Raspberry π

Very happy to teach you some basics.

Are you familiar with any other types of command prompt or are you starting from scratch?

That's very kind, cheers!

Starting from scratch so conscious that I could probably fill a forum with questions so would gladly take pointers where to start reading up.

Very happy to teach you some basic stuff youd need to get up and running. It really isnt aa tricky as you might think. It'll be a good exercise for me too.

Ill have a think about where to start overnight. Wont take me long to write up some simple prompts to get you started.

Probably start off on how to flash an sd card, log on, update the OS and navigate folder structures.

That would be amazing!

Any guidance would be great, whenever you have the time - thank you

Hi all, total n00b to all of this - is it possible to use a single rpi as both a NAS and a streamer with a hifi berry hat or do I need separate devices for this?

The other thing - when I see guides for the command line in raspbian is this being entered on my Mac then written to the sd card or do I need to connect keyboard, monitor and mouse to the pi to do it?

Cheers.

when I see guides for the command line in raspbian is this being entered on my Mac then written to the sd card or do I need to connect keyboard, monitor and mouse to the pi to do it?

You can either connect keyboard + monitor to the pi (you won't need mouse), or probably more conveniently, connect to it remotely using SSH from your Mac.

Cool, thank you. But right out of the box to get connected to network etc I’ll need a keyboard before I can configure SSH?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/headless.md

You can sort it all out after you write the card but before you boot the pi. Or, use ethernet to set it up.

Ah brilliant thank you! Think I’m going to enjoy this.

I'd recommend making a folder in your my documents on your main machine and keeping the wifi file and a readme with your basic setup stuff in so you dont forget how to do it in 3 months when you decide to reformat something and realise its all gonna have to be reconfigured.

I set all my stuff up from the command line and have a long list of commands to update the pi, create my main user, update the password, set the dhcp server, add my ssh key and all that stuff which i just burn through line by line. makes it easy to remember how the pi is setup too.

It is. Although for the price of a Pi zero I'd be tempted to separate them.

Means you can play around with different streaming software without having to set up the NAS each time and gives a bit more flexibility on where you store the different components.

Brilliant, all good stuff. Thanks all.

I'm questioning the need for a NAS when I can plug the SSD straight into a streamer. The only real need is for convenience of backing-up but I can just plug them both into my computer when I load new music on.

Has anyone used one of these type of Ethernet hats?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223101530663

Found somewhere selling cheap pi zeros, but the non-wifi ones so was thinking about using it with a hat like this and then plugging it into the router.

Obvs have to balance that up against just getting a 3, but I like the idea of low power consumption of the zeros and with them unlikely to be back in stock anytime in the foreseeable future it seems like a solution.

Cheers.

I've a 3b+ i held onto during my recent smarthome dumb down. Kept it in case the mood took me to toying with it again but so far 3 months have passed and I'm not feeling the urge.

What's a barely used 3b+ with official power supply and case worth to someone? 40 quid? I probably have an sd card and ethernet cable I can throw in too if needed.

I'm always on the lookout for more pi and arduino gear, but the problem is I don't need cases or PSUs.

Of course, and i don't want to be left with a case and psu lol. I'll stick it in the classifieds

In my lockdown clearing out I've found a 3B+ which I have no memory of buying and an original Pi Zero.

The 3B+ I think I'll use to shift some of the stuff from my server (Sonarr, Radarr, etc) if I can sort out the permissions so it can write to my Windows server but I'm not sure what to do with the Zero. The lack of wi-fi makes it a bit unwieldy as you have to connect up an adapter via a dongle.

Speaking of which, has anyone got a good guide to setting a headless pi up? I always end up having to google where to put my wifi settings and ssh and whatnot.

1. Download Rasbian lite
   
2. write to SD card
   
3. Plug in monitor, keyboard & screen
   
4. power up
   
5. Log in with username "pi" & password "raspberry"
   
6. Change password with "passwd"
   
7. Run "raspi-config". Change what you want, but enable SSH and wifi here
   
8. Probably reboot
   

I think that enabling SSH is as easy as creating a blank file called SSH in /boot/ on the sd card after you've written it.

No keyboard, mouse or screen required. Works for all raspbian versions.

I'm only saying I'm not sure because I've not tried it on a recent raspbian distro. I used this technique building a slightly older version a couple of weeks ago though.

EDIT: Might have to be a file called ssh, lower case

EDIT EDIT: Just tested it on a Raspbian card I just wrote in windows, it works on latest raspbian...has to be lower case file name.

Wifi can be enabled just as simply by creating the file /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf once your card has been written.

Contents of file need to be:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=«your_ISO-3166-1_two-letter_country_code»

network={
    ssid="«your_SSID»"
    psk="«your_PSK»"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

To clarify how it works, on first boot, Raspbian looks for the ssh and wpa_supplicant files in /boot/ and automatically moves them to the correct place to make things nice and easy to avoid having to piss about with peripherals.

Ah so I don't need to change that file if I want to switch WiFi network?

No, its removed after first boot.

If you're terminal only and want to change wifi details, modify the file in /etc/wpa_supplicant/ otherwise do it in your GUI in the normal way

Cheers, just what I always end up googling and finding crappy answers to.

Is Raspbian the OS of choice? I noticed you can get Ubuntu server on there or is there loads of compatibility issues with it running on an arm processor?

I asked myself the same question last week so benchmarked raspbian vs ubuntu server on a pi 4.

Raspbian runs far better. I'd only use ubuntu if there was a feature that raspbian doesn't have that I need and I haven't found one of those yet. Raspbian really is quite a competent debian distro.