Using two Pis at once I recently started using two Raspberry Pi’s on the same network. On top of that, I had a nicely developed and updated image of Raspbian, so I made an exact copy of the SD card for Pi #2. (see: how to backup an SD card image here | how to write an SD card here). But there were issues, and it took me some time to figure out why Pi #2 was crashing. Pi #1 (RS) is the one I’ve used since May. Pi #2 (Farnell) arrived a week later […more…]
pifind.py A week or two ago, the illustrious Jim Manley ran a Raspberry Jam – a meeting of people interested in the Pi. Unfortunately someone walked off with his Raspberry Pi. A bunch of us were chewing over ideas, on the Raspberry Pi forums, for how to add security features to make it possible to locate a stolen Pi. The whole thing reminded me of a fabulous book I used to love as a kid: The Great Pie Robbery by Richard Scarry Except the pies in the book were cherry, not raspberry. Someone else (rurwin) […more…]
Why do I need to know how to write a raspberry pi disk image to SD card with win32diskimager? Even if you bought a ready-prepared SD card with your Raspberry Pi, sooner or later a newer, better version of the operating system (OS) will be released. Unless you know how to make a bootable SD card from the downloaded OS image file, you won’t be able to take advantage of the improvements (and believe me, there will be lots of them as time progresses). There have already been three versions of Debian since I got […more…]
Several people, including me, have bought these… Neewer Black HDMI Input To VGA Adapter Converter For PC Laptop from Amazon and other places. I bought one to use in the school where I teach ICT 1/2 day per week and have only briefly tested it at home. Unfortunately it has come to light in the forums that these adaptors can be harmful to your Raspberry Pi hardware (click here). At least one person has reported that using one of these adaptors caused diode D1 to burn out. Subsequently it turns out that this Neewer device […more…]
Why bother backing up your SD card? There is some new information (September 2016) concerning Raspbian images and methods of SD card flashing that may be useful to you. How to flash an SD card with >4GB files I had a difficult time getting the new Raspbian image up and running. That wasn’t because there was anything wrong with it. It was because I am in an unusual position. I’m away from base without my normal Samsung HDTV/monitor, and without ethernet, so I’ve been running my Pi “headless” via ssh and VNC, using wifi. I’d […more…]
Installing Get_iplayer on Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi Update 15 November 2016 Installing latest Get_iplayer instructions here… https://raspi.tv/2016/get_iplayer-on-raspberry-pi-update-november-2016 Update 5 November 2014 Installing latest Get_iplayer instructions here… https://raspi.tv/2014/get_iplayer-raspberry-pi-update Update 23 Jan 2013 Installing Get_iplayer just got a whole lot easier. Now all you have to do is type… sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install get-iplayer ffmpeg atomicparsley libmp3-info-perl You may still find some of the following information useful. I’ll leave it there anyway. ;) Original post Following on from my original two postings on get_iplayer, (for Debian Squeeze & wheezy distros for the Raspberry Pi), […more…]
Tested on Wheezy Beta and Raspbian distros. I’m having fun and being a bit silly with tightvnc here. You can even use it to have a GUI for your Raspberry Pi from your Android phone. 8-) TightVNC is a compact remote desktop application you can use with the Raspberry Pi. Stewart Watkiss has written an excellent explanation of how to install and configure it. I’m going to cover the basics, but for more detail visit his PenguinTutor VNC page Install TightVNC on your Pi sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install tightvncserver That takes care of […more…]
This one is a bit basic, but I think a new blog post is called for. At least three times now, I’ve seen queries on the Raspberry Pi forums from people who think they are unable to type their login password. The reason for this is that in Linux, when you type in your login password, nothing comes up on the screen. All you have to do is type it and press <ENTER>. The keys you press are still being read by the computer, but nothing is being displayed (echoed) on the screen. In Windows […more…]
How to install Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator in Debian Wheezy Beta and Raspbian On the Raspberry Pi site there is a thread about how to install this spectrum emulator in Arch. I figured it was time to have a go in Wheezy – just for the heck of it – and it worked. Not 100% – still can’t get it to make sound reliably and satisfactorily through HDMI, but I have managed to get it working well through the analog audio out – *so you can use headphones or speakers to get those primitive speccy […more…]
Creating a new user with Sudo privileges in Debian on raspberry pi Someone asked on the Raspberry Pi forums recently how to change the default pi user. There is a command usermod, which could be used to do this if you first created a root password. But there are a lot of reasons for not creating a root password (mostly security and “best practice” related – and people still disagree about it). You can’t use usermod to modify the id you are currently using, so the only way to do it is to create a […more…]