Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Secret Agents - Third Edition

Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Secret Agents - Third Edition

Overview of this book

This book is for all mischievous Raspberry Pi owners who’d like to see their computer transform into a neat spy gadget to be used in a series of practical pranks and projects. No previous skills are required to follow along, and if you’re completely new to Linux, you’ll pick up much of the basics for free. We’ll help you set up your Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 and guide you through a number of pranks and secret agent techniques that are so inconspicuous yet high on mischief. You’ll learn how to configure your operating system for maximum mischief and start exploring audio, video, or Wi-Fi techniques. We’ll show you how to record, listen, or talk to people from a distance and how to set up your own phone network. Then, you’ll plug in your webcam and set up a motion detector with an alarm and find out what the other computers on your Wi-Fi network are up to. Once you’ve mastered the techniques, we’ll combine them with a battery pack and GPS for the ultimate off-road spy kit.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

Receiving status updates from the Pi


When you send your Raspberry Pi out in the world on stealthy missions, you might not be able to stay connected to it at all times. However, as long as the Pi has Internet access via a Wi-Fi network or USB modem, you'll be able to communicate with it from anywhere in the world.

In this example, we'll be using Twitter, a popular social networking service for sharing short messages. We're going to make the Pi send regular tweets about the mission and its whereabouts. If you do not already have a Twitter account, or you'd like a separate account for the Pi, you'll need to sign up at https://twitter.com first. Follow these steps to get started with Twitter:

  1. Before you post anything on Twitter, you should consider enabling tweet privacy. This means the messages won't be publicly visible and only selected people on Twitter will be able to read them.

    To enable tweet privacy, go to your account settings (https://twitter.com/settings/account) and check the Protect...