The best part is, you can sharpen your Python programming skills with these fun yet challenging projects. Yes, it does, although it shouldn't be used in every project.

These project ideas are likely to get you interested in this amazing language. Best of all, you can sharpen your Python programming skills with these fun yet challenging projects.

author | Juan Cruz Martinez

translator | Liu Yameng Source | InfoQ

typesetting | Python programming time

Do you know that Python is called all-purpose programming language ?

Yes, it does, although it shouldn't be used in every project.

You can use it to create desktop applications, games, mobile applications, websites and system software. It is even the most suitable language for implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

So, over the past few weeks, I've collected some unique project ideas for Python developers. These project ideas are likely to get you interested in this amazing language. The best part is, you can sharpen your Python programming skills with these fun yet challenging projects.

Let’s take a look one by one.

1. Create software using voice commands GUI

Interaction Example - Original image from Unsplash

Today, huge progress has been made in the field of desktop application development. You can see many drag-and-drop GUI builders and speech recognition libraries. So why can't they be combined to create a user interface by talking to the computer?

This is a completely new concept and after some research I found that no one has tried to do this yet. Therefore, it may be more challenging than those mentioned below.

Here are some instructions for getting started with this project using Python. First, you need to use the following packages:

• Speech recognition library

• PAGE - Drag-and-drop GUI builder

• PAGE Documentation

• PAGE How it works Video

• Creating a login window using PAGE

Now, the idea is to do some voice commands Hard coding, for example:

Do you understand what I mean? It's very simple and straightforward to add more commands like this.

because this will be a minimum viable product (Minimum Viable Product, MVP) . So, if you have to hardcode a lot of conditional statements (for example, if...else), that's perfectly fine. After setting up these basic commands for

, it's time to test the code. Now, you can try building a very basic login form in a window. The main flexibility of the idea of ​​

is that it can be used for game development, websites and mobile applications. Even using the different programming language is possible.

2. AI Gambling Bot

Tennis Match - Image via Unsplash

Gambling is an activity in which people predict the outcome and are rewarded if they guess correctly. Over the past few years, there have been many technological advancements in the field of artificial intelligence or machine learning.

For example, you may have heard of programs like AlphaGo Master, AlphaGo Zero, and AlphaZero that can play Go (the game) better than any professional human player. You can even get the source code for programs like Leela Zero.

The point I am trying to make is that artificial intelligence is becoming smarter than us. This means it can better predict something by considering all possibilities and learning from past experience.

Let’s apply some supervised learning concepts in Python to create a AI gambling bot. To get started with this project, here are some libraries you'll need.

• pandas - Data analysis

• NumPy - Multidimensional arrays, matrices and mathematical functions

• scikit-learn - Machine learning

• XGBoost - Gradient Boosting

• Matplotlib - Drawing

• sea born - Statistical data visualization

• pickle - Python object serialization

first , you need to choose a game (such as tennis, football, etc.) to predict the outcome. Now search for historical match result data that can be used to train the model.

For example, tennis match data in .csv format can be downloaded from the tennis-data.co.uk website.

If you don't know about gambling, here's how it works.

• You can bet $10 on Roger Federer at odds of 1.3.

• If he wins, you will receive $10 (actual amount), plus $3 (profit).

• If he loses, you lose your money (for example, $10).

After training the model, we must calculate the confidence level (Confidence Level) for each prediction, understand the performance of the robot by checking the number of times the prediction is correct, and finally pay attention to the return on investment (ROI).

can download a similar open source AI gambling robot project developed by Edouard Thomas (https://GitHub.com/edouardthom/ATPBetting).

3. Trading Bot

Trading – Image via Unsplash The

trading bot is very similar to the previous project in that it also requires AI for predictions.

The question now is, can AI correctly predict stock price fluctuations?

Of course, the answer is yes.

Before we start, we need some data to develop a trading robot.

• Yahoo Finance - Get stock data

• Alpha Vantage - Real-time API for financial data

These resources from Investopedia may be helpful in training the bot.

• Trading strategies for beginners

• Only after passing these five steps can you trade

After reading these two articles, you will have a better understanding of when to buy stocks and when to sell stocks. This knowledge can be easily converted into Python programs to automatically make decisions for us.

You can also refer to this open source trading robot called freqtrade (https://github.com/freqtrade/freqtrade). It is built using Python and implements several machine learning algorithms.

4. Iron Man Jarvis (AI-based virtual assistant)

AI Assistant Interface - Image from Unsplash

This idea is taken from the Hollywood movie "Iron Man" series. The movie revolves around technology, robots and AI.

Here, Iron Man uses artificial intelligence to create a virtual assistant for himself. The program, called Jarvis, helps Iron Man complete everyday tasks.

Iron Man uses simple English to issue instructions to Jarvis, and Jarvis responds in English. This means that our program requires speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities.

recommends using these libraries:

• Speech recognition

• Text to Speech (TTS)

Now you can hardcode voice commands, for example:

You can also use Jarvis to perform many other tasks, for example:

• Set the alarm on your phone.

• constantly checks the home security cameras and notifies if anyone is waiting outside. You can add more features like face detection and recognition. It helps you understand who or how many people are out there.

• Open/close the room's windows.

• Turns the light on/off.

• Automatically reply to emails.

• schedules tasks.

Even the founder of Facebook "Mark Zuckerberg" (Mark Zuckerberg) uses Jarvis as a side project.

5. Monitor a website for upcoming artist concerts

Tickets - Image via Unsplash

Songkick is a very popular service that provides information about upcoming concerts. Its API can be used to search for upcoming concerts by:

• Artist

• Location

• Venue

• Date and time

You can create a Python script that uses Songkick's API to check for a specific concert every day. Finally, send yourself an email whenever there is a concert.

Sometimes Songkick will even display a "Buy Tickets" link on their website. However, this link can go to different websites for different concerts. This means that even if we leverage web scraping, it will be difficult to automate ticket purchasing.

Instead, we can simply display the "Buy Tickets" link as it is in our application for manual operation.

6. Automatically renew free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority that provides free SSL certificates. However, the problem is that the certificate is only valid for 90 days. After 90 days, you must renew.

I think this is a great scenario for automating with Python. We can write some code to automatically renew the website SSL certificate before it expires.

Check out this code on GitHub (https://github.com/jaygreco/PA_SSL_AutoRenew) for inspiration.

7. Identifying Individuals in Crowds

Face Recognition - Author's Photo

Today, governments have installed surveillance cameras in public places to improve the safety of citizens. Most of these cameras are only used to record video, and forensic experts must manually identify or track individuals.

What if we created a Python program to identify each person in the camera in real time? First, we need access to the national ID database, but we may not have access to it.

So, an easy option is to create a database containing records of family members.

You can then use a face recognition library (https://pypi.org/project/face-recognition/) and concatenate it with the output of the camera.

8. Contact Tracing

Contact Tracing App - Image via Unsplash

Contact tracing is a method of identifying all people who have come into contact with each other within a specific time period. It is mostly used in pandemics like COVID-19 or HIV. Because there is no data on who is infected, we cannot stop its spread.

Python can be used for contact tracing with a machine learning algorithm called DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise).

Since this is just an affiliate project, we can't get any official data. For now, it's best to use Mockaroo to generate some actual test data.

You can check this article (https://towardsdatascience.com/contact-tracing-using-less-than-30-lines-of-python-code-6c5175f5385f) to learn about the specific code implementation.

9. Automatically move files from one folder to another

Nautilus File Manager for Ubuntu - Image uploaded by the author

This is a very basic Python program that always monitors a certain folder, whenever a file is added Whenever it comes to the folder, it checks its type and moves it to the specific folder accordingly.

For example, we can track our downloads folder. Now when a new file is downloaded it automatically moves it to another folder based on its type. The

.exe file is most likely a software setup program, so move it to the Software folder. Instead, move the pictures (png, jpg, gif) in the "Images" folder.

In this way we can organize different types of files for quick access.

10. Collect career path related videos from YouTube

YouTube homepage - Image from Unsplash

Create an application that accepts the names of career skills we need to learn.

For example, to become a web developer, we need to learn:

• CSS3

• JavaScript

• Backend languages ​​(PHP, Node.js, Python, ASP.NET, or Java)

• Bootstrap 4

• WordPress

• backend framework (Laravel, Codeigniter, Django, Flask, etc.)

• and so on.

After entering the skills, there will be a "Generate Career Path" button. It guides our program to search YouTube and select relevant videos/playlists based on each skill. If there are many similar skill videos, then it will select the video with the most views, comments, and likes.

The program then groups these videos based on skills and displays their thumbnails, titles, and links in the GUI.

also analyzes the duration of each video, aggregates it, and tells us how long it will take to learn that career path.

Now as a user we can watch these videos step by step and become a master of this profession.

Conclusion

Challenge yourself with these unique programming projects that will keep you active, improve your skills, and help you explore new possibilities.

Some of the project ideas I mentioned above can also be used as your graduation project.

It's time to show off your creativity using the Python programming language and turn those ideas into something you're proud of.