Blog Category: RaspberryPi  Category: RaspberryPi

Recently been researching USB WiFi adaptors a for my Pi3 given I just installed a PCIe Intel 8290 on my Lenovo Thinkstation M93a and I'm getting a whopping 780Mb/s connection through my WiFi broadband router. I'm also running out of ethernet ports on the router and my preference is to use one for my printer instead of it's onboard WiFi as it   more »

Whenever you read on the internet of how to connect to other devices on your home network using a hostname instead of an IP address when they the machine doesn't broadcast it, you generally get the following two answers: add an entry to your hosts file manually yourself configure your router to send out the name. There's a couple of issues   more »

I don't know if this is related to the other issue I was having with my mailbox not being found which I fixed in the other blog post, but after installing postfix: sudo apt install postfix and correctly configuring the SMTP relay, I could send email using the sendmail function: sendmail youremail@gmail.com Subject: testing does it work! . but   more »

Just installed and configured postfix and mutt on a fresh copy of Raspberry Pi OS Lite, sending of mail was fine but I was having issues with mutt. Don't know whether it was related to my other issue here, but mutt opens but I get the error: Cannot open mailbox /var/mail/pi: No such file or directory Very annoying, its never happened to me   more »

I've been eagerly awaiting the fourth version of the RaspberryPi for a while, but when it passed the point where I had expected it to be released I googled it only to find that the next incarnation may be a while. Darn it, I have to get anothe RaspberryPi3. So the time has come to commission it and I find the lastest version of Raspian called   more »

So you want to rig up your Raspberry Pi OSMC to be controlled by your favourite remote control, easy peasy - it is just a matter of plugging the IR receiver diode in and swith GPIO on in the settings. Dont like the standard pins 17 or 18, no problem - you can change them at teh same time, just follow these instructions. Go to 'My OSMC, Select 'Pi   more »

One of the major annoyances for me working with very large datasets you get from someone else is that you often don't know the format the file is coming in, not a problem really just take a peak in Notepad++ or Excel and you are away. But quite often these files are millions of rows in length and it is just not possible to work it out. So I've   more »

If you've ever plugged a Raspberry Pi into a tv you've probably come across this issue - the displayed image either doesn't fill the screen or over-runs it. The usual bit of googling reveals that all you have to do is tweak a couple of overscan settings and you are good to go. It sounds easy but three Raspberry Pis in and I've only just found the   more »

First up I'm sorry about bathering on about this SSH thing but I to be honest I'm padding out the blog posts a little bit as there's one article I've written that I'm just not sure I want to publish, It's nothing bad, just not in keeping with the tone of this site so I've racked it up at the end of the post ready to go and keep adding posts in   more »

I came across my old shortcut on my windows machine to vnc onto the Pi which prompted me to have a go connecting to my new RaspberryPi3. I duly fired it up only to receive an error message along the lines of 'No configured security type is supported'. After a bit of research it turns out that RealVNC has upped their security protocols and TightVNC   more »

One of reasons why I originally held back on buying a SSL certificate for my website was that I wasn't sure that it'd work using a dynamic IP routing service - cos I didn't want to waste $15! Well you don't need to fret about it because I can confirm it works after I eventually got round to setting up a free LetsEncrypt.org one on my   more »

For me being SSL secured has always been the benchmark as having a bonafide website. That little green padlock next to your websites URL doesn't really mean much for a blog, but I always wanted one. At the start of last year I started thing about trying to get one. Ever being a skinflint I wanted to pay nothing for it, but logic overcame   more »

My dream RaspberryPi project that I am slowly chipping away at is to create the ultimate alarm clock. It is a slow burner though as at it's inception I had none of the skills I needed to pull it off. I've now amassed all of the technical skills to pull it off and I'm just left with finalising the design and finding the time and the parts (not a   more »

So you've written a killer python script and you want to run it in the background as a service because when you close the terminal window/SSH session it kills it. I originally worked it out when I wrote my Twitterbot app, and was going to write it up seperately then but it took me so long to get it running in the background and I tried so may   more »

There are some things that aren't easy to do in SQL as you'd like. I don't know why it has to make the seemingly simple things to complete in Excel so annoyingly tricky. Dynamic pivots is one of those things that is overcomplicated, sure there's plenty of tutorials on the t'internet , but what they all seem to lack is instructions of how to write   more »

One of the common themes of the computer industry is to try to install a load of bloat on your computer under the guise of making it easier for you, well when I first got my Dell E310dw and had a flick through the setup guide to head off any such shinangans I noticed they had some sort of 'universal' installer. Trying not to fall for that I   more »

I'm always one for saving a bit of money and many years ago I came up with the plan that I could save a lot of money in printing costs if I didn't own a printer. It is a great idea, you'd be suprised at how much unnecessary printing you get up to and there's always the kick in the teeth of inkjet printer ink being more expensive than   more »

Next in my series of helpful SQL code is duplicates, I seem to always be having issues with duplicates. This annoys me immensely as all of the issues comes from other peoples data I have to work with. No problem I hear you say, google is awash with ways of how to delete them. Trouble is these are all based on blindly deleting superfluous rows   more »

So it turns out that SQL is really quick to pick up, once you have the (very) basics down everything you need to do fall intuitively into place as it is all based on the first principals of a select statement. And even if you do get stuck all answers are a very rapid google search. The biggest trouble I have with starting off programming any new   more »

Whilst I'm firmly in the 'Tried and Test' camp for most things in life and I may only be new to SQL programming but there are just sometimes when I have to buck the mainstream trend and do it my way. One of these occasions is comments in SQL, the widely adopted way would be to use the prescribed double dash -- or the widely adopted across multiple   more »

Having purchased my first Raspberry Pi a couple of years ago now I've still not got round to implementing some Internet of Things (IoT). The trouble was that I wasn't really convinced it was suitable for the job as I wanted something able to be battery operated to work in remote situations as the power draw was just too great. I liked the idea of   more »

Conscious that hosting a website from a home internet connection from the Raspberry Pi may lead to slower load time than you'd want I've been working on speeding up its response. I've always been focused on server speed throughout its whole development in a bid to speed up load times. I think I've got it cracked – but the only thing I'm   more »

Probably heavily linked with my inner analyst, for a while now I've wanted to create some real-time graphing of some of my raspberry pi stats. I've had a couple of stabs at it but getting it to actually work has eluded me until now. The below example guides you through how to plot your CPU temp as a graph to an image file, the code is in my github   more »

As a follow up from my ealier post introducing my twitter bot I thought I'd tell you how I did it and how to set one up on you own RaspberryPi or other Linux server. How it works It's not that tricky when you think it through, it is just hooking a few existing processes together to create your working bot. The only real tricky part for me was that   more »

Well, I didn't think I had it in me to write so much, I'm generally not a person with much to say (this is a lot for me!). My general interest in all things tech had always since the early days compelled me to want to make my own website, trouble is you actually need to have some content to put on it. After a while toiling I'd decided that I'd   more »

My latest project is now live, the @childs_be twitterbot is a go. The original idea was to have the pi tweet pictures from the barrelcam, at regular intervals. I had that running quite quickly and my attentions turned to adding functionality. I came up with being able to tweet the server's uptime and cpu temperature, but it seemed a bit lame   more »

If you host your own server and website like myself, you'll probably want to distplay your current uptime somewhere on your site. You are in luck, it is easy.... It uses the Linux command uptime and strips the unecessary gubbins from the output string: $ uptime This results contains some useful info including number of users logged on and   more »

Call me paranoid but ever since the antics of ACS:Law in the noughties I've been logging my IP address, it is not because I'm am an illegal downloader, my intrigue came about from the thought of how you would prove that you didn't if I was wrongly accused. Stay with me here, but think of the things that can go wrong in the chain of collecting   more »

I've struggled for a long time trying to find a way to elegantly and simply display my flickr photos on my site. Up 'til now I've had to stick with slideshow apps from other websites like flickriver. This is until I found this blueimp Gallery when I was looking for some lightbox coding for my website. I didn't end up using the blueimp lightbox   more »

Well, i had pre-written a post celebrating a whole year of uptime for my RaspberryPi - guess I shouldn't have jinxed it! On Friday I came home to find the Pi unresponsive to web access, putty & vnc. There was noting for it and I had to suck up the loss and kill the power, oh well I shouldn't be to disappointed, 345 days is a respectable   more »

The momentous day for Phil has been reached, his tank hosted server has launched! His Samsung Galaxy S2 server is live and pumping out his very own website. Phil is said to be delighted with his web 2.0 upgrade  and is looking forward share the images of the tank to the whole world. He says he's not finished yet and is working in the   more »

This a hack for repurposing an old android handset as an ip webcam - all you need is your old unused android smartphone and the free app IP Webcam. Heres a rundown own the steps you need to go through, I'll take you through more of the detail below. Steps Find the old android device you'll be using and connect it to your wireless   more »

Most broadband connections will nowdays dynamically assign you with an IP address. This means that every few days or every time you restart your router you will be assigned a new IP address. Consequently if you want to host a website using your domain name then you are going to encounter a problem. What you need to do is get a static IP address   more »

One of the first things I needed to check before ordering my Raspberry Pi was if it was technically feasable to host my own webserver from my Sky Broadband. In the past its been known by ISPs to block certain ports which makes it difficult and usually adds extra cost. One of the ways round the issue of your desired ports are blocked would be to   more »

The new website has now gone live. With the acquisition of my Raspberry Pi comes a whole host of possibilities. My Pi is currently running as the server for this website. Unfortunately the Pi is not powerful engough to run Wordpress or Joomla (who'd of thought they were processor intensive) - it does run, but a four to six second delay in spitting   more »

The new server has now gone live, the Rasberry Pi is sitting quietly in the corner of my living room serving up my website to the internet. I know I've backdated this post, but it is to mark the moment in history - I'll give the Pi one final good luck reboot and it is ready to go with the aim of surviving a whole year of uptime. For many years   more »