... build a smart boot device that provides a bunch of different CD images for BIOSes that don't do USB boot well

... build a safe password keeper that looks like a HID device

... do something interesting with USB-based gamepads to map those to keyboard keys for playing old DOS games

... make a connected USB storage device that offers some sort of additional sync services for the data stored on it (maybe over wifi?)

... make a network adapter that also acts as a firewall, or possibly links to tor/vpn/etc

... Something something MIDI over USB

> ... make a connected USB storage device that offers some sort of additional sync services for the data stored on it (maybe over wifi?)

There used to be a KS funded case built around a Pi and an HDD that would act as an external storage when plugged to a USB port and would work as Kodi based media player once booted and connected to an HDMI port.

If anybody knows if this can be done DIY style with minimal cable mess I am all ear :).

edit: ah ! https://geekworm.com/blogs/raspberry-pi/how-to-add-extra-sto...

> ... build a smart boot device that provides a bunch of different CD images for BIOSes that don't do USB boot ...

There’s an Android app for that, it’s one of the biggest things I miss after switching to the iPhone.

That's awesome. Do you recall the name?

The last time i checked it needed gadget kernel driver support and root, a showstopper for me...

Apart from that, great concept: load your 5+ cd images onto your 64+ gb android and be done (win10, ubuntu, debian, grml, kali, bios update cd image, etc) and forget about your usb drive collection...

I thought modern android required the gadget driver anyway? I’m pretty I was able to use it without root but it was (supposedly) less reliable without it.

Once I didn't have any USB sticks handy and didn't know about DriveDroid, so I used Servers Ultimate to host a TFTP server so I could PXE boot the netboot.xzy image from my phone to my laptop then download+install Arch Linux.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icecoldapp...

> build a smart boot device that provides a bunch of different CD images for BIOSes that don't do USB boot well

There are a few of those around.

http://isostick.com/

http://www.zalman.com/contents/products/view.html?no=212

http://iodd.kr/wordpress/product/iodd-2531/

Nice examples. I suppose you could hang a Raspberry Pi on your smartphone, and have say a Kali machine on it. Though you can also run Kali on Android.

> ... build a safe password keeper that looks like a HID device

Does anyone know if any such similar devices are already available? Whether based on an RPi or not?

So you can add GPIO to your computer with lots of preprocessing power.

Wow. What a good summary. Should be the heading. :-)

Say you are a mac user and want a portable Linux environment to play with that has GPIO? (That you can use on a plane)

You want to run a secure off line personal Certificate Authority (a Pi Zero would probably be enough and can work in the same way)

It can also be any other type of USB device, e.g. a HID device (keyboard/mouse/joystick) you can dream up loads of interesting things to do with this

I use a 3A+ for this. Works great, uses a lot less power, and is smaller.

The power draw is better with the new bootloader (lets the whole USB stack drop into low power mode)

Also this is USB-C native for all the mac book folk out there that hate to carry all those adapters

A debug port for an embedded device that looks like a UART and a MTP mount of the filesystem?

In the Nerves project (Elixir thing for embedded linux) it is used to be able to power, SSH to the device and push new firmware changes without needing to reimage the SD card. Already used that a lot with the zero and 3A.

Part time “HPC”. Lots of bandwidth in usbc and probably just enough compute to use it. Testbedding comes to mind.

Thanks for the Answers!