Over the last few months as I have been working with the Raspberry Pi, I have been using eXtplorer as a file manager and text editor. It is PHP and runs from the RPi’s web server. This is a great way to write code on the RPi from your desktop or from any web browser. I figured that I should share it since it is such a great tool. It should almost come with Rasbian. You can find it here: http://extplorer.net/ Here are some pictures of it running on the RPi: eXtplorer Login Screen eXtplorer File Manager Some of the great features are listed below (from their site). This is a must needed tool for working on the Raspberry Pi! I can’t …
Raspberr Pi: htop
In my other posts, I forgot to mention that I use htop instead of top for viewing processes. If you want to install run: $ sudo apt-get install htop and to run: $ htopIt works nicely, it’s colored, and it’s easy to use with the arrow keys.
Raspberry Pi and Motion Graphing
This week was the week of Raspberry Pi goodness and lots of coding. Now that I had the PIR sensor working, I wanted to do something with that data over time. I decided to log the data to MySQL running on my web server instead of the Pi. The Pi is awesome but I didn’t want the overhead of running MySQL on it along with writing constantly to the SD Card. Here is how I did it, after the break. First thing was to setup the database on my Web server which is running Server 2008 R2 on my VMWare ESXi server. I ended up using the Web Platform installer to install MySQL 5.1 and PHP. I probably won’t need …
Raspberry Pi and Wheezy
I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to Debian Wheezy. I have been putting it off because Squeeze works and it would involve re-configuring everything I have setup so far. At the same time, the longer I wait the more stuff there will be to setup. The great thing about re-installing: I get to do a clean install without the mistakes of figuring things out. It is also a refresher of how I got where I am now. Jump below for notes about the upgrade process. Firstly, you should make a backup of the SD card in case you need to restore back or to check how you did something. I used win32diskimager on my Windows 7 PC to make an …
RPi-Update
I was reading about the release of Chromium for the Raspberry Pi and read a comment about changing the memory split using rpi-update. I decided to see what it was all about. RPi-Update makes it much easier to change the memory split and keeping the firmware up to date rather than doing it manually. You can find it here https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/ Here is how I ended up getting it to install without the errors I got. This is based on the Debian Squeeze release from 06-19-2012. I haven’t switched to Wheezy yet. sudo apt-get install ca-certificatessudo apt-get install git-coresudo wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update && chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-updatesudo ldupdatesudo rpi-update If you get a error about the library then (I can’t remember the exact message) …
Raspberry Pi releases Debian Wheezy
It has arrived: We are pleased to announce the release of our first SD card image based on the Raspbian distribution. This is the result of an enormous amount of hard work by Alex and Dom over the past couple of months, and replaces the existing Debian squeeze image as our recommended install. Notably, it is the first official image to take full advantage of the Raspberry Pi’s floating point hardware for, amongst other things, much faster web browsing SOURCE: RaspberryPi.org Now to figure out if I can upgrade. Sounds like it would be worth the trouble to upgrade from scratch.
The Raspberry Pi is Running: Getting You There
Excited, I ripped open the package to find my Raspberry Pi. The packing looked like it had been run over but my Pi was still intact. Yay! First thing I realized I needed to find a power source and a SD card. After some digging I just ended up using an iPad power adapter with a cell phone micro USB cable. I was going to use my Galaxy S power adapter but I didn’t want to run it close to the limit of 700ma. For some reason I thought I had plenty of SD cards around, but I guess not. Luckily Best Buy had a 32GB Sandisk Ultra class 10 available in store for $27. Perfect! Raspberry Pi packaging, amazing it wasn’t damaged For the most part I hard …