Pages with tag Raspberry Pi

A portable WiFI router/NAS/Docker using RaspAP on Raspberry Pi 4 with USB/SSD boot device RaspAP lets us build WiFi routers on Debian-based systems like the Raspberry Pi. It can easily build a complex WiFi router, while running other services at the same time.
Automatically load Live TV & DVR on the Raspberry Pi & HDhomerun & PLEX

This is update to an earlier video series over getting rid of the Cable TV box, and instead using the HDHomerun box from Silicon Dust. In this update we're shown how to set up a Raspberry Pi running Kodi so it automatically goes into the HDHomerun Kodi Extension. The result feels exactly like a regular Cable TV box at a fraction of the up-front cost and with zero ongoing cost.

Backup your pictures while traveling without lugging a large computer When traveling most of us take lots of pictures, and we might have multiple SD cards. So, we take them home with us, insert them into the computer, and what if the SD cards failed? There are expensive boxes from disk drive makers to automate backing up pictures from SD cards, but what if you're a DIY person, and want to do your own backup solution while saving a lot of money. Like many such projects, this one starts with a Raspberry Pi.
Build a DLP2000 based pocket projector with Raspberry Pi Zero The TI DLP2000 is a compact low power video projector, and while the evaluation board is meant for the Beaglebone it can be easily wired to a Raspberry Pi Zero W. This project, along with the custom adapter board, makes for a very compact video projector that's easily battery powered.
Build a multi-drive NAS with Raspberry Pi 4 and several USB drives In the back of my mind is the question of replacing my Drobo NAS with something more modern. I've had it for about 10 years and surely it's time to replace it. An idea that bounced around recently is a Raspberry Pi 4 with a cluster of USB drives. For example 4 terabyte external portable drives are less than $100 apiece, and would be a small low power disk storage solution. The question is whether a Raspberry Pi is the best file server choice, and whether to leave the drives connected and spinning all day long.
Build a security camera system with Raspberry Pi Zero and cheap webcams Implement a full security camera system supporting multiple cameras, with night vision, motion detection, uploading video to Google Drive, all built on the Raspberry Pi Zero platform. The Zero W makes a perfect security camera because of its small size, and the NO-IR camera supports night vision (with IR light source) in a slim case that directly supports the camera.
Build an inexpensive spectrometer, and an inexpensive IR video camera, using a Raspberry Pi Regular spectrometers and infrared video cameras cost a lot of money. With a little effort, and a certain camera module for the Raspberry Pi, it is possible to build both an inexpensive Spectrometer and an inexpensive IR camera. The spectrometer is easily calibrated using light sources with known characteristics - for example a fluorescent light bulb has an emission spectrum governed by the mercury vapor in the bulb, which can be used in calibration. For the IR camera, the presenter found a cheap IR camera module that connects to the Raspberry Pi camera port, and then used Motion Eyes to view the video stream.
Build your own inexpensive super-computing cluster with Raspberry Pi 3's Want a cheap super-computer farm? A Raspberry Pi cluster can pack a lot of computing power into a small space at low energy consumption. Single-board-computers like the Raspberry Pi 3 are inexpensive, consume a miniscule amount of power, run Linux making them instantly accessible by all programmers, and support all kinds of computing tasks, including supercomputing. The Raspberry Pi's themselves run off a USB power supply you might otherwise use to charge cell phones. Simply stack a bunch of them up, wire them to an ethernet switch, and you have a computing cluster on the cheap.
Build your own security camera system with Raspberry Pi and cheap webcams You can build a powerful and flexible motion sensing security camera system using open source software on a Raspberry Pi and similar single board computers. The key is the MotionEyeOS that neatly bundles everything you need into a Raspberry Pi image. Simply burn it to an SD card, attach cameras, boot the Raspberry Pi, and start configuring. It easily supports monitoring multiple cameras, which can be USB webcams, WiFi cameras, the Raspberry Pi camera, or other MotionEyeOS instances. I have an original-version Raspberry Pi (low CPU power) driving two cameras and it handles things just fine.
Competitive review, Raspberry Pi 4B versus Jetson Nano Both the Jetson Nano and Raspberry Pi 4 are new for 2019, and both have powerful specs. This review compares the two to see which is useful for what kind of project. Obviously the Nano costs a lot more, and has a huge edge in GPU as meant for AI projects.
Creating a Docker Swarm with Raspberry Pi Zero's for easy cluster computing

Docker is a powerful basis for cloud computing especially if you use Docker Swarm's. This tutorial shows how to autoscale Docker images over a cluster of inexpensive Raspberry Pi Zero computers. It's an interesting way to learn about Docker and using Docker Swarms. The example shows autodeployment of Node-RED instances to individual Pi Zero's which is raises interesting ideas in my mind.

A downside to this example is the laborious setup. Each Pi Zero must have a customized boot SD card created. Seems to me that marrying this idea with the "Cluster HAT" hardware might be easier to manage, since you don't create a customized SD card for each machine in the cluster.

How to Boot a Raspberry Pi 4 or 400 from a USB drive The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive Linux computer that, by default, boots from a micro-SD card. While this is great for experiments, those using it in a production mode need reliability. The best choice is booting from a regular USB drive instead.
How to back up your Raspberry Pi SD card, or copy it to another (larger?) Raspberry Pi SD card SD Cards aren't exactly the most reliable of data storage devices. What happens if you've put hundreds of hours of work into a Raspberry Pi system, it's all on your SD Card, and the card craps out. Have you saved your work? Or maybe you need to move to a larger SD Card because you've run out of space. Or maybe you want to duplicate the card to have additional systems. These tasks are pretty easy, but not intuitively obvious. It'll take some time at the command line, but fortunately the commands are easy.
Inexpensively stream your MP3 collection with Raspberry Pi and Pi MusicBox Why pay megabucks to buy a commercialized music streaming gizmo that requires a monthly fee? You may already have the MP3 files, and with the right software a simple computer like the Raspberry Pi is sufficient to stream the music anywhere on your home network. The Pi MusicBox software makes it incredibly easy to setup, the only wrinkle being to have a large enough storage device. Fortunately the Raspberry Pi can easily use a USB hard drive.
Initial notes on using MAX485 based TTL-to-RS485 adapter boards with Arduino or Raspberry Pi

I've been looking for an inexpensive but robust way to connect an inexpensive embedded computer to an RS485 network. The MAX485 based interface boards look enticingly inexpensive, and claim to be easy to connect. They should be more reliable than a USB RS485 adapter, because the MAX485 boards are hardwired to GPIO pins. It took much searching to find any advice about connecting these adapters to a computer. The board I received was marked DI/DE/RE/RO on one end, and Vcc/A/B/GND on the other. The latter is clear, that's power and the RS485 pins, but what could the other end mean.

Installing OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, inexpensive security for your peace of mind Nowadays our personal privacy is being threatened by new government policies. Fortunately the open source world gives us tools with which to secure our lives. This tutorial goes over installing OpenVPN on your home network, giving you a secure method to access resources on your home network from anywhere else. Suppose you have a NAS with many terabytes of data at home, but you're traveling thousands of miles away and need to access that data. A VPN service on your home network provides a porthole through which to do so, provided you have VPN software on the computer you're carrying.
Installing OpenWRT on Raspberry Pi 4 using USB boot device OpenWRT is a professional grade package for Internet routers. With a little work, running OpenWRT on the Raspberry Pi 4 can make an excellent router. But, it's best to use a regular disk rather than an SD card, for reliablity.
Live TV & DVR on the Raspberry Pi & HDhomerun & PLEX

This video series goes over getting rid of the Cable TV box, and instead using the HDHomerun box from Silicon Dust. Silicon Dust makes a series of TV tuner boxes that are extremely flexible and out-of-the-box supports streaming television content to devices around your home network. The devices support multiple TV tuners so your household can watch multiple TV channels simultaneously, and there are many software DVR systems that can interface with Silicon Dust's products. The HDHomerun device is meant to replace cable TV boxes, letting you subscribe to cable TV systems without paying a monthly fee to lease hardware from the cable TV provider. Plus, because these boxes stream to devices over the local WiFi, there's no need to rent multiple cable TV boxes.

The project uses the PLEX media server, including running the PLEX software on a NAS drive. In the second video he presents a very expensive solution. In the third video he presents a preferred setup using a Raspberry Pi as the DVR running LibreELEC, the Raspberry Pi version of Kodi. The result is a very nice looking DVR and TV Tuner. A NAS drive is used as mass storage for the DVR, and he also integrates Kodi/LibreELEC into an existing PLEX media server he has on his network.

It's claimed he saves about $60 per month on cable TV fees. You can completely eliminate cable TV fee's by using over-the-air television, and Silicon Dust sells products for that purpose.

Kodi is a system for organizing "Media", whether that's Audio, Video, TV Shows, or Photos, for viewing on televisions. It has a "10 foot" interface meaning it's meant to be used from the couch via a remote control. LibreELEC lets you run Kodi on small computers like the Raspberry Pi.

Make Live: PiKon Raspberry Pi Telescope

The PiKon Telescope combines the Raspberry Pi, some PVC drain pipe and a few 3d printed parts to become a high power telescope capable of some impressive astrophotography. This video goes over building the thing. A primary problem is that the official design uses a type of PVC pipe easily available in England, with a 5" diameter, that isn't available in the USA. You can order a kit of parts from the fellow in England.

The design is a reflector telescope, meaning that a key component is the Mirror assembly that fits in the back of the tube. At the other end of the tube is a "spider" that holds the PiCamera and handles the focusing.

It uses a regular PiCamera with the focusing lens removed. Focusing is handled by moving the camera assembly back and forth.

Manually build a portable WiFI router/NAS/Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 Raspberry Pi OS (Linux) can be configured to support high end WiFi router configurations. No software like OpenWRT or RaspAP is required, if you have the patience to configure it all yourself using the command-line tools.
Mounting laptop drives to a Raspberry Pi 4 using ingenious mounting brackets It is possible to build a Raspberry Pi NAS in a compact space using several laptop style hard drives. The project shown here shows a pair of 2.5 inch drives mounted to a Raspberry Pi 4 using an ingenious bracket. This bracket design makes it easy to mount any Raspberry Pi model with a pair of 2.5 inch laptop-style drives. Then, of course, Open Media Vault can be run giving you a very compact computer and disk drives.
Overview of a simple MODBUS/RTU RS-485 temperature sensor

We want to experiment and learn about controlling MODBUS devices from devices like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino. In traditional process control systems, you use a PLC device costing several hundred dollars, and programmed with "ladder logic". Today single-board-computers are cheap, and are attractive for embedded control systems. Without breaking the bank, I found some ultra-cheap MODBUS temperature sensors made in China, available for about $10, and after some trial and error and more error, I have some success to report. In this post we'll simply go over the device I chose.

With any MODBUS/RTU device it's important to evaluate the setup and use of the device. What serial-line parameters to use (baud rate, parity, stop bits, etc), setting the client ID, and the registers which can be used, are all basic considerations. While this post looks at a specific device, the general outline of the evaluation is what is done for every MODBUS device.

Power input and output limits on the Raspberry Pi 4B and 400 The Raspberry Pi can power devices attached to the GPIO pins, or to the USB bus. But it's easy to accidently overload its power system.
Raspberry Pi 4 gets 8gb memory, USB Boot, and 64 bit OS, heralding new use as desktop system A cluster of Raspberry Pi announcements has us thinking "Desktop Computer from Raspberry Pi?" Last week videos started circulating showing how to boot a Raspberry Pi from USB, then today the Raspberry Pi Foundation unveiled an 8GB model, and support for a 64 bit version of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly known as Raspbian). Taken together this vastly increases the possibilities for how this diminutive humble little computer can be used.
Raspberry Pi Zero W, inexpensive Zero goodness, now with WiFi for just $10 The original Raspberry Pi Zero was a game-changer for inexpensive computers, offering a full-fledged for just $5. The biggest problem was the lack of WiFi. The Raspberry Pi foundation have now fixed that, unveiling the new Zero W with both WiFi and Bluetooth.
Raspberry Pi board and accessories buying guide. DIY makers around the world are building customized computerized gizmos thanks to the Raspberry Pi, and similar computers. These diminuitive computers pack a lot of computing power, at low energy requirements, and by running Linux they are more approachable than microcontrollers like the Arduino. The Raspberry Pi is the best known of this class of computer. Because of the very large user community, there is a ton of accessories, books, tutorials, and more focusing on the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi team amps up popular Linux single-board-computer with Raspberry Pi 4 model B The Raspberry Pi 4 is now available at the same traditional starting price of $35. This popular linux single-board-computer (Linux SBC) comes in the same familiar form factor, but with upgraded specs across the board. Perhaps the most important is it can be purchased with up to 4GB of memory, but there's a lot more to consider.
Read a MODBUS temperature sensor through USB-RS485 adapter on Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi

Running MODBUS/RTU over an RS485 network is pretty cool, in an old-school way. The technique was invented decades ago, and allowed you to connect to a few dozen MODBUS devices over simple twisted pair copper wire, over a thousand feet distance or more. It's such a successful technique that it has not been supplanted by new modern communication technologies like TCP/IP. Unfortunately most modern computers do not have RS-485 interfaces. Fortunately there are many USB-RS485 adapters available. In this article we'll use a cheap USB-RS485 adapter on both a Raspberry Pi and a regular x86 Linux box to communicate with a simple MODBUS temperature sensor.

What we'll do is create simple MODBUS client programs, in C and Python, to communicate with the chosen temperature sensor device.

Recording a Raspberry Pi desktop using a HDMI Video Capture device and OBS Studio How do we record HDMI video? Does recording HDMI video require expensive gear? It turns out the HDMI output from a computer can be easily recorded with a cheap HDMI video capture device costing around $25.
Relive the glory days of Mac OS 7 on a Raspberry Pi Have fond memories of Mac OS 7 but unable to find an old Mac? With a simple Mac emulator, an inexpensive Raspberry Pi becomes a competent old-school Mac capable of running Mac OS 7. Oh, and all those old games. The video goes over what's involved, so have fun.
The SunFounder smart Video Car kit for Raspberry Pi This cool Raspberry Pi-based toy car can roam around, shoot video as it goes, panning and tilting the camera on 2-axes, all of which is sure to make any teenager go "WAY COOL".
Using Raspberry Pi as Amiga emulator that's better than a real Amiga

The Amiga 1000 was a ground-breaking computer of the 1980's. Many of us think it was far and above better than the other computers of that time. Unlike the 1980's era Macintosh, the Amiga was properly multitasking and had better multimedia, and of course it was a zillion times better than MS-DOS. But then in the 1990's Commodore Computer Corporation went out of business after promising several advanced Amiga systems. That left Amiga fans stuck and abandoned.

Fast forward over 20 years, and the Raspberry Pi is a flexible inexpensive Linux-based computer that's inspired all kinds of hacking projects. In this case, an Amiga emulator running on Raspberry Pi allows you to run AmigaDOS applications.

A speed test shows that with Amibian, a Raspberry Pi runs 250 times faster than an Amiga A600. Running various heavy-duty applications run faster than on an original Amiga. This is under an EMULATOR, since AmigaDOS of course was written for Motorola 68xxx processors while the Raspberry Pi is an ARM processor.

Using VNC to access remote desktop on Raspberry Pi or other computer behind a NAT firewall

Connecting to a remote computer is very powerful, because you can access remote files, remote applications, and so forth. Those of us building home automation or other Internet of Things devices sometimes install those devices at a remote location behind a NAT firewall, and then need to access the computer's desktop environment. For example, I have a Beaglebone Black at a remote site over 3000 miles away, and needed to run Firefox on the BBB to access some things. It's not feasible to go to the device in person, therefore the question is how to access the remote desktop.

VNC is the primary choice for this purpose. It has a lower bandwidth requirement than running X11 over the Internet, plus you avoid the complexity of installing an X11 server on Windows or Mac. Simply install a VNC client, instead. The key hurdle is getting past the NAT router.

Using multiple USB disks on a Raspberry Pi OS on RPI 4 With a USB powered hub and a little bit of configuration, we can attach as many USB drives to a Raspbere Pi as we like, and automatically mount them like on macOS.
pi-top [4] is a Raspberry Pi neatly integrated as a portable IoT computer with OLED display The latest pi-top product is a very nice case integrating a portable power pack, an OLED screen, four buttons, and access to the GPIO pins. The pi-top team has always sought to make it easier for youngsters to get started on IoT projects with Raspberry Pi's by offering easy-to-use cases. The pi-top [4] is about building portable hand-held gadgets that can interface with real hardware. The kit includes a Raspberry Pi 3B+, the aforementioned case, a battery pack for portable power, and a handful of sensors.