Start-ups contribute £196 billion to the UK economy every year, and the tech industry in particular is booming.
Even the most successful tech entrepreneurs will have started out somewhere — possibly with their own DIY projects. DIY isn’t always the quickest or most effective way to get a job done, but it’s often the most informative and rewarding.
You no longer need a degree to get started with technology, and though it’s always a good idea to manage your money, you shouldn’t need to budget for hugely expensive equipment either.
Here are five fun tech project ideas to spark your creativity.
Add Wi-Fi to your camera
Are you a budding photographer? If a DSLR camera is your tool of choice, you could be taking great shots but forgetting to manually transfer them from your memory card to your computer. Why not try giving your digital camera a Wi-Fi upgrade?
All it takes is the right SD card and a little setup work, and in doing so you’ll learn about backing up your snaps and speeding up your editing process.
Create your own image hosting service
Hosting your photos and videos on third-party platforms such as Google or social media sites may be convenient, but you give up a lot of control too. There are ways to set up your own galleries however and still share them on the internet.
There’s lots of different tools out there to help you do so and going solo will teach you more about web hosting and everything that goes with it.
Craft your own arcade
If you’re interested in learning more about software, creating your own arcade is a fun way to do it. You could try turning your old PC into a retro gaming machine, or even get creative with carpentry and put together an arcade cabinet out of old furniture.
Make a dashboard camera
We’ve all seen some of the amazing moments captured by dashboard cameras, and they can come in handy in accidents too. You could grab an old smartphone to get started, and even add live stream capability with the help of a small programmable computer.
This is a project you can start small with and expand on as you grow more confident, and you’ll pick up lots of knowledge about electronics along the way.
Build a private cloud storage service
Whether you want full control over your own files, or you’d simply like to know more about cloud services, creating your own cloud storage service isn’t too hard to do.
With a little extra knowledge on file sharing, networking and relevant apps, you can build your own sync and backup service in no time.
Have you worked on any fun DIY tech projects? Let us know in the comments below.