I build a lot of stuff just to learn new technologies but I don't always plan to pursue anything serious. Here are a few: A sensor attached to a barbell that u

I build a lot of stuff just to learn new technologies but I don't always plan to pursue anything serious. Here are a few: A sensor attached to a barbell that uses a gyroscope and accelerometer to analyze your form. I built a prototype using a Raspberry Pi and BerryIMU and it was cool to visualize the data. It was mainly just to learn more about the Raspberry Pi. An app to map the precise location of routers inside a building. I was learning about writing Android apps and mapping and this was a fun project. By accessing the list of nearby wifi networks and their strength, I could triangulate the location of the router and plot it on the map (visualized as a square that got smaller and smaller as you collected more data). A to-do list that was triggered by location. After learning about lat/lon and mapping from the previous project I thought it would be cool to geofence tasks. For example, I need to get milk so I put that on the list and when I get within a certain distance of any grocery store, I get a notification. Or if my task is to get cash, I get a notification when I get near to an atm. I used the Foursquare API for the location searching and did some calculation based on speed of travel to give more or less advance notice. I have dozens of these little projects I've done in the name of learning and eventually parts of them made it into larger projects.