ENTERPRISE

Tips And Tricks To Set You Apart From The Tech Crowd (Part 3)

3/31/2013 9:20:33 AM

Phones and tablets are fun, but to earn your stripes you need to spend some time on the Pi - a 4K PC bedroom-programming PC.

What you get

The processor: At its center 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 micro USB 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 drive, 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.

Always-on media streamer    

Apple TV too limiting? Stream HD media from any networked or online source...

Apple TV

Apple TV

Ingredients:

·         Raspberry Pi Model B

·         HDMI cable

·         4GB SD card (Class 6)

·         SD card reader (if not in your PC

·         MicroUSB power supply

·         Ethernet cable

·         RaspbMC software

1.    Step 1

RaspbMC is a Linux OS that boots into the XBMC media center 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.

2.    Step 2

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 micro USB cable. The first boot looks scary, but if successful the Pi should update itself from the net. It may reboot a few times.

3.    Step 3

Once restarted, navigate via the keys to System>Settings>Services 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.

4.    Step 4

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 (iOS/Android), run the ‘Add new host wizard’. Add the host for XBMC at the IP address from step 3 and control the PI with your phone. Select Videos or Music to add libraries from a USB drive or your home network.

Network-attached storage

How about a low-power, always-on server for accessing media anywhere in the world?

Network-attached storage

Ingredients:

·         Raspberry Pi Model B

·         500GB USB hard drive

·         4GB SD card

·         MicroUSB power supply

·         Ethernet cable

·         SqueezePlug software

·         USB Image Tool

1.    Step 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 (www.squeezeplug.com). Extract everything from the Zip file.

2.    Step 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.    Step 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.    Step 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.

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...

ZX spectrum

ZX spectrum

Ingredients

·         Raspberry Pi Model B

·         MicroUSB power

·         4GB SD card

·         Powered USB Hub

·         Keyboard & Mouse

1.    Step 1

The Free Unix Spectrum Emulator (FUSE) runs on most Linux PCs and allows you to play Spectrum games. A large library of these is at worldofspectrum.org. But first of all, you’ll need a desktop OS from raspberrypi.org.

2.    Step 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.    Step 3

You should see two folders open up. Open the terminal again, type ‘cd libspectrum-1.0.0’. Next, type the following three commands: ‘./configure’, then ‘make’, then ‘sudo make install’ - but all without the quote marks.

4.    Step 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.

Done those? Try these...

1.    Android 4.0 ICS

The most exciting project currently is a port of Android Ice Cream Sandwich to the Raspberry Pi. It doesn’t meet Google’s official hardware requirements for the OS, but hackers have it running smoothly and are preparing a full release. Who needs costly smart TVs or Ouya consoles?

2.    RoboPi

What is the prime directive for a cheap general purpose computing board? To be a robot brain, of course. FishPi is a work in progress that will eventually (they hope) be an aquatic robot that can navigate the Atlantic autonomously, like a tiny ghost ship collecting samples for all of eternity.

3.    Smart glasses

Google and Apple may be about to take their war into eyewear, but the Pi is there first. Will Powell hooked up a couple of Pis to a pair of Vuzix AR specs and a Bluetooth mic to create a piece of software that subtitles conversations with foreign language speakers. It’s a Star Trek- style voice recognition universal translator.

4.    Pi in the sky

One of the more common uses for the Pi is as a cheap controller for time-lapse photography. No street stills for Dave Akerman, though, who sent his up in a high-altitude balloon, where, 30km up and in temperatures of -50°C, it snapped from near space. Pics at website: daveakerman.com.

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