PiTunnel connects your Raspberry Pi to the world

Raspberry Pis are usually very lonely. These tiny, single-board computers sit quietly under desks or inside 3D printed cases, staring wistfully into the far distance while waiting for a little attention. Now, thanks to a side project by a programmer named Dimitri Raftopoulos, an app called PiTunnel ensures your Pi need not be alone anymore.

The project exposes your Pi to the outside world securely. With a few commands on your local Pi, you can access your little computer via a terminal or the web. A unique feature includes the ability to bring up a command prompt through your browser. It’s similar to other projects like Dataplicity but Raftopoulos has added a few of his own tweaks.

“When I first discovered Raspberry Pi while doing a personal project, I was quite surprised at how little was available for easy remote access to projects you build, so I made PiTunnel,” said Raftopoulos. He has done a great deal of software engineering for commercial embedded computers.

The project is self-funded.

“Other services are really focused on Remote Terminals. Although PiTunnel has that feature, it’s more about Tunneling, which means you can access any network service that’s running on our Raspberry Pi from anywhere in the world, whether it’s http or some other custom protocol, without bothering to setup complex network routing or static IPs,” said Raftopoulos. “You can run any service you want over it, and make it accessible to everyone in the world or secure it just for your own access.”

Thanks to PiTunnel your lonely little computer can act as a remote monitoring station, a security system, and even a remote web server. It’s a cool way to make your sad little Pi happy again.