Back in 2006, Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory noticed a disturbing trend—interviewees for degree course placement did not know enough about what a computer is or how it worked. So, he set out to design an inexpensive computer that would inspire kids to experiment with computers at home—a similar to the hobbyist computers, such as the Apple II, Amiga, and Commodore 64 computers of a generation before. On February 29, 2012, the first batch of 10,000 Raspberry Pis sold out within a few minutes, crashing the websites of the stores selling them. By the end of 2012 more than 500,000 Raspberry Pis have been sold and not just to school children.
The Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized single-board computer costs about $35 and has as much computing power as the early Xbox—more than enough power for playing games, running a home media center, a file server, a website, a small database, or a wireless access point. Its Broadcom System on a chip (SoC) architecture includes a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), and the single-board design includes a network port, an HDMI connection, two USB ports, an SD card slot, and 512 MB of memory. There is more power and there are more features available on this small, inexpensive computer today than there were on the expensive desktop computers that ran the original Windows operating system.
This book contains recipes that take advantage of the power and features of the Raspberry Pi to create a number of practical solutions that can be realized without programming—solutions that anyone with minimal computer skills can apply in their home or office. This book is not about educating or inspiring children to learn computer programming. This book is for parents, hobbyists, and computer geeks who would like to learn more about the Raspberry Pi's "official" Raspbian Linux operating system and the advanced networking solutions that are available for the Raspberry Pi today.
Chapter 1, Installation and Setup, introduces the Raspberry Pi, explains how to download and install fresh images of popular Raspberry Pi distributions, and describes how to set up for the initial boot.
Chapter 2, Administration, contains a collection of recipes for the Raspberry Pi that cover the basic administration of the Raspberry Pi including how to access the Raspberry Pi remotely using Secure Shell.
Chapter 3, Maintenance, has recipes that are for the basic maintenance of the Raspberry Pi including installing and updating new software and accessing the built-in documentation.
Chapter 4, File Sharing, has recipes that are for sharing files with other computers on the same local network including automounting disks and installing a file server.
Chapter 5, Advanced Networking, has recipes that are for advanced networking solutions including setting up a webserver, a wiki, and a wireless access point.
For the recipes in this book you will need the following:
A Raspberry Pi
A 5V power supply (the Raspberry Pi does not usually come with one)
A keyboard
A mouse
A display (a TV or a monitor)
A handful of SD cards
USB devices ( such as an external disk)
A network connection
Some recipes require:
An external USB disk
A USB wireless network adapter
You may also want to purchase a case and a powered USB hub. They will help you protect your Raspberry Pi. The case protects the Raspberry Pi from the elements, and the powered USB hub protects it from the power drain that results from connecting too many devices.
The recipes in the first three chapters do not require any additional devices other than the Raspberry Pi and a network connection. The recipes in Chapter 4, File Sharing, show how to connect a USB disk to the Raspberry Pi. And in Chapter 5 , Advanced Networking, the final recipe shows how to use a USB wireless network adapter to turn the Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point.
For most of the recipes in this book, you will just need the Raspberry Pi, a power supply, and a network connection. After completing the recipes in Chapter 2, Administration, the Raspberry Pi can be accessed remotely and does not require a display, keyboard, or mouse.
This book is for those who would like to use the Raspberry Pi for more than just an educational tool or an experimenter's toy.
The book is also intended to turn the beginning Raspberry Pi user into an accomplished Linux administrator. Even an advanced Linux user will find the recipes in this book useful as a reference for creating advanced networking solutions with the Raspberry Pi.
The recipes in this book begin simply leading the reader through the installation and basic administration of the Raspberry Pi. As the book progresses, the solutions become more advanced, building on the knowledge gained from previous recipes. The final chapter contains a number of advanced networking solutions.
Although inexpensive, the Raspberry Pi has enough power for a number of practical solutions both at home and at the office. This book is for those who would like to use the Raspberry Pi in practical solutions, not just as an educational toy.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "This recipe shows how to update the Raspberry Pi using the apt-get command."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ sudo apt-get install pianobar
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."
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