexpensive, low-power microcontrollers such as the Arduino series. But if you’ve already got a Raspberry Pi, there are a couple of accessories that can give you a leg up on electrical circuits.

For instance, you can use the GPIO pins on your Raspberry Pi SBC to design projects involving resistors, LEDs, and displays. Likewise, you’ll require a sensor or HAT to turn your Raspberry Pi into a temperature, pressure, and humidity monitoring system. For hardcore tinkerers who seek to add transistors, capacitors, and other complex components to their projects, I also recommend grabbing a breadboard to interface the extra modules and avoid bricking your SBC.

• Allecin Breadboard and Jumper Wires Kit

  $14 at Amazon

• Raspberry Pi Sense HAT

  $54 at Amazon

• AIMELIAE TEA5767 FM Stereo Radio Module

  $18 $19 Save $1

  $18 at Amazon

4 Camera module

Great for newcomers, even better for hardcore users

Since many popular Raspberry Pi projects hinge around cameras, I always keep a spare module in my tinkering bag. On the beginner side, you’ve got time-lapse camera setups to record changes in an object over time. For folks with newer mainline Raspberry Pi boards, you can leverage your camera module in a full-on surveillance system capable of sending alerts upon detecting motion in the feed.

Heck, you can even outfit your miniature experimentation machine with an IR camera to add night-vision capabilities to your NVR setup. And if you’re more of a drone enthusiast, you can already guess the perfect device for recording footage on your Raspberry Pi-powered quadcopter.

• innomaker Raspberry Pi Camera Module

  $11 at Amazon

• Arducam 4K 8MP IMX219 Autofocus USB Camera Module

  $39 at Amazon

• ELP Wide Angle USB Camera Module for Raspberry Pi

  $75 at Amazon

3 PCIe to NVMe adapter

This one’s only for Raspberry Pi 5 owners

You’d often find me whining about the underwhelming specs of the newest Raspberry Pi here on XDA. While I wish the RPi 5 had a PCIe 3.0 interface, the Gen 2.0 port opens up several connectivity options for the SBC. Typically, you’ll use an adapter board to interface an SSD to your tinkering companion, though that’s far from your only option.

If you want to enhance the SBC’s machine learning prowess, you can grab the official AI Kit and pair it with a Frigate-based NVR setup. Then there’s the option to connect a full-on graphics card to the board, though you’ll have to be a DIY maestro to pull off this wacky experiment.

2 Spare microSD cards

An inexpensive way to test different operating systems

Distro-hopping can be a fun hobby when you want to mess around with different flavors of Linux. Rather than restricting you to a live distro or forcing you to set up multiple partitions on an SSD/HDD, SBCs like the Raspberry Pi series let you cycle between microSD cards.

Given their low price tags, you can pick up several microSD cards for the same cost as an SSD. If distro hopping doesn’t suit your fancy, you can even use your arsenal of microSD cards to store your favorite projects. Heck, I use as many as ten cards in my Raspberry Pi workstation, with most of them featuring entirely different operating systems.

1 Portable monitor with keyboard/touchscreen

Great for every DIY enthusiast

When I received the Elecrow CrowView Note 14 back in January, the first experiment I performed with it involved putting together a Raspberry Pi-flavored laptop. While I had to scour the Linux landscape for the perfect distro, the result exceeded my expectations on all fronts except the battery life.

The best part? Having a portable monitor with a built-in keyboard and battery makes it a lot easier to work on other DIY projects. Whether it’s testing your favorite emulation platforms or configuring an obscure OS, a device that combines a monitor with a keyboard is the best quality-of-life accessory you can grab for your Raspberry Pi.

Building a powerful Raspberry Pi workstation with useful peripherals

If you’re still looking for cool devices you can pair with a Raspberry Pi, I’ve got a couple of other recommendations. A 3D printer is a great investment for DIY lovers who want to create their own accessories for the Raspberry Pi. Likewise, microcontrollers like the Arduino family are fairly useful for advanced projects, and you can even program them with your SBC. USB hubs can also come in handy, and I’d especially recommend picking up an active cooler for newer Raspberry Pi models.