A Flashy Raspberry Pi Family Location Tracker
There’s a recent post on r/RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS by u/hardlyAwordsmith and their moder/sci-fi looking wall mounted GPS location display. It’s like building a Marauder’s Map or a Weasley family clock for your own home, with privacy and DIY spirit at its core.
What They Built (And Why It's so Surveillance State, But Made Cozy)
At the center of this project, u/hardlyAwordsmith uses a Raspberry Pi 5 running Node-RED to sort through data and story logic, with a connected Raspberry Pi Pico W controlling an array of about 150 glowing LED triangles on the wall that map to real-world areas.
Each family member installs the OwnTracks app on their phone. This app publishes live GPS coordinates to an MQTT broker hosted on the Pi. Node-RED then processes the location updates and determines which zones on the custom display should light up to represent where a particular person has moved without sending data off to a corporate cloud.
It’s rare to see a project that feels both practically useful and full-on whimsical. The decision to use LED triangles spread across a visual map turns something dry like coordinate tracking into something poetic and interactive. That’s exactly the kind of turn-key creativity that makes Raspberry Pi projects genuinely memorable.
What's Next?
Taking this a step further as the system begs to grow:
- Adding dynamic sound effects for movement. arrival and departures might be perfect white noise to blend into the background
This project proves that tracker tech doesn’t have to be expensive, invasive, or opaque—with a Pi, some LEDs, and good design, you own your own map of the world.
Wouldn’t it be cool to take this from ambient wall art to something interactive enough to sit on your desk?
