Raspberry Pi

useful info
61

Yes, you should have… But then, I have a weird affinity for oddly-shaped rooms.

62

After reading sig’s post about the “pi-hole” DNS blacklist tool, I had to set one up.

It’s sweet. And scary how much stuff it blocks. Now I just have to point the house WiFi router to it and see just how much stuff it will block.

63

I am conflicted about ad blockers. I enjoy a lot of content that is only paid for through ads, and blocking those ads means they don’t get paid. I do some of my Amazon shopping through links on other people’s pages too.

64

Total n00b question. This Pi Hole thing has piqued my interest. I have zero experience with Raspberry Pi. Does it come loaded with any OS or do I have to do that myself? I’m aware of Rasbian but I know just enough Linux to be dangerous.

65

Depending on what kit you get, you might have an SD card preloaded w/ an OS, or have to buy your own card and start from scratch.

2 Likes
66

I’ve got two cards I switch between. Both I had to load, which admittedly used two different tools to load the SD card.

One card has Raspbian, and runs a basic Linux desktop environment. Enough to run apps, basic web stuff, etc.

The other runs Retropi, and boots directly to the main screen for that.

67

Yeah, Pi noob tips.

  1. If you mess up, start over.
  2. Don’t try to modify SD card that does X to do Y. Just buy another card.
68

Sweet. My birthday is next month. Maybe I’ll buy myself a little present. :slight_smile:

69

I want to set one up to control the LED lighting in my kitchen according to the time of day and precipitation.

edit: lighting I haven’ teven bought yet.

1 Like
70

It’s not so much the ads, it’s all the invisible tracking crap that goes on in the background that I really object to.

71

It’s also a good starter into the world of Linux. From my current experience in the workforce, that line is blurring more and more and I see environments running both Windows and Linux equally now. That and MS’s move to more command line server installs (2012 Core and 2016 Nano) to me signals a need for people who can do both. It’ll be a good skill to have in the toolbox.

72

So…I’ve got an Amazon $50 gift card burning a hole in my pocket and I fear it’s going to go into a second Pi. I figured out how to enable WiFi on the Pi last night so I’m no longer limited to locations where I have ethernet drops.

Then I’m going to have to wire an extension to a circuit in the garage so I can mount that Pi to the ceiling of the garage with increasingly elaborate homemade ADS-B antennae.

I’m going to tell myself that this circuit extension in the garage is for the exterior security camera I also want to hook up. Or maybe I just hook up the camera to the Pi.

I…I think I have a problem.

4 Likes
73

Other reasons to get involved with Linux includes the fact that Microsoft is moving towards “Windows as a service” sales model where you won’t pay just one time to have a computer OS. Instead, it will be more like a rental. They also stated a while back that starting with Windows 10, updates are free only for the first two years. Add in the new Creators Update that’s going to introduce even more advertisements, this time into File Explorer, and it’s giving me more reason to avoid Windows 10 as much as I can.

The local Fry’s has a few of the Raspberry Pi items in stock, so I may be buying a starter kit this weekend.

74

Make sure whatever kit you get, the card is accessible/replaceable.

The kit I got is more or less sealed. I was able to get Raspbian on it to override the stripped-down HDX client OS that it uses by default, but I’m stuck at 8GB internal storage. When (there I go…) I get Pi #2, this one will be the ADS-B box exclusively, which will keep my space usage down.

75

Sorry. Should have said buying individual components to assemble a system, rather than a pre-selected kit.

76

Really? Wasn’t aware of these. I did skip on one kit I was looking at that was a nice case for the “official” touchscreen, but it blocked the HDMI connector (even though it didn’t use it). I’d have been fine with having to manually or automatically switch, but occasionally (often) I’d want it hooked to something larger than a cell phone display.

77

I think they’re rare, but this one is pretty well locked down. You can get a regular install of Raspbian on it without too much trouble, but you can’t crack the case open easily.

78

I have a second RPi3 en route from Amazon, should show up any day. My first one is a little too useful in its role sharing my internet and media drive in the barracks for me to mess around with it as much as I’d like to.

I get the day off tomorrow (it’s been a few weeks) so I’m going to do some Arduino stuff.

I’ve been using Linux on and off since 2000, but having a dedicated box (albeit a very small one) that is most conveniently used via command line has really helped me brush up on things and I"m much more capable than when I started. My Pine64 is a more capable box than my RPi3 on paper (twice as much RAM, for one), but the sheer wealth of tutorials and materials for RPi makes it a much better choice for learning with.

I can recommend this book (see also companion web site) for sort of an all-around crash course in doing cool things with it. I have been reading it on Safari and it’s the next purchase, probably. I did buy the equivalent one for Arduino (and companion web site), and it’s also quite good.

Stuff I’ve bought since March:

Doing it all over again, I would probably not have bothered with the touch screen (and case) and air mouse/remote thing yet. I was originally going to set it up and watch movies on it, but mostly I end up watching on my laptop (with the media drive shared from the RPi). The screen mostly sits on an ntop display showing me network traffic graphs. I had some problems sharing the internet and files reliably until I got the powered USB hub (which is awesome). I can’t buy much more; I need to start getting rid of things in preparation for going home.

(Edit: added links to book web sites with code downloads and helpful extras. Gives a better idea of the value than just Amazon reviews.)

79

This is a drawback to the SmartiCase is that I purchased, but I solved this problem by buying another RPi. =) And actually, the bigger annoyance is having to take the RPi out of the case to swap out SD cards. That said, for a semi-static setup it’s a really nice case. I may wall-mount that one in the garage or something.

80

I got this set for Christmas for me and the duck, and it’s pretty darn cool.

Lot’s of stuff that I’m not using right now, but could be useful in another incarnation of Pi.

edit: Needs more memory though for what I’m using it for. Apparently there are ways to use a swap file on the SD card, but that’s scary.