Raspberry Pi Essentials

Table of Contents

Raspberry Pi Essentials

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Raspberry Pi

Let's get started

Unboxing the Raspberry Pi

Configure power for Pi

Local display, keyboard, mouse, or remote headless access

Selecting a screen

Connecting VGA displays

Getting your SD Card ready

Booting the Raspberry Pi for the first time

It's time to power up the Pi

No video on initial boot

Final installation configuration

A quick tour of the desktop

Instructions for downloading all project files

Summary

2. Configuring the Raspberry Pi Desktop and Software

Hardware and software networking configuration

Client reservations for Ethernet and wireless

Configuring the Raspberry Pi desktop and software

Keeping the development environment up to date

Setting up a screensaver

Manually locking your session

Desktop and file manager accelerators

Adding root privileges to the PCManFM file manager

Programming on the Raspberry Pi

Developing with Bash shell scripts

Project 1 – Building a talking clock with a Bash script

Creating project files and directories

Building a talking clock with Python 3

Summary

3. Raspberry Pi and Cameras

Connecting cameras to the Raspberry Pi

PiCam and PiNoIR

Webcams

Project architecture for the Raspberry Pi security camera

Features and limitations of the cameras

Testing camera capability

Viewing CPU resource for the luvcview application

Verifying the PiCam operation

Controlling data storage for video

Testing the data storage limit

Project 1 – Running raspivid as a background service

Project 1a – Creating a Bash script to drive raspivid

Testing the picam.sh script

Project 1b – Creating a movement detector with a USB camera

Test the webcam installation

A final word on resolution and frame rate for movement detection

Project 2 – Combining the webcam movement detector and the PiCam camera

Project 3 – Creating a simple Python GUI for the security application

Summary

4. Raspberry Pi Audio Input and Output

Audio quality and bandwidth

Audio capability on the Raspberry Pi

Limited headphone output

Understanding the ALSA configuration

Configuring the default device for ALSA

Configuring the Raspberry Pi to support high-quality sound

Project 1 – Installing an advanced audio playback application

Building an Internet radio based on VLC and Raspberry Pi

Project 2a – Running VLC in the background for the Internet radio

Starting VLC automatically at reboot

Project 2b – Designing a playlist file for the Internet radio

Chapter 4 supplemental materials

Project 2c – Parsing the playlist file for the Internet radio

Project 2d – Implementing a Python text interface to VLC

Project 3 – Implementing a TKinter GUI for the Internet radio

Running tktest.py

Creating a clock in the radio UI

Running tkradio.py

Recording sound files on the Pi

Summary

5. Port Input and Output on the Raspberry Pi

Understanding Raspberry Pi digital input and output ports

Using breakout boards with the Raspberry Pi

Driving LEDs as output indicators

Python LED demo

TKinter LED demo

Block 1 – initialization

Block 2 – on/off buttons

Block 3 – monostable function

Block 4 – loop flash

Block 5 – PWM flash

Block 6 – TKPWM flash and toggle tkrun

Block 7 – start the application

TKinter switch demo

Block 1 – the activity indicator

Block 2 – the Edge switch detector

Block 3 – the Event switch detector

Adding a physical switch interface to the Internet radio

Project 1 – Add a switch interface to the Internet radio

Summary

6. Driving I2C Peripherals on the Raspberry Pi

Getting started with I2C

Understanding address fields

Driving RC servos

Raspberry Pi software requirements for SMBus

Programming the PCA 9685 to drive a servo

PCA 9685 addressing and registers

Project 1 – Python control of a PWM board driving RC servo motors

Code block 1 – imports, constants, and variables

Code block 2 – I2C access functions

Code block 3 – the PCA9685 specific code

Code block 4: the test code

Other demo code

Summary

7. Going Mobile with Raspberry Pi

Remote access to the Raspberry Pi

Using PuTTY remote access

Installing PuTTY on Microsoft Windows

Remote access from Linux and OSX

Testing your remote session from a PC or Mac

Battery power systems

Selecting regulators

Measuring Raspberry Pi project current

Potential battery power solutions

Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Basic

Adafruit PowerBoost 500C

Power banks as an alternative mobile power system

Project 1 – Selecting a project battery capacity

Summary

8. Creating a Raspberry Pi Line-following Robot

Implementing a line-following robot

Line-following robot architecture

Software architecture

Software module functions

Implementing rbuttons.py

Downloading rbuttons.py and test-buttons.py

Implementing rcam.py

Installing the pip manager

Installing the pip package manager

Installing Pillow

Downloading rcam.py

Implementing rwheel.py

Downloading rwheel.py and test-rwheel.py

Implementing navigate.py

Downloading navigate.py

The steering methodology

Open loop servo control

Analyzing camera data

Steering algorithm

Time to build the mobile system

Checking wireless connectivity

Line-following robot

Assembling the robot

How to bring up your robot

Navigating the robot

Summary

Index

Raspberry Pi Essentials

Raspberry Pi Essentials

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2015

Production reference: 1230415

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78439-639-8

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Credits

Author

Jack Creasey

Reviewers

P Ashwin

Scott Gibson

Yegor Yefremov

Werner Ziegelwanger

Commissioning Editor

Julian Ursell

Acquisition Editor

Sonali Vernekar

Content Development Editor

Siddhesh Salvi

Technical Editor

Rohith Rajan

Copy Editor

Sarang Chari

Project Coordinator

Nidhi Joshi

Proofreaders

Safis Editing

Paul Hindle

Kevin McGowan

Dan McMahon

Indexer

Tejal Soni

Graphics

Sheetal Aute

Production Coordinator

Aparna Bhagat

Cover Work

Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

Jack Creasey has been in the technology industry for more than 30 years, the last 15 years as a Senior Program Manager in hardware and software design. His expertise includes designing, developing, and teaching IT courseware. He is an avid inventor and holds 13 patents in hardware and software design.

After retiring early from the computing industry, Jack avidly participates in social network groups that share his passion for next generation technology solutions.

About the Reviewers

P Ashwin is a Bangalore-based engineer who wears many different hats depending on the occasion. He graduated from IIIT Hyderabad in 2012 as a Master of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering. He has a total of 5 years of experience in the software industry where he worked in different domains, such as testing, data warehousing, replication, and automation. He is very well versed in DB concepts, SQL, and scripting with Bash and Python. He has earned professional certifications in products from Oracle, IBM, Informatica, and Teradata. He's also an ISTQB certified Tester.

In his free time, he volunteers for different technical hackathons and social service activities. He was introduced to Raspberry Pi in one of the hackathons and he's been hooked on it ever since. He writes a lot of code in Python, C, C++, and Shell on his Raspberry Pi B+ cluster. He's currently working on creating his own Beowulf cluster of 64 Raspberry Pi 2s.

Scott Gibson is an Electrical Engineer from Ottawa, Ontario Canada. He works as a software developer in the wireless telecommunications industry as well as a consultant specializing in embedded hardware and software development.

Scott has a passion for all things technical with particular interest in projects that cross between software, hardware, and mechanical engineering. Scott runs the website www.thegreatgeekery.com documenting some of his personal projects as well as contributions to the open source community.

Werner Ziegelwanger (MSc) has studied game engineering and simulation and got his master's degree in 2011. His master's thesis was published with the title Terrain Rendering with Geometry Clipmaps for Games by Diplomica Verlag. His hobbies are programming, games, and all kinds of technical gadgets.

Werner worked as a self-employed programmer for many years and mainly did web projects. At that time, he started his own blog (http://developer-blog.net), which is about the Raspberry Pi, Linux, and open source technologies.

Since 2013, Werner has been working as a Magento developer and head of programming at mStage GmbH, an e-commerce company focused on Magento.

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This book is dedicated to my wife, April. Without her dedication and support this book would not exist.

April provided encouragement to start the project, and acted as the Instructional designer and editor once underway.

Her patience and input as we built the learning objectives helped us meet most of the deadlines, and significantly enhanced the materials.

I can only hope she will perform this function again for the next book.

Preface

The Raspberry Pi is a low-cost, highly capable computer system about the size of a deck of cards that can use a standard-sized keyboard, monitor, and mouse. This book will show you how to use this amazing little machine to design and configure your own development environment, build really cool hobby projects, and gain expertise in project design and development. You will also learn how to take advantage of existing open source tools, applications, and scripts.

It doesn't matter whether you are new to the hobby project world or you are an experienced DIY maker; from the very first chapter, we guide you through complex software and hardware concepts. This book uses a project-based learning design, from setting up a graphical desktop interface to driving a line-following robot; you learn what you need to know when you need it.

As you complete the projects, you will build on what you learn in the chapters and continue to expand your expertise, using complex computing solutions for your Raspberry Pi.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, introduces the features of the Raspberry Pi and its peripherals. You will build your own Raspberry Pi system and configure the base OS.

Chapter 2, Configuring the Raspberry Pi Desktop and Software, continues with the configuration of a Raspberry Pi project development environment based on the use of graphical desktop applications. You will build a talking clock using a Raspberry Pi sound card.

Chapter 3, Raspberry Pi and Cameras, explores the configuration of the Raspberry Pi to support various video solutions. You will create a camera-based movement detection system with PiCam and USB cameras, using Bash Shell and Python 3 scripts.

Chapter 4, Raspberry Pi Audio Input and Output, examines audio capability and the configuration of the Raspberry Pi to support high-quality sound. You will build an Internet radio and stereo audio system using VLC.

Chapter 5, Port Input and Output on the Raspberry Pi, explains digital I/O configuration. You will experiment with LEDs as output indicators and sensing switches to make improvements to the Internet radio.

Chapter 6, Driving I2C Peripherals on the Raspberry Pi, describes the characteristics of I2C protocols and the extensive I2C interface support built into the Raspberry Pi. You will build an RC servo control program.

Chapter 7, Going Mobile with Raspberry Pi, explores wireless access from the command-line to a remote Raspberry Pi and battery power systems. You will configure remote access to a Raspberry Pi.

Chapter 8, Creating a Raspberry Pi Line-following Robot, builds upon projects completed in previous chapters to design the architecture for a Raspberry Pi-driven robot. You will construct a line-following robot using PiCam as the line sensor.

What you need for this book

The content was based on:

NOOBS Version 1.4.0, released on February 18, 2015

Raspbian (Debian Wheezy) Version 7.8 (Linux Kernel 3.18), released by RaspberryPi.org on February 16, 2015

For details, visit http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/.

Who this book is for

Raspberry Pi Essentials is intended for hobbyists and academic project designers and developers who have minimal experience with programming languages and hardware designs. Don't worry if you are new to computing, this book will coach you through cool projects that ensure you build expertise and competence. Since the Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computing solution, you can easily build a very cost-effective and flexible graphical desktop environment to develop your hobby projects.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: You will often see the Wi-Fi configuration utility referred to in configuration guides as the wpa_supplicant GUI user interface.

A block of code is set as follows:

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8

Type=Application

Name=Screenlock

Name[en_GB]=Screenlock

Icon=kscreensaver

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8

Type=Application

Name=Screenlock

Name[en_GB]=Screenlock

Icon=kscreensaver

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

sudo apt-get update

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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