Phones and tablets are fun, but to earn your
Elite stripes you need to spend some time on the Pi – a $48.5 PC built for
bedroom programming
What you get
The processor
At its centre is a single-core ARM
processor running at 700MHz with 256MB RAM. That’s close to the original iPad,
albeit a little slower
HDMI out
Display is handled by an HDMI port, which
also carries sound. The video processor is capable of very smooth 1080p
playback
RCA video
It has an analogue video out for composite
connections, and also a headphone socket.
USB2.0
The Pi has two USB sockets, although it’s
recommended that you use a powered hub to connect peripherals for stability’s
sake
Power in
A microUSB port is used for power. You have
to buy or borrow a power supply, or you can get geekier still and make a
battery pack.
SD card reader
There’s no hard driver, so buy an SD card
and burn a copy of Linux to it in order to get the Pi booting. Most cards up to
32GB work
Ethernet
You can use a wired Ethernet port to
control the Pi remotely or stream songs and videos. Most USB wireless dongles
will also work
GPIO
pins
General Purpose Input/ Output connectors
are designed to hook up other hobbyist hardware, such as Arduino robot parts.
1. Always-on media streamer
Apple TV too limiting? Stream HD media from
any networked or online source…
Apple
TV too limiting?
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Ingredients
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Raspberry Pi Model B
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$ 48.5
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HDMI cable
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$6.5
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4GB SD card (Class 6)
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$12.9
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SD card reader (if not built into your
PC)
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$1.5
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MicroUSB power supply
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$16
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Ethernet cable
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$3
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RaspbMC software
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$free
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Total
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$ 88.5 ($77 minus cable/ card reader)
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2. RaspbMC is a Linux OS that boots into the XBMC media centre
software. Plug the SD card into a reader on a Windows PC, download the installer
(bit.ly/ raspwin) then extract and run. NB: this purges the SD card
3. Attach your PC’s keyboard, monitor and mouse to the Pi and plug in
an Ethernet cable. Put the SD into the Pi and hook up the microUSB cable. The
first boot looks scary, but if successful the Pi should update itself from the
net. It may reboot a few times.
4. Once restarted, navigate via the keys to System > Setting >
Service and turn on ‘UPnP’ and ‘UPnP control’, ‘Allow control of XBMC via
HTTP’, ‘remote control’ and ‘AirPlay client’. Hit escape to return to the menu,
go System > System Info and note IP address.
5. Turn off the Pi, unplug everything. Hook it up to your TV via HDMI
then plug in the Ethernet and power cables. Grab the Official XBMC Remote app
for iOS or Android and run the ‘Add new host wizard’. Add the host for XBMC at
the IP address from step 3 and you can then control the PI with your phone.
Just select Videos or Music to add libraries from a USB drive or your hoem
network.
6. Network-attached storage and media server
How about a low-power, always-on server for
accessing media anywhere in the world?
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Ingredients
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Raspberry Pi Model B
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$48.5
|
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USB hard drive
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$80.5
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4GB SD card
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$12.9
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MicroUSB power supply
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$16
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Ethernet cable
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$3
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Squeezeplug software
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Free
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USB Image Tool
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Free
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Total
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$161
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1. As well as streaming your music and video, the Pi can also work very
nicely as a media server or NAS box for storing it. To start, download
Squeezeplug (squeezeplug.eu). Extract everything from the Zip file.
2. Squeezeplug has no installer file, so if using Windows, you’ll need
USB Image Tool (alexpage.de/usb-image-tool) to burn the disc image to your SD
card. Mac users should try ‘dd-gui’ (gingerbeardman.com/dd-gui). Burn the image
to the SD
3. Put the SD into the Pi. On first run, hook the Pi to your monitor
and keyboard. Turn the Pi on. It asks for login details: enter username ‘root’
and password ‘nosoup4u’. choose ‘Raspberry Pi’ from the next setup screen.
Reboot by typing ‘shutdown –r now’
4. Plug in the USB drive with all your media files on it and attach the
network cable. Reboot the Pi and type ‘setup’. From here, install MiniDLNA from
the media library option. Ignore everything else – just unplug your monitor and
connect via a UPnP client (BubbleUPnP on Android is very good) and all the
music and videos on the USB disk will be added automatically to the library.
7. Build a ZX spectrum
It’s no surprise to learn that one of
Raspberry Pi’s big backers also made the Speccy classic Elite. Seems as good a
time as any to relive some childhood memories…
Build
a ZX spectrum
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Ingredients
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Raspberry Pi Model B
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$48
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MincroUSB power
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$16
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4GB SD card
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$12.9
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Powered USB Hub
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$9.5
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Keyboard & Mouse
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$16
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Optional TV/ monitor with HDMI In from
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$80.5
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Total from
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$103
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1. The Free Unix Spectrum Emulator (FUSE) runs on most Linux PCs and
allows you to play Spectrum games. A large library of these are at
worldofspectrum.org. But first of all, you’ll need a desktop OS from
raspberrypi.org
2. From the desktop OS, open Accessories>LXTerminal. Type ‘sudo
apt-get install libx11-dev’ to download the files required. Next, you’ll need
to download FUSE (bit.ly/PiFuse) and an associated file (bit.ly/FuseLib). Save
them to your home folder (Pi by default), then right click and ‘Extract here’.
3. You should see two folders open up. Open the terminal again, type
‘cd libspectrum-1.0.0’. next, tye the following three commands: ‘./configure’,
then ‘make’, then ‘sudo make install’ – but all without the quote marks.
4. It will take a while, but well done – you’ve just compiled and
installed a Linux program the hard way. Nerd. Type ‘cd ../fuse-1.0.0.1a’ and
those three commands again. Drop any games you download into the FUSE folder
you just created, type ‘fuse –no –sound’ into terminal and press F1 to load an
old favorite.
