Book Image

Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials

By : Piotr J Kula
Book Image

Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials

By: Piotr J Kula

Overview of this book

There’s no end to what you can do with a Raspberry Pi – it makes a huge range of tech projects possible. This book shows you how to transform it into a multipurpose web server, able to store and manage resources that lets you build some truly innovative and impressive computing creations. You’ll learn how to use your Raspberry Pi 2 to host a website using a range of different languages, host a game server, store files, and run everything from a media center to a cloud network. If you want to take control of your technological world, start building your own server and find out what’s possible with the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Begin by getting your Pi set up – follow each step as the book shows you how to prepare a network and configure the additional features that you’ll need to build your projects. Once you’ve done this you’ll dig a little deeper and set up your pi as a file server, making sure it’s built for speed using a range of different tools, including Python, Node.js and ASP.NET. Following this the book shows you how to extend your server to allow you to host games, and stream live HD video before customizing it even further to create a fully-fledged media center. It doesn’t stop there however – the book then dives into the exciting world of the Internet of Things (IoT). You’ll learn how to install Windows IoT onto your Raspberry Pi, the operating system that’s driving embedded software projects all around the world. Once you’ve done this you’ll be ready to explore IoT further, as the book shows you how to use your device to host a cloud network that can form the basis of a wider IoT project.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Raspberry Pi 2 Server Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Playing videos


We can play video and audio files using OMXPlayer, which was specifically designed by the XBMC project, and it uses hardware decoding on the Raspberry Pi. Since OMXPlayer uses hardware decoders, it is possible for you to use any additionally purchased video licenses.

Tip

OMXPlayer requires at least 256 MB GPU RAM to run.

OMXPlayer for video playback

Download an MP4 file onto the Raspberry Pi (for example, we can use the site http://www.hd-trailers.net/ to find some links) and we will use OMXPlayer to play video and sound to the HDMI port. You can also use RTMP streams directly instead of video files. Replace the URL in wget with an existing file on the Internet:

sudo apt-get install omxplayer 
cd /tmp 
sudo wget http://videosite.com/filename.mp4 
omxplayer –o hdmi filename.mp4