10 Raspberry Pi Projects Made Easy

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Everything you need to make technology come to

life with our amazing ideas to try with your Pi!

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24 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

Around six months ago we put together an article featuring ten of the most amazing Raspberry Pi projects in the world. Those

projects featured lofty goals (like taking pictures from the edge of space) achieved by some devilishly clever people that we could only dream of emulating. As well as proving the power and versatility of the Raspberry Pi, these projects served as inspiration for the rest of us.

This time we’re getting practical. We want you to pick up the gauntlet and actually get building and we’ve hand-picked another ten amazing projects, but each one of these can be put

together in a day – some in just an afternoon of light tinkering. In fact, most need little more than the technology you’ve already got in your home – a TV, a camera, a mobile phone or videogame controller. Even for the few projects that do need a bit more practical hacking, the bits and bobs you need are unlikely to cost much more than £10 or £15 – a small price to pay for the gadgets you’ll get in return.

Hopefully these projects will give you just enough expertise and practical experience to allow you to take things even further and come up with projects of your own. Perhaps you could

monitor the temperature of your bedroom and trigger an electric blanket to come on for an hour in those chilly winter evenings. Or maybe you could sample the soil moisture of a houseplant and have it tweet you when it’s thirsty. Many of the techniques featured in the following pages (and even entire chunks of code) would translate perfectly to projects just like these – all you need is an idea and a little bit of know-how.

In another six months we’re going to lay down the gauntlet all over again, but next time we want to show off your projects in these pages. Get hacking and show us what you can do!

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25 Practical Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire

10 Raspberry Pi projects made easy

028 - 029

Portable internet radio

026 - 027

Complete media centre

032 - 033

Time-lapse camera trigger

034 - 035

Retro games console

042 - 043

Wireless access point

040 - 041

VoIP server

036 - 037

File server

030 - 031

Always-on torrent box

038 - 039

Security camera

044 - 045

Voice-control Your Pi

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26 Create a complete

media centre

Turn your Raspberry Pi into the perfect media

centre with some simple software and tweaks

There are a few ways to use the Raspberry Pi as an HTPC, with some of the best being XBMC-powered distros. OpenELEC is a great, lightweight way to use the Pi for that sole

purpose, but we’re going to cover the more customisable Raspbmc, based on Debian.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

NAME:

ROB ZWETSLOOT

OCCUPATION:

TECH WRITER

Rob models complex systems and is a web developer proﬁ cient in Python, Django and PHP. He loves to experiment with computing

» Internet connection

» External hard drive

» VESA mount

MAKER PROFILE

The Raspberry Pi makes the perfect media centre, and there’s software to take advantage of it

Choose between different HTPC solutions with different advantages and disadvantages

The complete Pi media centre

Watch local and network videos at full 1080p resolution, along with music and pictures

Get popular streaming apps for web-based video to run directly from your Raspberry Pi

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01 Install Raspbmc

Raspbmc has a downloadable installer that always gets the latest image for your Pi. Create a new directory and then download it with:

$ wget http://svn.stmlabs.com/svn/

raspbmc/release/installers/python/

install.py

Make it executable with:

$ chmod +x install.py

And then run it with:

$ sudo python install.py

Follow the on-screen instructions and it will then install onto your Pi.

06 Web remote

In Settings, go to Services and then Webserver. Enable it and you will now be able to control your Raspberry Pi using a web browser. To access the web browser remote, enter the IP address – found in System Info under the home screen’s Settings tab – into your browser, followed by ‘:80’.

07 Android Remote

There’s an ofﬁ cial Android Remote app on the Google Play Store that can control XBMC once the web server is enabled. Download it to your phone and launch it. Go to the Settings, add new host, and enter the IP address and port (80 by default) like in the previous step.

08 Using CEC

If your TV supports it, CEC can be used over HDMI to control your XBMC-powered Pi. CEC should be enabled by default, which means you can control your entire setup with only one remote control. Refer to the XBMC wiki to see if your TV supports CEC, and how you can take advantage of it: bit.ly/18kdVHf

09 Traditional

remotes

XBMC supports a large number of universal remotes that include, or support, USB IR receivers. One of the best devices for this is the FLIRC, a fully programmable USB IR receiver that allows you to use any remote with the Pi.

05 Get some apps

On any content tab, go to Add-Ons. It will display the apps you already have, which is none by default. By selecting Get More, the full list of available apps will be shown and you can install them with one button click from there.

03 Network sharing

You can add fi le sources to XBMC by fi rst of all going to Video, then Add Source. Go to Browse and you can add local or networked fi les. For network shares, choose either UPnP or SMB shares to see what’s visible on the network, or ‘Add network location’ if you know the direct path. This works the same for Music and Pictures.

02 Setup

By installing Raspbmc this way, the distro will then download the latest image and updates to run on your Pi on ﬁ rst boot. This will take a while, and involve a couple of restarts, but will only happen the ﬁ rst time. Select your language in XBMC and you’re done.

Raspbmc will

download the

04 Scrape your media

After selecting a source, you can choose what service to scrape information from. This gives you more info on the ﬁ les you’re watching, such as episode summaries and proper names. Make sure your ﬁ lms have the year appended to them, and that your TV shows do too.

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Portable internet radio

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28 Build a portable

internet radio

Turn your Raspberry Pi into a portable

Wi-Fi streaming radio

There are thousands of free radio stations on the internet, and with this project you can listen to all of them from one tiny little box. So let’s build our streaming radio using a Raspberry Pi, a speaker and a few odds and ends…

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» A wireless internet connection

» 2 x momentary switches

» 4 x female-to-male leads (to connect your Pi to a breadboard)

» 2 x 220-ohm resistors

» 4 x male-to-male leads

» Speakers connected to 3.5mm headphone jack

01 Let’s get set up

Firstly, we need to prepare our Pi. Using Raspbian, and a Pi connected to the internet, open a terminal and switch to the root user:

sudo su

And update your list of packages, then upgrade your Pi to the latest software:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

The completed project, with momentary switches to control stations

02 Install some extra packages

We need to install the Python packages to access the GPIO. In a terminal, logged in as root, enter the following.

apt-get install python-rpi.gpio

Now install MPlayer, which is what will be playing our audio.

apt-get install mplayer

Connect your speaker(s) to the 3.5mm audio out jack on the Pi

The circuit is very straightforward with just two buttons We’ve used the Pi Cobbler, but it’s not a requirement

MAKER PROFILE

NAME: LES POUNDER OCCUPATION: FREELANCE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

Les has been a strong advocate of Linux and free software since 1999 and loves to tinker with hardware and software projects

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07 Make it executable

Save and exit radio in /etc/init.d by

pressing Ctrl+X and then answering yes to the prompt.

Now make radio executable by typing (as root):

chmod 755 radio

Then, as root, register radio to start on boot by typing in a terminal:

update-rc.d radio defaults

08 Raspi-config

In a terminal as root, use

raspi-conﬁ g to change the boot behaviour of

your Pi. We don’t want it to load the desktop,

09 First test

Once the Pi has ﬁ nished loading, press one of the buttons on your breadboard. In a few seconds you should hear the audio come through the speakers that you attached to the 3.5mm headphone jack.

That’s it, you have a wireless internet radio. Why not add a mute function using amixer (manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/gutsy/ man1/amixer.1.html) and another momentary switch. Or even add an LCD screen (www.rpiblog. com/2012/11/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-raspberry-pi.html) to show the station details.

04 Set up the software

Copy radio.py from the cover disc to

your home directory – we’ll use the code as is for this guide, but feel free to edit the code to suit your needs later on.

Now open a terminal and switch to root, and edit your network interface conﬁ g:

nano /etc/network/interfaces

05 Wi-Fi configuration

We want the Pi to automatically connect to your router via Wi-Fi during boot.

Edit your /etc/network/interfaces ﬁ le to

resemble this:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa-ssid “ssid”

wpa-psk “password”

Replace the “ssid” and “password” with your

own details, but keep the quotation marks.

03 Make the files executable and Install

To install the tools, we need to navigate to PiAUISuite-master/Install.

We now need to make InstallAUISuite.sh executable for all users, so use:

chmod 777 InstallAUISuite.sh

Now that the ﬁ le is executable, let’s install:

sudo ./ InstallAUISuite.sh

There are

thousands of free

radio stations on

the internet, and

you can listen to

06 Configure the radio to start at boot

In a terminal, as root, navigate to

/etc/init.d/ and then create a ﬁ le called radio

using nano.

nano radio

In that ﬁ le, type in the following:

#! /bin/bash

modprobe snd_bcm2835

amixer cset numid=3 1

python /home/pi/radio.py

This loads the kernel module for the sound card Amixer sets the output to the 3.5mm headphone jack (that’s what 1 means, HDMI is 2). Lastly it calls the Python script.

#!/usr/bin env python

import

time

import

sleep

import

os

import

RPi.GPIO

as

GPIO

# I found loads of BBC Radio streams from http://bbcstreams.com/

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)

GPIO.setup(

23 , GPIO.IN)

GPIO.setup(

24 , GPIO.IN)

while True:

if

GPIO.input(

23 )==

1 :

os.system(‘sudo killall mplayer’)

os.system(‘mplayer -playlist http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1.asx &’)

if

GPIO.input(

24 )==

1 :

os.system(‘sudo killall mplayer’)

os.system(‘mplayer -playlist http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r6.asx &’)

sleep(

0.1 );

GPIO.cleanup()

We import the RPi GPIO library and set it to use BCM numbering system Here we set up pins 23 and 24, which control the radio station selection Here we say that if the button is pressed for 23, run the command below Here we see the script kill any open MPlayer processes and then load the radio station

This code is the glue that links the GPIO to MPlayer, which handles audio playback

–a terminal is all we need, as the project will not require a screen for future use..

Once complete, reboot the Pi and watch as the output from boot whizzes across the screen.

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30 Build an always-on torrent box

Get the latest distros, packages and test builds

faster with a low-power, mini torrent box

Torrenting your open source software has a number of advantages – it can be faster, alleviates bandwidth and allows you to share back with the community. Distros, packages and more are available via torrents, and the Raspberry Pi makes for a tiny, low-wattage, always-on torrent box to better manage your ﬁ les.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» A portable hard drive

» Raspbian www.raspberrypi.org/ downloads

» PC with a desktop environment and Deluge installed

NAME:

ROB ZWETSLOOT

OCCUPATION:

TECH WRITER

MAKER PROFILE

Faster, alleviates

bandwidth and allows

_{Store completed ﬁ les}

on an external hard drive, for more space or easy transport

You’ll be transferring large amounts of data, so wired networking is a must

Always-on torrent box

An always-on torrent box you can hide in a (well-ventilated) small space

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01 Install Raspbian

Raspbian works just ﬁ ne for our torrent box. Install the image on an SD card and go through the basic setup process, making sure to enable SSH in the advanced options and to disable the desktop.

06 Remote connection

Now you’re in the client, type the following three commands:

config -s allow_remote True

config allow_remote

exit

Restart the Deluge daemon with:

$ sudo pkill deluged && deluged

Now open the graphical client on your Linux PC.

07 Remote interface

Go to Edit>Preferences>Interface, then disable Classic Mode and restart Deluge. Click Add on the Connection Manager, and enter the IP in Hostname and the user we set up earlier. Click Connect to see any torrents you have downloading or uploading.

08 Download location

Go again to Edit then Preferences, and change to the Downloads tab if it’s not on there already. Set the download location to the directory we mounted the hard drive to, and enable ‘Auto add .torrents’, setting it to any destination if you plan to dump torrent ﬁ les to the Pi.

09 Start on boot

An init script from Ubuntu can be used to have Deluge start on boot. Download it with:

$ sudo wget -O

/etc/default/deluge-daemon http://bit.ly/13nKOSj

Open /etc/default/deluge-daemon with nano

and change the username to the one we set up earlier. Save it, then download the full init script and update with:

$ sudo wget -O

/etc/init.d/deluge-daemon http://bit.ly/13nKKlz

$ sudo chmod 755

/etc/init.d/deluge-daemon

$ sudo update-rc.d deluge-daemon

defaults

05 Basic configuration

Edit the ﬁ le with:

$ nano ~/.config/deluge/auth

And add to the bottom:

[user]:[password]:10

…to restrict access. Now start it up with:

$ deluged

$ deluge-console

03 Mount hard drive

Unless you plan to reformat your portable drive, you’ll need to install NTFS support onto your Pi. Type:

$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Add the hard drive to /etc/fstab (open it with

sudo nano /etc/fstab

) by adding the line:

/dev/[hard drive address] [mount

point] auto noatime 0 0

Use fdisk to ﬁ nd the name of the storage, and create a mount point such as /home/pi/torrents with mkdir. Reboot for it to mount.

02 Remote access

Type

ifconfig

into your Pi’s command line to ﬁ nd the IP address. At this point you can unplug the monitor and set it up remotely, but either way you can now access the Pi by typing:

$ ssh [user]@[IP address]

…and entering your password to log in.

04 Install Deluge

We’ll use Deluge for our torrents. Install it with:

$ sudo apt-get install deluged

deluge-console

Now start and then stop Deluge so it creates a conﬁ g ﬁ le we can edit with:

$ deluged

$ sudo pkill deluged

And fi nally, run the following to copy the confi g fi le in case we mess up:

$ cp ~/.config/deluge/auth ~/.config/

deluge/auth.old

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32 Create a time-lapse

camera trigger

Make shooting time-lapse video with your

DSLR camera a cinch with our expert advice

You’d be forgiven for thinking that creating mesmerising time-lapse videos like those of Vincent Laforet (www.laforetvisuals.com) or John Eklund (www.theartoftimelapse.com) might be out of reach of the Average Joe, but with the help of

the Raspberry Pi and a sprinkling of Python code, that’s no longer the case. In this guide we’re going to use our Raspberry Pi to trigger our run-of-the-mill DSLR camera (in this case a Canon EOS) to create pixel-perfect time-lapse imagery for little more than £10. Here’s how…

01 Set up the Raspberry Pi

For this tutorial we’re assuming you’re using a recent build of Raspbian, available both on the disc and via www.raspberrypi.org/downloads. With the Raspberry Pi set up with a keyboard, mouse and monitor, open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update

02 Install the RPi.GPIO library

Next we want to make sure your development environment is set up. Users of Raspian should be set up already, but you should follow these steps anyway to make sure. In the terminal, type:

suda atp-get install python-dev

Then:

sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» Breadboard, connectors, jumper wire

» DSLR camera

» Compatible shutter cable

» Raspbian with Python 2.7 NAME:

RUSSELL BARNES

OCCUPATION:

EDITOR, LINUX USER

Russell has been an open source advocate and technology writer for 15 years. He is a keen RasPi and Arduino project maker

MAKER PROFILE

Time-lapse camera trigger

We’re using a cheap Canon EOS DSLR, so to trigger the shutter with the Raspberry Pi, all we need is a simple 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable

We’re using the Pi Cobbler as a breakout for the Pi’s GPIO pins, making the build process easier (though it’s not required)

Using a basic 3.5mm audio jack, we can pulse the shutter trigger simply by applying voltage to the

cable ‘head’ We wont be controlling

the autofocus with our Python app, so set the focus to manual and select your camera settings in advance of the shoot

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06 Creating a video from the images

With your camera packed with images, we need to now collect and output them as a video ﬁ le. While it’s technically possible to do on the Pi, we’d recommend copying them to an easily accessible folder on a separate Linux PC since there will be quite a lot of heavy lifting involved. We’re going to use FFmpeg. With the terminal open in the folder where your images are stored, type:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i image%04d.jpg

-vcodec libx264 -b 800k video.avi

. This obviously assumes you have libx264 installed on your machine and the ‘image%o4d.jpg’ assumes the ﬁ le format and the number of digits it’s dealing with (in this case: ‘picture0001.jpg’). See ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html for full documentation of FFmpeg’s incredible capabilities, but the ﬂ ags we’ve selected should make for good results.

03 Set up the Pi Cobbler

With the development environment set up, we can turn our attention to the hardware. For this tutorial we’ve used a cheap prototyping breadboard and an Adafruit Pi Cobbler (learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pi-cobbler-kit/ overview) to give us easy access to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. As you can see from the picture, the Cobbler straddles the centre-point of the breadboard and a ribbon cable connects the two.

04 Configure the breadboard

For the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO to control the camera, we need to create a circuit between a pin on the GPIO (in this case pin 23 on the Cobbler – but it’s actually physical pin 16) and the pin that connects to the ‘head’ or ‘tip’ of the camera cable that activates the shutter when connected. We’ve also used a resistor, but it isn’t required. The base of the connector cable is always ground, so make sure you ground the ‘GND’ pin on the Cobbler and the middle pin on the audio jack. It’s very simple stuff. With the circuit complete, we can focus on the code.

05 The Linux User Time-lapse

Photography Tool

We’ve created a small 55-line Python utility called The Linux User Time-lapse Photography Tool, which asks the user to input how many shots they’d like to take and the frequency they’d like them taken. It then takes that information and uses it in a For loop to activate the shutter using GPIO pin 16 . If you’d like to use the project ‘in the ﬁ eld’ we’d recommend using the Android app ConnectBot to SSH into your RasPi for input and feedback. Don’t forget to start your script with

sudo python time_lapse_camera.py

Practical Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire

10 Raspi projects made easy

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

import time

print‘\nWelcome to the Linux User Time-lapse Photography Tool.’

print“Just tell us how many shots you’d like to take and the interval between them.\n”

print“Try googling ‘time-lapse interval calc’ if you need help deciding.\n”

def main():

shots = raw_input(‘How many shots would you like to take?\n ->’)

interval = raw_input(‘How frequently do you want to take them (in seconds)?\n ->’)

if shots.isdigit() and interval.isdigit(): shots = int(shots)

interval = int(interval)

print“You’ll be shooting for %d minutes.\n” % (shots * interval / 60) answer = raw_input(‘Are you ready to proceed?(yes/no):’)

confirm = answer.lower() in [‘yes’, ‘y’] if confirm: GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD) GPIO.setup(16, GPIO.OUT) taken = 1 print

print‘Starting a run of %d shots’ % (shots)

for i in range(0, shots): print

print‘Shot %d of %d’ % (taken, shots) taken +=1 GPIO.output(16, GPIO.HIGH) time.sleep(0.5) GPIO.output(16, GPIO.LOW) time.sleep(interval) GPIO.cleanup() else:

print“Let’s try again (or press Ctrl + C to quit):\n”

main()

else:

print “Oops - You can only enter numbers. Let’s try again:\n”

main() print

print‘Done. Thanks for using the Linux User Time-lapse Photography Tool!\n’

again = raw_input(‘Would you like to do another time-lapse? (yes/no):\n -> ‘) proceed = again.lower() in [‘yes’, ‘y’]

if proceed: main()

else:

print‘\nSee you next time!\n’

quit()

if __name__ == ‘__main__’: main()

Time-lapse trigger code listing

It’s a simple script so the imports are meagre. We need to import the GPIO module to control the shutter pin and the Time module helps us deal with the interval between shots

Be mindful of (GPIO.BOARD) – this tells you we’re using physical pin number 16, as opposed to the documented number (which in this case is 23)

This is the main loop of the script that loops over your total shot count and factors in your time interval

With the main If and For loops complete, the script uses a further If / Else to ask if you’d like to shoot again, or quit

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34 Make your own retro

games console

Get your retro gaming ﬁ x with RetroPie,

a distro for getting the games of

yesteryear onto your Raspberry Pi

There’s a growing trend for people to create their own arcade cabinet or hack together their own retro console, and the Raspberry Pi’s size and power makes it perfect for this. Follow our tutorial to turn your Pi into a fully functional emulating powerhouse.

Retro games console

Turn your Raspberry Pi into the ultimate portable retro games console Conﬁ gure RetroPie for more power control

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

NAME:

ROB ZWETSLOOT

OCCUPATION:

TECH WRITER

» RetroPie

blog.petrockblock.com/download/ retropie-project-image/

MAKER PROFILE

Properly conﬁ gure

USB and PS3 controllers out of the box

Install drivers to use the Xbox 360 controller

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01 Install RetroPie

Download the latest RetroPie image from the website and unzip it. Like installing other Raspberry Pi distros, you simply need to write the image to the SD card with:

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=[path to image]

of=/dev/[path to sd card]

06 Add some games

Adding games to your Raspberry Pi is fairly simple. Grab the SD card from the Pi and put it in your PC. Move any ROMs or compatible PC ﬁ les to the relevant folders in:

[path to SD card]/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/

07 Navigate RetroPie

RetroPie will automatically know if there are games for a speciﬁ c emulator and allow you to access it. Pressing left or right will move between the emulators, which then have options to load the games on the SD card.

08 Two players

For multiplayer gaming, it’s best to use two controllers of the same type to avoid conﬁ g issues. Go to the bottom of ~/RetroPie/conﬁ gs/ all/retroarch.cfg and copy and paste the code

from

input_player1_joypad_index = “0”

to the bottom. Change each instance of player1 to player 2, and a second controller will now work.

09 Safe restart

Some of the emulators can’t be quit out of, meaning you’ll need to physically reboot your Pi by unplugging it each time. We can add a hotkey to exit the emulators by again going to

retroarch.cfg and adding to the end:

input_enable_hotkey_btn = “X”

input_exit_emulator_btn = “Y”

…with X and Y being the corresponding numbers of buttons on your controller.

04 Using an Xbox 360 pad

To use a wired or PC-compatible Xbox 360 controller, you’ll ﬁ rst need to install the correct drivers:

$ sudo apt-get install xboxdrv

Then edit /etc/rc.local by adding:

xboxdrv --trigger-as-button --wid 0

--led 2 --deadzone 4000 --silent &

sleep 1

…before exit 0. Change --wid to --id if it’s a wired controller. Reboot.

05 Recognising the 360 controller

Add the 360 pad to your confi guration fi le by fi rst going to tools with:

$ cd ~/RetroPie/emulators/RetroArch/

tools

Then type in the following:

$ ./retroarch-joyconfig -o p1.cfg -p

1 -j 0

And ﬁ nally add the ﬁ les to RetroArch with:

$ sudo cat p*.cfg >> ~/RetroPie/

configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Save and reboot.

03 Calibrating controllers

Press the menu button you set up, and go to exit. You’ll get to a command line. Connect a USB controller and enter the following:

$ cd RetroPie/emulators/RetroArch/

tools

…and then:

$ ./retroarch-joyconfig >> ~/

RetroPie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Follow on the on-screen instructions to properly conﬁ gure your controller.

02 Initial setup

On the fi rst boot, you’ll be asked to confi gure a controller, which can be done with a keyboard, a standard USB controller or a PS3 controller. The initial setup on RetroPie is for very limited controls, and you’ll need to launch a separate tool for better confi g.

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36 Build a file server

Sick of using ﬂash drives or email to share

ﬁ les between computers? Turn your RasPi

into a server and your problem’s solved!

Access your shares from Windows, Linux or Mac!

Having a central ﬁ le server in your house will make life easier. You’ll no longer have to struggle to share ﬁ les between computers, as you can just save everything in your own mini-cloud on your home network. The Raspberry Pi is perfect for this!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» A router or switch on your network to plug your Raspberry Pi into

» (Optional) External storage –

an external hard drive or ﬂ ash drive

» Powered USB hub (if using external hard drive)

» Raspbian latest version

MAKER PROFILE

NAME: Liam Fraser OCCUPATION: Programmer and Sysadmin at Web Hosting company Liam is the creator of the RaspberryPiTutorials YouTube series and volunteers as a Linux server administrator for the Raspberry Pi Foundation

01 Installing the required software

Log into the Raspbian system with the username Pi and the password ‘raspberry’. Get the latest package lists using the command

sudo apt-get update

. Then install the required packages with the command

sudo

apt-get install samba

. Samba will be used to serve ﬁ les and also comes with software to advertise ﬁ le shares on the network.

02 Connect external storage

If you have any external storage, you’ll need to prepare it for use with Linux. Note that

The Raspberry Pi will automatically advertise its shares on the network – no need to remember IP addresses

you will only be able to read the storage device on other Linux computers unless you reformat it. If you connect the device, you’ll be able to use the dmesg command to ﬁ nd out what the device is called. (Piping that into

tail -n 3

prints the last three lines.) It’s probably /dev/sda.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ dmesg | tail -n 3

[ 1707.371370] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] No

Caching mode page present

[ 1707.371403] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda]

Assuming drive cache: write through

[ 1707.371422] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda]

Attached SCSI removable disk

Each Samba user gets access to their home folder, as well as a folder shared between all users

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06 Create a shared directory

We’re going to create a directory that any users in the sambashare group can access

and change. Setting the setgid permission on a directory (chmod g+s) causes new ﬁ les and subdirectories created within it to inherit its group ID. This means that each user in the sambashare group can access and change the ﬁ les.

pi@raspberrypi /home $ sudo mkdir /

home/allusers

pi@raspberrypi /home $ sudo chown

07 Conﬁ guring Samba

Open /etc/samba/smb.conf in an editor

using sudo. Scroll down to the Authentication section and uncomment the

security = user

line. Then scroll down to the Share Deﬁ nitions section and change

read only

to no in the [homes] section.

Finally, scroll down to the bottom of the ﬁ le and add a section for the shared folder.

[allusers]

comment = Shared Folder

path = /home/allusers

read only = no

guest ok = no

browseable = yes

create mask = 0770

directory mask = 0770

Restart Samba with

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

08 Connecting to the shares

The Raspberry Pi will advertise its shares automatically. Each user will get access to their

home folder, as well as the allusers directory.

If the user isn’t in the sambashares group, they won’t be able to get it. The syntax for accessing Samba shares is as follows:

Windows:

\\raspberrypi\share_name

Mac:

smb://raspberrypi/share_name

Linux:

smb://raspberrypi/share_name

The share name is optional – you should be able to browse for them. In fact, you shouldn’t even need to use these; you just need to go to the Network section of your ﬁ le manager and select ‘raspberrypi’.

04 Mount external storage

We’re going to move /home onto our

external storage. We’ll do that by mounting it on

/mnt/storage, moving the ﬁ les from /home to /mnt/storage, and then mounting the partition

on the now empty /home.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo su

root@raspberrypi:/home/pi# cd /

root@raspberrypi:/# mkdir /mnt/home

root@raspberrypi:/# mount /dev/sda1

/mnt/home/

root@raspberrypi:/# mv /home/* /mnt/

home/

root@raspberrypi:/# umount /mnt/

home/

root@raspberrypi:/# rmdir /mnt/home/

root@raspberrypi:/# echo ‘/dev/sda1

/home ext4 defaults 0 1’ >> /etc/

fstab

root@raspberrypi:/# mount -a

root@raspberrypi:/# mount | grep

sda1

/dev/sda1 on /home type ext4

(rw,relatime,data=ordered)

root@raspberrypi:/# ls /home

lost+found pi

root@raspberrypi:/# exit

05 Create users for Samba

We now need to create some users to log into Samba shares with. Do the above steps for as many users as you’d like to have on the server. Only do the usermod step if you want the user to be able to use a shared directory for all users.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo adduser liam

Adding user `liam’ ...

Adding new group `liam’ (1002) ...

Adding new user `liam’ (1001) with

group `liam’ ...

Creating home directory `/home/liam’

...

Copying files from `/etc/skel’ ...

sh: 0: getcwd() failed: No such file

or directory

Enter new UNIX password:

Retype new UNIX password:

passwd: password updated

successfully

Changing the user information for

liam

Enter the new value, or press ENTER

for the default

Full Name []: Liam Fraser

Room Number []:

Work Phone []:

Home Phone []:

Other []:

Is the information correct? [Y/n] Y

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo usermod -a

-G sambashare liam

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo pdbedit -a

-u liam

new password:

retype new password:

Unix username: liam

Full Name: Liam Fraser

Home Directory: \\raspberrypi\

liam

03 Format external storage

Use Parted to create a new partition table on your external storage device and make a single partition the full size of the device. Then run partprobe to reload the partition table, and make an ext4 ﬁ le system on the new partition. This will destroy all existing data on the disk.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo parted /dev/

sda

(parted) print

Disk /dev/sda: 16.1GB

(parted) mktable msdos

Warning: The existing disk label on

/dev/sda will be destroyed and all

data on this disk will be lost. Do

you want to continue?

Yes/No? Yes

(parted) mkpart

Partition type? primary/extended?

primary

File system type? [ext2]? ext2

Start? 0GB

End? 16GB

(parted) quit

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo partprobe

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo mkfs.ext4 /

dev/sda1

root:sambashare /home/allusers/

pi@raspberrypi /home $ sudo chmod

770 /home/allusers/

pi@raspberrypi /home $ sudo chmod

g+s /home/allusers/

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Security camera

Build a security camera

Want to keep an eye on something from the

comfort of your web browser? All you need is

a Pi and a webcam!

This article will teach you how to use the MJPG-streamer software to stream video straight from a webcam to your web browser. You could record the stream, and also display multiple streams from multiple Raspberry Pis on one page. The streams can also be viewed from mobile devices and tablets.

MAKER PROFILE

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

NAME: Liam Fraser OCCUPATION: Programmer and Sysadmin at Web Hosting company Liam is the creator of the RaspberryPiTutorials YouTube series and works as a Linux server administrator for the Raspberry Pi Foundation

» A Linux-compatible webcam

(we used a Logitech C270)

» Powered USB hub (the webcam might not have enough power without one)

» Latest Raspbian Image

www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

01 Network investigation

We’ll want to investigate the network that the Pi is on, so we can assign it a static IP address. That way, we’ll always know where it is on the network.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ip addr show dev

eth0 | grep inet

inet 172.17.173.94/24 brd

172.17.173.255 scope global eth0

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ip route | grep

default

default via 172.17.173.1 dev eth0

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cat /etc/resolv.

conf

nameserver 172.17.173.1

06 Start MJPG-streamer at boot

Edit the /etc/rc.local ﬁ le (you’ll need to

07 Recording the stream

You can easily download a motion JPEG stream and convert it to a more useful format using VLC:

cvlc http://172.17.173.94:8080/?acti

on=stream --sout file/mp4:stream.mp4

Alternatively, you can just download the stream URL with wget like so:

wget http://172.17.173.94:8080/?act

ion=stream

04 Compile MJPG-streamer

Download and compile MJPG-streamer as shown below:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ svn checkout svn://

svn.code.sf.net/p/mjpg-streamer/code/

mjpg-streamer-code

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd

mjpg-streamer-code/mjpg-streamer

pi@raspberrypi ~/mjpg-streamer-code/

mjpg-streamer $ make clean all

05 Testing it out

Start MJPG-streamer as follows:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.

./mjpg_streamer -i “input_uvc.so” -o

“output_http.so -w ./www”

You have to export the library path variable to the current directory (.) so that the various input and output plug-ins can be used. Type your Raspberry Pi’s IP address followed by :8080 into a web browser. Click the Stream tab to view the stream. If the Stream tab doesn’t work, try the example that uses JavaScript, as that should work on most browsers, including the Android browser.

03 Installing the required software

Log into the Raspbian system with the username ‘pi’ and the password ‘raspberry’. The MJPG-streamer software isn’t packaged for the Raspberry Pi, so we’ll need to compile it ourselves. Update the package index with the command

sudo apt-get update

. We need to install Subversion, which we’ll use to download source code. We’ll also need libjpeg,

02 Assign a static IP address

Now that we have the network conﬁ guration, we can assign a static IP address. Open

/etc/network/interfaces in an editor such as

nano, and change the line:

iface eth0 inet dhcp

to a conﬁ guration similar to our expert’s. Reboot to load the new conﬁ guration.

iface eth0 inet static

address 172.17.173.94

netmask 255.255.255.0

network 172.17.173.0

broadcast 172.17.173.255

gateway 172.17.173.1

and imagemagick, both of which are required by MJPG-streamer. You can install these with

sudo apt-get install subversion

libjpeg8-dev imagemagick

use sudo) to include the following lines, ensuring that it still ends with exit 0:

export

STREAMER_PATH=/home/pi/mjpg-streamer-code/mjpg-streamer

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$STREAMER_PATH

$STREAMER_PATH/mjpg_streamer -i

“input_uvc.so” -o “output_http.so -w

$STREAMER_PATH/www” &s

Reboot the Pi to check that it comes back up happily and starts the stream.

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08 Multiple streams at once

Here is an example of how to put multiple streams on a single webpage. These streams could come from a number of different Raspberry Pis all over the house.

<html>

<h1>Streaming Example</h2>

<table border=”1”>

Stream from a webcam straight to your web browser MJPG-streamer also allows you to capture still images, which could be useful if put in a script MJPG-streamer comes with many different methods of accessing the stream, with examples for each

Most USB cameras should work pretty much ‘out of the box’, but it’s worth checking compatibility ﬁ rst

Depending on your webcam, you may need a powered USB hub to get it working

It even works from mobile devices and tablets!

<tr>

<td><h2>Stream 1</h2></td>

<td><h2>Stream 2</h2></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><img src=”http://172.17.173.94:8080/

?action=stream”/></td>

<td><img src=”http://172.17.173.94:8080/

?action=stream”/></td>

</tr>

</table>

</html>

09 Extensions and improvements

This example setup is very basic and has a few ﬂ aws. There is no authentication or SSL encryption, which means the streams are insecure and shouldn’t be shared over the internet. The HTTP module that comes with MJPG-streamer is quite simple, so you could get SSL by using a reverse proxy, such as Pound. You’d be able to do SSL for each Pi you had with a single Pound instance and access the different Pis by having something like ‘stream1, stream2’ in the URL.

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39

…if you want the raw data. However, playing it back is tricky because you need to specify the number of frames per second to display.

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VoIP server

www.

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40 Build a VoIP server

Use your Raspberry Pi as a voice over

IP server, perfect for phone calls in

the home or a small business

RasPBX is a project that brings Asterisk – industry-standard voice over IP software – to the Raspberry Pi. There are VoIP clients for many platforms, including hardware that converts VoIP to a conventional telephone line. Each client gets a phone number and can call other clients. You can also have conference calls, perfect for meetings over the phone. As an extension of this article, you could also share the VoIP server over the internet, allowing remote clients to connect.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» Smartphones, computers, or VoIP phones on the same network to use as clients

» Powered USB hub (if using external hard drive)

» The latest RasPBX image

www.raspberry-asterisk.org/ downloads

MAKER PROFILE

NAME: Liam Fraser OCCUPATION: Programmer and Sysadmin at Web Hosting company Liam is the creator of the RaspberryPiTutorials YouTube series and volunteers as a Linux server administrator for the Raspberry Pi Foundation

01 Initial setup

RasPBX is good to go as soon as the image is ﬂ ashed to your SD card: there is a web interface for conﬁ guration, and SSH is included for remote login. As this will be a server, we’ll log in with the user ‘root’ and password ‘raspberry’ and change the IP address to a static one so we always know where it is on the network.

root@raspbx:~# ip addr show dev eth0

| grep inet

inet 172.17.173.94/24 brd

172.17.173.255 scope global eth0

inet6

fe80::ba27:ebff:fef3:9016/64 scope

link

root@raspbx:~# ip route | grep

default

default via 172.17.173.1 dev eth0

root@raspbx:~# cat /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 127.0.0.1

nameserver 8.8.8.8

nameserver 8.8.8.4

03 The web Interface

Type the static IP address of your Raspberry Pi into a web browser. You’ll be taken to the FreePBX web interface for conﬁ guring Asterisk. Click the FreePBX Administration button and use the username ‘admin’, and password ‘admin’. The User Control Panel allows users to listen to their voicemails.

02 Assign a static IP address

iface eth0 inet static

04 Add extensions

Each device that will be connected needs its own extension. To add an extension, hover over the Applications tab, then select Extensions. Select Generic SIP Device as the device type and click Submit. The User Extension is the number to call to get to that device. The Display Name can either be the name of a person or just the same as the User Extension. The only other thing that you need to ﬁ ll in is the secret, which is a passphrase that allows the device to connect. One of these will have been generated, but you can change it if you like. Scroll to the bottom and click Submit. Add as many extensions as you like.

address 172.17.173.94

netmask 255.255.255.0

network 172.17.173.0

broadcast 172.17.173.255

gateway 172.17.173.1

Now that we have the network conﬁ guration, we can assign a static IP address. Open

/etc/network/interfaces in an editor such as

nano, and change the line:

iface eth0 inet dhcp

to a conﬁ guration similar to our expert’s. We don’t have to worry about DNS as Google’s nameservers are being used. You can load the new network conﬁ g using

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

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08 Trying a conference call

Call the conference number that you set up from one of the devices. You’ll need to enter the PIN code you set followed by the # key. You’ll be told that you are the only person in this conference, and will hear a notiﬁ cation whenever anyone else joins and leaves the conference.

05 Add a conference extension

Go to the Applications section and select Conferences. Choose a number and name for the conference, and a PIN number if you’d like users to require a PIN to join. Click Submit Changes once you’re done.

06 Apply config

Changes such as adding extensions and conferences are not made until the Apply Conﬁ g button is pressed, so be sure to do that before closing the web interface.

07 Trying it out

If you’re using an Android phone, we recommend CSipSimple, which can be found on Google Play. We recommend Linphone for Linux clients. We’ll use two Android phones as an example. When adding an account in CSipSimple, scroll down to the Generic wizards section and select Basic. Then ﬁ ll in the information as shown in the image (right). Once you have two devices set up, try calling between the two.

Call other VoIP numbers and have their phone ring just like a normal call

Each client

gets a phone

number and can

call other clients.

The Raspberry Pi makes the perfect server for this kind of project We recommend using wired networking, especially if you want to ‘set and forget’ your VoIP server

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Portable wireless access point

www.

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42 Create a portable

wireless access point

With the help of a Wi-Fi adaptor, you can

turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless

access point for other devices

The Raspberry Pi’s portability makes it ideal for carrying around as an emergency wireless router and access point – great for some hotels and visiting less tech-adept friends and family.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

» Model B Raspberry Pi

» Compatible Wi-Fi adaptor

www.adafruit.com/products/814

» Raspbian

www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

01 Install Raspbian

For this project, we can use Raspbian to power our access point. Install the image on an SD card and go through the basic setup process, making sure to enable SSH. You can also turn off the desktop during setup as well if you don’t plan to use it.

NAME:

ROB ZWETSLOOT

OCCUPATION:

TECH WRITER

MAKER PROFILE

Use a Wi-Fi adaptor to turn your Pi into a wireless access point

Create wireless internet wherever there’s an available internet connection

No need for extra setup with a monitor once conﬁ gured

02 Connect through SSH

Find the IP address of your Raspberry Pi by typing

ifconfig

into the command line,

and make a note of it. Turn off the Pi, plug in your wireless adaptor, and turn it back on. In a networked computer’s terminal, type:

$ ssh [user]@[IP address]

Enter your password to then log in.

03 Install DHCP

Install a DHCP server to your Pi with:

$ sudo apt-get install hostapd

isc-dhcp-server

Now we need to set it up. Edit the conﬁ guration ﬁ le with:

$ sudo nano /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

And start by putting a # in front of the two option domain-name entries, then remove the # in front of ‘authoritative;’, seven lines down

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09 Finish up

So that this works after a reboot, type:

$ sudo sh -c “iptables-save > /etc/

iptables.ipv4.nat”

Then add

up iptables-restore < /etc/

iptables.ipv4.nat

to the end of the

/etc/network/interfaces ﬁ le.

Finally, set it up as a daemon with:

sudo service hostapd start

sudo service isc-dhcp-server start

sudo update-rc.d hostapd enable

sudo update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server enable

04 Server address

At the end of the conﬁ guration ﬁ le, add these lines:

subnet 192.168.42.0 netmask

255.255.255.0 {

range 192.168.42.10 192.168.42.50;

option broadcast-address

192.168.42.255;

option routers 192.168.42.1;

default-lease-time 600;

max-lease-time 7200;

option domain-name “local”;

option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8,

8.8.4.4;

}

Save and exit.

05 Disable Wi-Fi

Edit the server more with:

$ sudo nano

/etc/default/isc-dhcp-server

Set INTERFACES to ‘wlan0’ and save. Now open:

$ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Put a # in front of ‘iface wlan0’ and the following lines with ‘wpa roam’, ‘iface default’ and any others affecting wlan0.

06 Enable access

After the line ‘allow-hotplug wlan0’, enter the following:

iface wlan0 inet static

07 Wireless networking

Create your wireless network with the following code:

interface=wlan0

driver=rtl871xdrv

ssid=[access point name]

hw_mode=g

channel=1

macaddr_acl=0

auth_algs=1

ignore_broadcast_ssid=0

wpa=2

wpa_passphrase=[password]

wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

wpa_pairwise=TKIP

rsn_pairwise=CCMP

The Raspberry

Pi’s portability

makes it ideal for

carrying around

08 Network Addressing

Run:

$ sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

And add

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

to the bottom of the ﬁ le.

Save this, and then ﬁ nish by running:

$ sudo sh -c “echo 1 > /proc/sys/

net/ipv4/ip_forward”

Run the following three commands to make sure the internet is forwarded correctly:

sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING

-o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i

eth0 -o wlan0 -m state --state

RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o

eth0 -j ACCEPT

address 192.168.42.1

netmask 255.255.255.0

Save and exit, then set wlan0’s address with:

$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 192.168.42.1

Now create a new ﬁ le to use to start creating the wireless network:

$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

Save and exit. Now edit hostapd to point it to this

new ﬁ le with:

$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd

And then add:

/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf to DAEMON_

CONF=””

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Voice-control your Pi

www.

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44 Voice-control your Pi

Control your Raspberry Pi using just your voice

Ever since Captain Jean-Luc Picard ﬁ rst spoke to the Enterprise computer, there has been a fascination with verbally interacting with a computer by voice alone. Now you can do the same with your Raspberry Pi. Special thanks to Steve Hickson and his PiAUISuite…

MAKER PROFILE

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

NAME: LES POUNDER OCCUPATION: FREELANCE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

Les has been a strong advocate of Linux and free software since 1999, and loves to tinker with hardware and software projects

» USB microphone

(check compatibility – your expert used a Zoom H2)

» Powered USB hub (particularly if using an external hard drive)

» Source code available from https://github.com/ StevenHickson/PiAUISuite

01 Download the software

We start by downloading the suite of software from the repository on GitHub: https://github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite/ archive/master.zip

What you are downloading is a suite of software for the Pi; however, we will focus solely on voicecommand.

In a terminal, navigate to the download folder and unzip the ﬁ le using

unzip master.zip

. You will now have a folder called PiAUISuite-master.

03 Make the files executable and install

To install the tools, we need to navigate to PiAUISuite-master/Install.

We now need to make InstallAUISuite.sh

executable for all users, so use

chmod 777 InstallAUISuite.sh

Now that the ﬁ le is executable, let’s install:

sudo ./ InstallAUISuite.sh

Practically any USB microphone should work, but always check compatibility We recommend using a powered USB hub for your microphone and any storage you might use

02 Download the dependencies

You will need to install a few dependencies to build your project, so open a terminal and run the following:

sudo apt-get install

libboost1.50-dev libboost-regex1.50-libboost1.50-dev

youtube-dl axel curl xterm

libcurl4-gnutls-dev mpg123 flac sox libboost1.46

This will take a bit of time, so go grab a drink.

We’ve used a VESA mount to ﬁ x the RasPi to the back of the monitor. See shop.pimoroni.com

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06 Setting up our commands

You will now see an empty nano session. Commands take the format of:

WORD==COMMAND

So, for example, to open a browser use

Internet==midori &

Or a new terminal using

Terminal==xterm &

Try those both out, then use Ctrl+O to save, and Ctrl+X to exit nano.

Note: Appending a command with ‘&’ will make it run in the background.

07 Plug in the microphone

Plug in your powered USB hub and then attach your USB microphone. Give the Pi a few seconds, then use the command

lsusb

to ensure that your mic is listed. Your expert used a Zoom H2, which has superb Linux compatibility.

Your microphone should just work with the Raspberry Pi, but if you need to check, install Audacity (

sudo apt-get install audacity

) and do a test recording.

08 Little bit of housekeeping

There are a few ﬁ les that need to be made executable by everyone to work.

In a terminal type in the following.

sudo chmod 777 /usr/bin/voicecommand

sudo chmod 777

/usr/bin/speech-recog.sh

sudo chmod 777

/usr/bin/X11/speech-recog.sh

This now completes the conﬁ guration.

09 Our first words

Voicecommand listens for a keyword to work; by default, that keyword is Pi, so in a terminal type in

voicecommand -c

. This will launch voicecommand in continuous mode. Now say “Pi” clearly; you will see the terminal

print Found Audio followed by Recording WAVE ‘stdin’… – this means that it has acknowledged

your voice. Now clearly say “Internet”.

10 Taking it further

Your Raspberry Pi should now launch the Midori web browser.

Congratulations, you just used your voice to control your Pi!

Remember we said that this was a suite of voice-based tools? Well, head on over to stevenhickson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/voice-command-v20-for-raspberry-pi.html and learn more about what these tools can do to enhance your future projects. Good luck!

04 The install process

Once you run the script, you will be asked to install dependencies, answer yes to this and it will install them. You may get an error about libboost – ignore it.

You will next be asked what tools you would like to install; answer No to all, except voicecommand, which is the last choice.

05 Configuring voicecommand

The script will ask you if you wish to automatically confi gure the tool; answer No to this. The script will now end and leave you at the terminal. Now we can edit the confi g fi le using