Advice for raspberry pi (basic)
Nick wrote 12/17/2025 at 07:00 • 0 pointsI am new to raspberry pi and have done a couple of projects with LEDs and OLED screens, but I wanted to get into using the pi to control real world stuff. Like program it to brew my coffee every morning or shut my fish tank light off every night. How do I connect the pi to electrical circuits around my house. (Hope that makes sense)
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the prefabbed modular HATs comunity is full of out of the box projects, but if you are more of a hands on and improvising than i would advise getting a breadboard and IC component kit. brush up on and or learn about component and circuit identification. we are surrounded by E-Waste so there's lose parts all around. relays are micro switches that use low voltage to control high voltage and can be found in many devices and or purchased for very little. they are a basic building block of automation. begin there. with AI going as it is, this is an excellent question to ask a Co-pilot.
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Buy WiFi power switches and lamps and use the RPi to control them over your WLAN. That way you also don't mess with mains voltages.
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Well I'd suggest joining a community like the official Raspberry Pi forum, outline your project and ask specific questions: Raspberry Pi Forums.
Right off the bat I can tell you that you cannot connect Raspberry Pi GPIOs directly to devices which necessitate power exceeding what the 5V or 3.3V GPIOs are able to provide (which are most if not all "real world stuff" devices, as you put it). An example that comes to mind would be a 12V pump. You need something in between, a relais, transistor circuitry, op amp, and so forth, plus a seperate power supply.
Hope that helps.
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