By contrast, I have several Arduino boards sitting here, and never found a good use for them. For me the appeal of the Pi lies in the combination of low energy usage, low price, networking, and comparatively high computing power. Once you get over the "woah, wasting an entire computer just for [insert menial task]" barrier, it's simply incredible what this single component enables you to cook up on a whim. The Pi allows me to make things that are not yet (or will never be) available commercially.
However, I would not say this thing is necessarily useful for all hackers or nerds. It's only useful if you have ideas for small, self-built devices that require programmable intelligence. Take note that this is also fundamentally different from the stated purpose of the Pi, as stated by its manufacturer.
I lost track of this idea a few years ago, so the situation may have changed. But if it hasn't, I see the following options for you:
1) find a cloud-synced scale that offers an SDK or at least some way of retrieving the data from the cloud.
2) buy a low-cost digital scale, take it apart and see what you can do with a voltmeter and a soldering iron. At the very least, you should be able to hook into the raw analog weight data which you could feed to a Pi with an A/D board. The nicer solution would be to siphon off the digital value. Even in scales where one chip does everything you could still try to pick up data going to the LCD. However, that might require some epic cabling and soldering, not sure it's worth it.
3) cheesing it: hook up a networked camera and point it to the scale's display. You can do this with any old android phone and a remote webcam app. Have the software on the Pi (or some other computer) pull the image when you step on the scale, run OCR on it, write the value out to wherever you want.
Yes, in principle. If they are not obfuscating and/or encrypting their data, which is a big if. And you'd be bound to keeping that packet sniffer online forever, piping matching data to where you need it.
I had a conversation the other day about side projects. People would ask me what I did for side projects, since I have experience in software, electrical engineering, control systems, mechanical assemblies, etc.
My answer was generally that at my day job I got to write software to control electromechanical systems with a budget in the millions. What am I going to do on the side to compete with that?
Sound familiar? I'm guessing that a lot of your "I don't know what to do with it" is because even a cheap laptop, desktop, or tablet is so much easier to work with and has pretty much greater capability than the RPi that the latter just sits and gathers dust.
Oh, and if it helps, in addition to my RPi gathering dust, I also have a BeagleBone and about a dozen flavors of Arduino :-) At least I do some consulting work with Arduino code, so they get used a bit.
But recently I used one as an IRC bouncer, and another as a XBMC host.
Before that I just wanted to see how arch+dwm+emacs would feel on a 700MHz prev-gen. ARM CPU. Acceptable. I tried to underclock it down to my first desktop computer freq (p75), I've never seen linux run on such slow freq.
I also enjoyed the pre-compiled cross compiler so I could write factorial on my x64 machine and then deploy it on my rpi cluster of 2. None of this is amazing and no hard requirement on a pi (I could have done the same in VMs or with MIPS emulators but ... it would be more setup and less toying).
Impulse buy for most.
ps: One more major downer for me, hardware compatibility, too frail. SDCard would fail, usb would fail, first psu would not push enough amps ... It made you realize how the ATX desktops shielded you. And now I was at the point where I couldn't be sure of anything without researching wikis for hours. Again electricity.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Streaming-Med...
* ZNC for IRC connectivity * connected to backup server for incremental backups * connected to backup server for bittorrent downloads * media server streams bittorrent downloads to macbook * test web server * git server * owncloud or ftp server for sharing files * controls light switch via http->gpio * nes emulator through hdmi to tv with usb nes controller * ddclient for dynamic DNS of c1.jrcii.com on afraid.org * Run printer jobs/server * snort + snorby * web SDR * WPA2 cracker * in-room temp humidity to menubar and blinds * pet feeder/waterer * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXmCiaRc9XU * piphone
As for hardware projects... I've never had an idea for one I'd actually want or care for. Things like a lightbulb that flashes when you get a tweet, and that reads it out loud when you wave your hand infront of it... pet feeders... etc I can do without. Would be fun to build but I'm so busy these days I can only motivate myself to make time if I like the end product I'm building, too.
That said, they have been used in the past for various things - a simple SSH server, a networked webcam, a serial interface for my Atari ST, and I've even done some tinkering with a breadboard and the GPIO, so I have had some use out of them at least.
But It's good to know. The down-vote seems unnecessary.
The command-line interface for omxplayer is a bit verbose, so I wrote a basic wrapper in BASH, so all I need to do is type "play <url>" and the video will begin streaming after a 10-second buffer. I keep a Screen session open on the Pi so I can drop in and command it from anywhere. At any given point, that little Pi can be simultaneously playing 1080p video, while downloading another two videos in the background. Incredibly capable little devices!