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)

Making a covert wearable recorder with Pi Zero


Having a powerful device as small as the Pi Zero opens up all sorts of opportunities for covert operations. So why don't we build a voice recorder that we can take out with us and hide on our person—but which will also do everything else we'd expect from the Pi Zero? The low power requirement means that we can get hours of portable power from a small lithium-ion power bank.

Now, while the Pi Zero is very small, unfortunately the standard connector kit for power and USB makes it bulkier once we start plugging things into it:

Pi Zero connector kit

The bit that was bothering me was the bulky and long USB adapter to convert the Pi's micro-USB connector to a normal USB connector so I could plug in the audio adapter, but having a poke around on Amazon yielded the availability of very small form-factor converters:

eBoot low-profile OTG micro-USB converters

So this is what my Pi Zero looks like with my USB audio device connected to it using the small...