Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

TheOtherContraGuy posted:

Hey I want to set up my Pi as a tiny dev server but I'm kinda out of my element (first time). Is there a way to connect my Pi to my computer so that I can do all the heavy lifting on my desktop. I find it kind of annoying to disconnect my monitor and develop directly on my Pi. I guess I want to turn my Pi into a non-virtual virtual machine. Is that crazy?

any VNC app should work, but tightvnc seems to be popular:

http://www.penguintutor.com/raspberrypi/tightvnc

I did this myself a while back and it works a treat.

edit: man, i'm slow

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 13:01

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:58

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Mortanis posted:

Is there any easy way at all to control a fan from a RPi? I picked up my first Raspberry Pi for a small project. This is not a cooling fan, but something I need to cycle up for X minutes every hour to circulate air in a small area. Most 5v fans I'm seeing are tiny - I'm hoping for 80mm, but those are generally 12v. I've found a few 80mm USB fans, but I'm fairly certain the USB power is constant and no way to toggle it on/off. That leaves GPIO which has a 5v it looks like, but I'm not sure if this is something I can do without additional hardware.

I know this is 'additional hardware' but they are cheap enough:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3V-Relay-High-Level-Driver-Module-optocouple-Relay-Moduele-for-Arduino-/131493349440

use the gpio pins to switch the relay, and you can power up pretty much anything you like that has it's own power source.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2015 14:44

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

TheresaJayne posted:

I wonder if i can get some help from the rest of you,

I am into IT, have been a developer for way too many years than i care to mention (I started with zx81)

I just see a Pi as a PC running linux.

I have a PiFace and 2 Pi-B and one Pi2

I also have a breadboard kit with the header cable for the Pi as well.

I have yet to find any helpful information on how to enable piface or do anything interesting except a "weather station".

I live in the UK so the weather is NOT at the top of my targets of projects.
Maybe there is some good links that can help computer based people like me get into the "engineering" side rather than the Engineers getting into programming....

links if possible please.

I am also old (started out on rubber key 48k) and I use my collection of Pi's for short term fun projects.
I have the obligatory webcam, I also have the 'night vision' cam which is on my list to do something with, got a few small OLED displays, which are interesting to get installed and working, then quite fun to script, I've learnt quite a bit of Python doing stuff like this.

Theres also the 'solder kit' stuff - the power switch, breakout board and so on - keeps me entertained in my spare time.

Basically, I am a sucker for the adafruit style projects - tiny touch screens, breakout boards etc - https://www.pi-supply.com is a good place to browse.

got my Pi3 yesterday, haven't had chance to try it yet though.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 16:34

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Napoleon Bonaparty posted:

Let's be real here, if you want maximum value, you go to AliExpress, where 3.5mm male jacks cost a cent a piece as long as you buy a thousand of them.

So true. I needed about 20 small capacitors for a project, cheaper to buy a bag of 500 and wait a few weeks than 20 on my local ebay.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 18:27

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

DeaconBlues posted:

I'm looking for a way to power my Pi from mains voltage, without having to use a cumbersome phone style charger.

I want to have 240v AC (UK mains) coming in on two wires, going through an AC->DC converter in-line with the cable, coming out to a microUSB powering the Pi. I've tried searching on Amazon but I'm either using the wrong terms or there's nothing available due to possible safety issues (people zapping themselves through not turning mains voltage off first).

There's got to be a major use case for this kind of adaptor, so I don't know why I can't find one. Any ideas?

If you have room, change the wall socket for one with USB built in:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Gen...sb+power+socket

edit:

single sockets also available:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Knightsbrid...4H81J2AFV79H9VM

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 12:56

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Hi All,

would a Pi2 / 3 be robust enough to work as a VPN gateway at a remote site?
I looke after a few remote networks which are on ADSL connection and use consumer grade routers with no VPN capability and there is only so much I can with port forwarding.

I'd like to put a Pi3 in the server rack, open the right ports on the router and use it as a VPN gateway, but I'm wondering if repeated connects and disconnects will cause it to become unstable ?

if this is a good idea, does anyone have suggestions for VPN software to run on the Pi ?

cheers

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 14:12

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

evil_bunnY posted:

It'll probably work, but if that's for work-related stuff just get a decent SMB router with a VPN endpoint.

I'd love to, but that costs (more) money.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 14:31

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

fishmech posted:

How much bandwidth and how many users does it need to handle? It can really only do 100 megabit bidirectional throughput at most, and usually a bit less than that, especially if it'll also be writing to disk often. And as far as unique sessions going on at once, many people can't do more than 25 users before it starts having issues.

it' would just be me logging in to access and admin the phone systems.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 16:42

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Paul MaudDib posted:

Yeah, I mean why would you not just buy the right hardware here? Are you really hard-up for rack space or something? Particularly something that will be used by lots of people.

Anything hardware accelerated is going to blow away anything except a serious server-class system. If you really want to homebrew, this is what ALIX PC Engines and Intel Avoton are for.

The age old issue is that these are customers, and don't want to spend money.
Some of our customers are reasonable people, but most are of the mindset that states "what we have is working fine, why do we need to spend �100 on a new router?" to which my answer of "I can fix your issues quicker" doesn't always convince them to put their hand in their pocket and spend.

But my department budget would cover �25 for a Pi and my time to fit it.

They get charged for my time no matter how I end up looking at their issues, but VPN would make my life easier

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 16:47

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

re: Pi audio, Pi Supply just posted this on their FB page:

https://www.justboom.co/

might be useful for a standalone music box project perhaps ?

# ¿ Sep 28, 2016 09:04

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Fragrag posted:

There's no way to run Raspbian or any ARM linux distro on a VM on Windows right? I want to deploy some Pis for an exhibition at school and I'm trying to find a way to adjust the Pis on location without cobbling a monitor/keyboard together.

I was thinking of making a base image where they connect to my phone's hotspot and I SSH into. When I tried that, I couldn't find the IP address it got assigned so I can't SSH into it.

Ideally I'd love to run a VM, set everything up properly and then deploy it but that's not an option I'm guessing.

Do they need to have internet access ? if not, just hang them all off a cheapo router with DHCP. Then you can ipscan that network and find them all.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 10:16

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

underage at the vape shop posted:

For a course this year, I have to make something with a raspberry pi 3. They haven't released guidelines yet but I have absolutely 0 ideas for anything that would be cool. It is a beginner class so I'm not sure how much they'll really expect but I'd still like to do something that I'd enjoy making. Any suggestions?

E: The only thing I could think of personally would be something where it automatically chucks raws and jpgs in the right folders on my harddrive when I put my sd card in it, but that feels like it'd be way too simple, and not really use the pi. Also you could do it with a python script or something.

is a weather station too cliche ? temp, humidity and barometric sensors are cheap enough, and you could database the readings and graph it on a web server. that would cover scripting, reading the GPIO pins, databases, web server stuff etc. once you have the data you can do other stuff like 'today is the hottest day since $whenever' and so on.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 14:59

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Fixit posted:

Successfully installed Rasbian with daughter onto the Pi. She was very excited, but confused. She quite literally jumped up when she saw Rasbian had Minecraft on it. While she was playing the keyboard lost power and she could only dig down...and kill herself lol. Showed her scratch and she saw the cat on the screen and made the connection between our new kittens and the computer cat. Told her she will get to tell the computer cat what to do. She seems excited. She was a little down that our Lego case didn't work (it wouldn't let the HDMI and power be plugged in).

if the keyboard died, you may need a better powered hub. It's a worthwhile addition.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 11:05

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

McGiggins posted:

If at all possible i won't be doing any mains anything at all.

The entire scope of the project is to stick a pi in the coop, put some lovely leds to give a weak illumination around the top edge so they're comfortable going in, and some form of lovely small low power, low rez night vision camera or two to spy on the birds and make sure they're safe.

Hmmm, and maybe a tiny speaker so i can go "chook chook chook" and gently caress with them from afar.

The auto-door is a super stretch goal.

All this talk of mains wiring is making me think this is a much higher difficulty project than i thought.

you could do it all with 12v, i.e. a car battery.

you'll need something to keep the battery charged, but a 60W solar panel would do the trick.

You can then use car lamps or pretty much any 12v stuff you like with much less chance of hurtin g yourself. Bear in mind you can still easily set fire to all sorts of things if you short a car battery though.

12v > 5v converts are aliexpress cheap to run the Pi

I have a similar setup in my workshop, 100W panel on the roof which keeps a 110Ah battery charged, from which I run a load of LED light panels and a DAB radio. In 10000 years it'll pay for itself

# ¿ Apr 20, 2018 09:03

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Newf posted:

I'm interested in using my 3 B+ as a pi-hole. The twists are that my internet connection is via an android mobile hotspot and doesn't involve a router of any sort, and that I don't know anything about routers or networks etc.

Can I buy a wireless router that: gets its internet connection from a USB (or wirelessly) connected cell phone, serves this internet connection to the computers and other devices in my house, and connects to my PI for the pi-hole DNS lookups?

if you're current hotspot uses a SIM then, yes, plenty of routers that support connnecting using a 3/4G network.

I've used some of these to give customers emergency internet when their main service is down:

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/products/list-4691.html

# ¿ Oct 7, 2018 08:44

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

re: temp stuff, I use this:

https://temperature-machine.com/

and it's pretty good. the dev guy is good at responding to questions as well:

https://gitter.im/temperature-machine/Lobby?source=all-rooms-list

# ¿ May 9, 2019 17:10

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

ante posted:

Headless setup has always been a huge pain in the dick, and I really don't understand why. I feel like this should be the default setup method, I don't have spare monitors and keyboards just sitting on a random desk.

Easiest way I've found is to use the SSH file 'trick' then run raspi-config to enable VNC, then VNC in, which makes joining wifi networks considerably easier in my experience.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2019 21:31

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

doctorfrog posted:

I'm kinda fed up with getting a Bluetooth speaker to work reliably on this Pi 3. Applications have to be special somehow to work with Bluetooth at all, and when the device drops for some reason, there's no intelligent attempt to reconnect.

Are there any small, ok quality speakers that either run off AA batteries or a Pi USB port, that will connect to the audio jack? I have loaded the device with about 100 hours of ambient sounds that I'd like to use to keep my birds chirpy throughout the day when I'm not there to accompany their noise.

Every bluetooth speaker I own has a 3.5inch line in, assuming yours also has that, then just connect that to the headphone out on the pi. The power issue would be the same as when you were using it as a bluetooth speaker, so presumably that was working OK already.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 08:50

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

xzzy posted:

Dumb help me use google question: I want an SD card reader on my rpi, which is easy, there's billions of USB options out there. But I want one that has that nice spring loaded push to lock/unlock feature and I'm not sure what that function is actually called.

If it matters, I'm gonna be stripping it out of its case and mounting it in a custom case along with the pi. So if there's a maker version of one of these that would be sweet.

'latching' is the term I'd use

edit: I need to read all the replies first

# ¿ Aug 10, 2021 11:15

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

priznat posted:

Well, we know the interfaces we want but it's still in the spec design phase so form factor is open. Would probably get a cable custom made if there's no good options. It's the classic development card that has to have everything and the kitchen sink on it but also be able to sell it to customers as a reference design so can't stick too much on the board, otherwise I would just push for a compute module and then put the RJ45 on the main board.

Simplest solution is just use a RPi 4B, 40 pin header with female header on the pcie and plug the card in directly (like a really big hat) but not sure yet if we'll have the space for that.

3.5 IDE to 2.5 IDE cable? , though I have no idea if the pins on the Pi line up with the 3.5 IDE spacing.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 13:09

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Subjunctive posted:

There�s almost nothing to elaborate on, it really just works. Any kind of device, log in with email, let other specific people access specific machines, works through all the bullshit NAT/double-NAT in the world. DNS just works, file transfer just works, no firewall-port-management etc. All the security properties of WireGuard but as close to �self-managing� as networking can really be. It�s honestly one of the best pieces of technology I�ve ever encountered.

(It�s a bit trickier to get going on Steam Deck in a clean way, but the steps are on a blog post from the team.)

https://tailscale.com/ � no referral code or anything, just good vibes

this is pretty cool, I've got my phone routing all it's traffic through my pi-hole at home.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2022 16:10

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Is anyone else here using a Pi for terrarium related projects?

I've been given (and told to fix) an old 'BioPod' setup whcih was some sort of automated enclosure with an app you could tell it what you were putting in it and it would set temp etc.

All the sensors are dead, but the enclosure itself is sensibly built with lots of options for water pipes and stuff, so I did a search and found TerrariumPi ( https://theyosh.github.io/TerrariumPI/ ) and have been fiddling with it for a few weeks.

I currently have an old Pi3 with a relay board and a temp sensor (a '1 wire' sensor). The software triggers the relays, so I have lights on timers, a mist pump on a timer and a heat mat that regulates the temp by using the temp sensor.

My Q is what humidity sensors are reasonably easy to use, the Terrarium software has a list that it supports, but just asking if anyone here has used a partucular unti that is easy to add to the Pi ( https://theyosh.github.io/TerrariumPI/hardware/ )

This is my current janky setup, if anyone is interested

prototyping layout, once I figure out where everything needs to go, it'll be condensed down so it firts in the tray the original controller board used to live in

pipes and such, the tank can have about 30mm of water depth and has inlets for pumps / filters etc. I'm going to be using this to have some ferns in it.

current inhabitants - some plants I brought from home, just to soak up some of the water the mister sprays in.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2023 14:57

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:58

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

ante posted:

I've been looking for this link again for years:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

SD cards are poo poo, don't even trust ones you think are real (because they may not be)

This was a good read, cheers.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 10:14

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