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    Linux User & Developer

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    linux

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    © NO. 1 FOR RASPBERRY PI The essential monthly guide for coders & makers MINIAVSE\@S<0)s www.linuxuser.co.uk FIND ALL THE TUTORIAL FILES YOU NEED © www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorial-files MOOcs a Ow to Ow ae Ne | ew @ an SIU EDP RASPBERRY PI VIDEO PLAYER Add a touchscreen to your Pi and make it play videos DigitalEcition GreatDigitalMagscm ey witht SULT val ast RASPBERRY id | Keep your Pi safe with an SOO CULO LT www.sbeshop.co.uk call 0203 514.0914 At SB Components we strive to offer our customers the best prices for the best products. Our product team works tirelessly to source top quality affordable components from around the world. Dee ee Ly Welcome toissue 142 of Linux User & Developer # RobZwetsloot sas srsps:eongnsrng cargyantonegacamper Sindutin rolonnghi tert ‘grdeyetdevessegerermnerts ‘ethatatpymachp, Reb we} tesunactomnsvestnglantobuis ‘Tuspouny Pe ayeroap Sahisanestoonstloby hero ‘St. anare steer Richard Sm« started using computers ong, ‘rthsiontby ear Aawelas ‘wringtoreadngopen source Magione elps rms setup ‘2nduse ponsouresoftware for {hoirbusiness ped Overon page DErNitehexpianshawtomanage bis polecteusingLbveRan Mihalis Tsoukalos ieaunixeytem ‘edminstetornthesgertsein Programming. datbasesand mathe. Ha haben ving nu ‘nce 1998 inte ue. Mra Shee ushow wean uta ‘Sndadminatora epalebete tsingthe comand tne and ‘sertngitrtace rush (page <2, Jon Mastersica.inuxkemsthsckerwhohas ben workingontinactor ame "years, sine he frst attended Your team of Linux experts... unferatyat the ageof 3. Jon ves incamordge, Massachusats, ‘snéwors forage onterpice UUniavendor You canting bullae kernel Column on pages sesehie month Gareth Halfacree sou ressentrowe reporter andbringsusthelatest ‘evelopment tom allover the ‘pen sores wor startingon page. Seepage ors biiant . Fevtew ofthe new Cubstach ‘evignd for those who ‘utgronn the Cubicboard [eC Linux User font-lel1g Ce aA) This issue » Simplify project planning » Start writing Bash scripts » Code an RSS reader for Android » Make a hand-held video player with Pi Welcome to the latest edition of Linux User & Developer, the UK and America’s favourite Linux and open source maga: Linuxusersare, fundamentally, a self-taught bunch. And for every hour of format training received bya Linuxdeveloper, countless more have been spentin the tenacious pursuit of solutions to coding problems. But one of the things that makes this all work is the strength of the Linux community, continually communicating and sharing knowledge, and this kind of dynamic interaction is beginning to shake up the education establishment at large. This month, following ed's move to make its acclaimed Introduction to Linux course free and open, we take a lookat the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MO0Cs) We also dive into the hugely anticipated Linux Mint 17 long- term support release, Giana, tofind out whether Distrowatch’s highest-ranking distro really does deliver the complete package. With this being Cinnamon's first appearance in an LTS release and Giana being the culmination of years’ worth of effort, it’s one of the most exciting releases we've seen yet There's another great tutorial line-up, too. This issue we cover Drush, Revel and LibrePlan, touchscreens and servos with the Pi, we start a new series on shell scripts and continue our Android series with a look at networkingapps. Have fun, Gavin Thomas, Deputy Editor Get in touch with the team: linuxuser@imagine-publishing.co.uk imagineshop-o.x etd Visit us online for more news, opinion, tutorials and reviews: www.linuxuser.co.uk Issue 142 16 Linux Mint 17 Hands-on tour and in-depth review of the new LTS release OpenSource 06 News The bi open: 14 Kernel Column Thelatest onthe Linux Kernelwith Jon Masters 79 Books Some of thebest bookson Linuxand open source 94 Letters Your view stories fromthe eworld on the magazine he open source scene Features 16 Linux Mint 17 Exergy nessa 26 Learn Linux for free MOOCs and the rise of open source education 50 Code apps for Android ogee er Ana Thismonth wecodeanRSS reader to explore networking 88 Q&A Your questions answered Tutorials 30 Edkevideo in Kdenlive 2 to use this powerfulopen tor tomake movies 32 Write useful shell scripts part 1 jon your command line knowledge to useful Bast 36 Simplify your project planning with Librel cron LibrePlan tomanage 42 pun Drupal sites with Drush drminister a Drupal website fromthe command tine 46 Generate webpage templates with Go+ Se ea eiteidnakroqats On your free disc 96 Cover disc TvE-BOOTINGDYD ered’ foo Reviews ry 80 Cubietruck Cantthe boosted spe itsincreasedseling pric 82 Makeblock WilithisArduino-powered robotinvade theclassroon? a 84 LXLE 14.04 Canthis lightweight breathe newlfetocid POS? Join us online for more Linux news, opinion and reviews www.linuxuser.co.uk vivitinuxuser co.uk ¢ oD PRO YOUR HOSTING COMPANY WEB HOSTING FROM pee Rey DEDICATED SERVERS FROM WEBDESIGNERMAG 06 News | 12 Opinion | 94 Letters OpenSources HP unveils Linux- powered ‘The Machine’ Cutting-edge project uses memristor and photonics technology Howlett Packard has announced it intention ‘to ship the world's first commercial computer ‘based around iticon photonics and memristor technologies within the next six years, ‘custom-built operating system ye Linux kernel. represent would be used by the syst for both working memory and 0-caled universal memory he advantages many, Performanc HP's memristor technology, first postulatedin 1971, erases the distinction between working memoryand storage Aims to release The Machine between 2017 and 2020 vwouldaiso drop, wth roneed to supply constant ted that itis dedicating around its research and development axkernel This operating, sed under an as yet 75 per lisence, the company divs 13 the company’s to The reach fruition, hnology being traditional semiconductor transistors with versions based ‘oncarben naiotube technelegy is also said to include News The latest in the Linux community OPEN source I Gan KDE c details future plans ‘The KOE Project has summarised its future direction developments, with Jos Poortulct Posting a detailed breakdown to the projects offical website, Jos Poortlit detailed the development direction, while also showing off new designs HARDWARE Nvidia partners for 64-bit ARM servers Nvidia, once described as “the worst company" by Linux founder Linus Torvalds has announced a partnership with three companies to produce 64-bit ARM-based servorsrunning GNU/Linux The company has joined Crrascale, E4 Computer Engineering and Eurotech | to produce rack-mountable computing nodes based on Applied Micro's X-Gene ARMs processors ~ nat interestingly, Nvidia's own TograK1 ARM. processor. These systems feature the Linux port of the companys CUDA application programming interfacs (APO to allow processing to be offloaded to bundled Tela K20 accelerator cards, Based on the same technology a ite graphics processors, the Tesla family feature ro graphics output butinstead use thousands Of stream processors and a lage quantity of high-speed GODRS memory to speed up hiehiy parallel applications. Intl models areavaliableto purchase now m Nvidia's 64-bit ‘ARM: based servers wil foatureits Tesla accelerator boards Linux calendar BU AUT Rd DCT EST lulis FeO Ma ary ee ed ey Pees Panera tener ae Rea leaders, and to plan the future cori Pa peso 18th - 20th August See ea) Oey eet USA Pee nar ed gust Raa Pet recor aes re ae ec) eee uy Tre eer icid 20th - 22nd Au; ere ag Reentry ary Penni The annual ere a ihre eats the Debian Perl Group, 3 2 is iB re 8 & FrOsCon ere Esa essere teste roy rent eee fcr ear en) ompreh 23rd - 24th August OpenSource voursourceoftinuxnewsand views NAAN oe fees tn Respondly goes free for FOSS (Ue expands vezi Team communications service gives back Respondly, the collaborative communications platform designed to improve customer relationship management, hs announced that {open-source projects can ows upto. delays in shipping the See tT enters Respondly wants to improve user ‘communications in open-source projects another Ope eee HARDWARE. Russian government looks to Linux Homek Cortex®-AS7 MPCore ARH Coreg” Mucor Dab an Trace ‘The Russian Ministry of Industry has portedly announced plans to produce 1d processor, dubbed ill be produced locally to Baikal, which ower’ GNU/Linux-based computers for miconductor mana ade: a juma to 28nm wil itie reported, would be used to run a variant of take te to compete and cast a considerable GNU/Linux aloredfor the local market. money to retook the fectones and its low-power designs are geting increasing Tha papers souces suggest that the cit interest in the sever sector of late, and its reasoning behind the moveisto reduce Russias While holding the majorty share ofthe mobile based li facturing: at present, market, ARM ety absent from the and Io desktop since the PC ofthe Nineties, pro mTheaimisto moveto GNU/Linux-based systems on a Homebrew Cortex-AS7 design manufactur ts of AMDandintl the overwhelming majority ofthe gover vivitinuxuser co.uk News The latest in the Linux cormmunity OPEN SOURCE) | FIREFOX J Mozilla adopting VR Technology Firefox gets early Oculus Rift support Mozila's Viadimir Vukidevié has revealed that 0 video support he is leading a project atthe company to build virtual reality technologies into the open- Firefox's support for VRisplay devices will be starting withthe Oculus Rift support for VR display devi BEE - Node.js drops Needles Cree) Doren oerer i Contributor Agreements Summer Special Offer m |e Still sticking MIT licence ‘The Nodeje project has announced that itis to do away with the requirement for asigned Contributor Licence Agreement (CLA in order ‘to encourage external contribution. Butt On Award Winning Hosting improved Goer our legal Fast UK Web Servers metodo so Doe eed GC SO Sed pat the featur no a release u ‘The Only UK Web Host To Offer A feedback heclaimed,"whchiswhy events ineNodeo vi Lifetime Money Back Guarantee! save50IU OpenSource yoursourceoftinuxnewsand views NAAN be tlhe le [NEW RELEASE | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 released Anticipating the future and raising the bar, RHEL 7 caters for current and next-gen ne Renae Satellite 6 beta Earlior last month, Red Hat announced the 1 maxiors 1 CucaoPs. ployment, RHEL.7 deliver: burgeoning end by enab sapabilties, includ virtual and: The industry-standard SPECIbb2013 benchmark measures Java-based application performance Product plans and pricing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 canbe found at wmw. redhat.com/wapps/store/eatalog.htmt administrator On top of that, the Ethernet in during run-time without ices running been adled andthe end users ofthe product wvivitinuxuser co.uk FRESH. FAST. FREE. LIBRE. N The Document Foundation proudly presents: LibreOffice the world's most advanced free software office suite www libreoffice.org Ju, a subs 1as been relee Or Richard Hillesley wise fees, Unuandinee fsttvareforavarety spubtcatons ‘When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wise \Wieb in 1900, his proposal ~ presented the year before ~ was that “a global hypertext space bee created in which any network-accessible Information could be referred to by a single “Universal Document Identifier” (wiwas.rg/ People/Berers-Lee/ShortHistory. htm eautifully simple. On the server side, there were webpages written in a typertext markup language (HTML) that Fellowes simple conventions and rules, On the client side, there was a browser that was able to translate the HTML code into a readable format. The web of browsable pages was kitted together by hypertext links, which became known as URLS. ‘Bemers-Lee had an unfashionable vision of “the Webls potential to foster a global vill not its potental to eam him a vila and a fleet cars, but he was not the first to have that vision. He credits his iepiration for the to Profesor Ted Nelson, the man who coined the term ‘hyportink’ back in the Sintios and sctibed the whole messy conceet in Dream ines published in 197 wwlinuxuser.co.uk. A magic place of literary memory Ted Nels 1 world brought togethe: d nearly les after its original c ptio Nelsons one of those inspiredthinkers whose invented, although notably more comglex. The ceancopts dont aways make it into the eractical ‘weld inthe form that he would wish. For nearly ‘i dacadas he has been working on Xanadu, ‘8 mysterious computer system to beat all ns, and a complex vision of a future reality hat exists in a parallel uivers to ou which has been promised at regular irtervals for years sy with the release of Openkanadu, “Openkanady ‘means you can see all the parts. ti not yet though it is intended isa subset ofthe orginal adefine the way we in 1960 that wrote Nelson, would mir chance 19 POF, which simulates paper, by connections" jranadu.com) ‘About contemporary computer systems “Todays d.up inthe Eighties, and mised our 2 Word wide hypertext the simulates paper. The World (another imitation of ‘paper orginal hypertext model with breaking inks and no managoment of version or contents” en.wikipedia org/wikiProject Xanadu). Nelson that Xanadu solves hese prabiems and mer During the Eighties vast amounts of monoy were pumped into Xanadu by Autodesk and others, with the objective of coming up with semathing akin tothe Web before the Web was virtue of B Xanadu was obscure and dit rumerous attests heleap rom concept tina org/nade/233#tcomment-1715, 1960, Nelson enrlledon acomputer course for the humanities, and “was struck by a vision cof what could be’ Fr his term project, written bier heir work, years before the ‘Some five years later he came up with the term Typertext. Since that date, Nelson ha working on his fe project, a software ramenork which would be a “magic p of terry memory” (www 2iathvieginaedu/ elab/nf|OISSheml) named ator Coleridge's bla Khan, and descried at length inhi 1961 ary Machines, Xanadu and was as leroge's poem, which was famously ed, in a sort of Reverie brou so grain of Op taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House a quarter of @ mile ween Pocock and Linton, 1m Culbone Church, in al of the year, 1797", ant completed because oft 1 arial fon busi ok’, alter which th ‘meraryo the dream escaped i in Droam Machines, published in 197 promised that Xanadu would be relea 1976, His system, a weleora th 0 the ideas ofthe Sts, would be used to “foster free Neleon “Xanadu was obscure and difficult. itnever made the leap from concept to realisation” expression and emponer people where earior formsof communication, TV, adioand print, were largely one-vay, hierarchic, and disempowerng In the 1987 edition of Literary Machines, the release date was revised to 1988. In January 1968, Nelson wotein Bytemagazine that Xanadu wouldbe completedby 1981 Amazingly, an inital version was released in August 1999 ~ apparently to prove prior at on had proposed years before ~ but has yet to see any kind of a 1 dete long since superseded by the Web we know today. A lator manitstation of aspects of Xanadu was known as Zigzag. Nelson wrote of Zigzag: “We belive the computer world canbe simpitied and Unified, Today, rcnary poople must deal with an appalling variety of programs and mechanisms to maintain ther information, We have discover new simplification based on one simple concept new, berated form of data that shows tsa in wicinew ways.” (wwwxanadu.corvzgzag) ran with the mad ida to show the way to others so thatthe mad idea may become reality - and maybe the Neb owes more to Nelson than he is usually croct for, Alt mechanisms ofthe W9)/3.nelgon htm) and ‘and other web technologies as suboptimal, the Web and Wikipedia. and Commons have rendered: much of although he did recognise the protlom o and artists, which has yot to be resolved by the real Word Wide Web although toths problem, aking of et tax, was suboptimal any number of reason Itis perhapsall this that makes Nelson quote Oscar Wide: "Everybody's waiting for me to dio so they can say how much they appreciated my work. But nobody will back me’ lelson's vision redundant, Opinion The latest in the Linuxcommunity OPEN SOURCE THE OPEN SOURCE COLUMN Bitter tablets Are tablet computers the way forward in the classroom, ponders Simon. ‘Simon Brew iss scheoiay \wtorand editor workingacrossthe Un Widows a Mactsxplattorns have children. My children goto school. The ‘schools that my children go to teach ICT. To 44060, they noed computers. A to of those schools, there's curently 8 drive to fund a bunch of iPad. Currently, said schools use 12 mix of desktop and laptop computers, and feach has access to a bunch of interesting software tools that we parents can also get 10 play around with remotely in some cases Granted, when one of my children comes home ard asks if we can got @ copy of said program for home it gets a bit awkward, not least when | check the prices, but there's something useful think, about continuing 0 There is currently a pretty nasty bug that stops the restoration process. The permissions ofthe sites/defautt diroctory are strict for security reasons, but they perplex Drush and do nt allow itt finish its restora process. The solution is simple, but it has to bbe done before the execution of the drush archive-backup command: charge the permissions of the site/default dicectory by ‘executing the following command when you are inside the Drupal root directory and then take abackup: chmod 755 sites/default/ ‘You can now restore using the Orush backup file without anyother problems, Do not forgat to fhe the directory permissions of the site/defautt directory aftr taking the backup. To restore the database that you back up using drush sql- ‘dun —result-file-soneFile.sal, you should run thefollowing command $ drush sal-comect < soneFile. sql 12 Instalinen modus Usually the fist madule you want to installon a new Drupal sites the views module. You can downoad it~ but nat enable it = with the folowing: '$ drush pr-downiload views Enableitwith S drush pr-enable views Note that the parenabile command will ask you to download all unmet dependencies (of the module you are trying to enable. If you know the exact name of a module, the following command wil show its releases as wall as whether itis already installed on your Drupal site $ drush p-releases all tools Run Dru pal sites with Drush Administer a Drupal site from the command line You can use Drush on any Drupal site, as long as you have direct access to its files via the command line 113 Desbleandremove modes Before removing @ module, itis mandatory for the module tobe inthe disabled state, asfolons: $$ drush pr-disable views The following extensions will be disabled: views Do you really want to continue? (yin): y views was disabled successfully, Uninstaling bth views and ctools modlescan bo doneastolons: $$ drush po-uninstall views ctools {As you can imagine, the cools module caret bo deleted because tisnot cently cisabled. 1G asiverss about rust Drush is very power; therefore, you should meaeize twice and cut once when using it because some commands can damage the security thedatabaseorthefles fyour sito. Not onty can Drush be used in scripts to automate many tasks, but also you can write your own custom commands if you know PHP. Enjoyexpiorng! = Tutorial Generate webpage templates with Go + Revel Generate webpage templates with Go + Revel \mifyou submitamessagein the form, twill, takeitto/echo andechoitback to you Advisor ‘Sean M Tracey is» Seatreteingette icedrggtslagiey Sosa & crane Resources Go1.2+ Revel nitp:/revel github.io git Mercurial Amodern Linux system ‘Your favourite text editor vwvitinuxuser co.uk A tittle while ago, we looked at some of the features of Go ~ and itis lovely, Golang ie Quick to write, quick to deploy run, However, Gos new nd delivering quick to and defining ‘and bsteringly fas oF Node hacking bash commands. Before erminal both Git Mercurial vel needs both to dots funky set installation magic. Assuming you have both Lon tem, the fist Uke to work with their favour ard handling netw nitty gritty as te Enter Revel, an open source MVC framework for Go, Releasedin early 2013 and just about to hit the bigv100. 20 get github.com/revel/revel This wil fetch the Revel framework and all of ts dependencies for us, but before we can Generate webpage templates with Go + Revel Easily deal with the tricky business of creatinga server and handling network requests Revel vs Flask vs Node.js Its hard to compare frameworks to each athe, particularly when youre comparing three afferent languages and coding philosophies against each athe. Python and Nodes have the advantage of boing stghtly longer in the tooth (although not by a great deal. Flask has the benefit of almost two decades of mosty backwards-compatible Python software development. meaning that if you come across the problem, somebody has probably already figured it cut. Noga doesn't have the same amount af development time, but it does have a Ferooiously active development commun recently the number of modes on NPM cutnumberes the number of Ruby Gems. That's phenomenal ReveV/Go dovsnt have ether of these quai... yet, What it does have is backing from several of the largest softwere companies in the world. Go is going to gO a long way and Revel (an open-source software) has had a lot of tine and love poured into it by some very passionate people. Though not nearly as. feature complete, Rove i getting there and, with LO. near.t’stheperfect tmetogetecited start using the framework, wee going to need to Revel command line tols too. Fortunately, that's anather one-liner as well: 20 get github.con/revel/ond/revel ‘Jost like that, Revel is now set up on our system, Painless, Enter: revel help Ifa dialog is printed then we're ready to go, but if there's an issua, i's likely caused by Reve being unable to find your installation of Go. To rectify this, check that you have a $SGOPATH variable pointing to your Go installations root folder before goingany turt 0: revel new [YOUR_APE_MHE] Divein Lets reate our first Revel app. Enter Vola, we've just made a new Revel app. So, what's just happened? Revel is all about x Revel has become a fantastic piece of kit for a Go developer to get a capable server started up 4 system up and running as quickly sible, By inching the new command, Revel wil generate the basic files needed to instantly got an app up and running. Doponding con what youve set your SGOPATH variable as, 4 new folder vill be created in that directory with the name that you passed when creating the project. IF successful you should see a prompttikethe following: ~ revel! http: //revel.github.io Your application is reat ‘arhwmn/Go/sre/banana You can run it ith: revel run [YOUR_APP.NAME] ust lke the prompt suggests lets go ahead fandrun that app now, revel run [YOUR APP.NAME] ust ke that, our Revel app is ready to go andis listening for connections ofport 8000. OB Timeteratour If you vist localhost: 2000 youll see a friendly green welcoming screen professing it works", which is lovely but revels ite of the inner workings of our Revel app. Before we start switching up some code, wore going to take a look atthe default configuration and folder structure of anew Revel ap Head to your $GOPATH folder and in sre find the folder with the name of your Revel ‘app. Open it up and take a look. The folders of importance to us here are the public, app and cont folders. Let's take a quick ook inside conf. Here you have two files: app.conf and routes: app.confis a standard configuration file, soit you want to change the pot that your Revel app listens on, define an SS certificate ar charge your app name, etc hereis where yout doit The routes file is slightly more interesting As ts name suggests, this is where we would define ary and all routes that we want our ‘app to be able to handle, a8 well as define static files and error handling, Interestingly, the order in which the routos are defined determines the importance of that route You neice for our / path the words App Index follow the entry. This defines a controler that will handle each individual request that hits that end point. The logicfor our controllers can bbe found in the app/eontrollers/app.go i. Each controller can have a view assigned to 1 Unless we specify otherwise, the controller will look for a template with the same name 28 tel n the appiviews/App! folder - in the cease of our/ rout, that would be Index html OG Mariputete tne tomptao res Now that we know where we can find Important things, lets look at passing. stuff between them, Open up the Index file found in the app/viens/App’ folder It looks just lhe ‘ordinary HTML butwitha fewiite cfferances. A ‘thetopofthe fieyoutl ee thelines: {Geet . "title" "Hone")) (template “header hel” 3) This is pretty neat. In the index.html fle we ‘can set a variable in the render process that ‘our headerhtm fle will be able to use when i's imported into the app view. If we set a variable with {set . "title" "Hone'y) ‘then we can have it print in headerhtml by ‘Simply ingarting itwhere it's needed, ike s, stitle((titlen This hints nicely at some of the more useful Revel template keywords. if we wanted to ‘209 a series of CSS or JavaSeriot files in the header :ntml fein Indoxihtml we would use the “append! keyword to create or add toa Uist for range to work through when the template was being rendered. For instance. Ceppend « “noreScripts" "seb joD Ceppend « “moreScripts” "jsebrlarda js (append « “norescripts” "jie goes on sD would result in Revel iterating through the entries appended and then replacing the (I) in the headerhtml range with the name of ‘each value passed ‘There are quite @ number of keywords that ‘can be used in a Revel template, mostly for ‘the convenience of rendering HTML in place of plaintext stings: for instance, {nib example) wil output newline cheractors as HTML. 2 breake. Stil not all of the keywords are just for rendering markup, we can do basic checks before we decide to render anything atl diy ige'status >{CF ea Haveuser Tr) Logged in(end)} will only display a message if the variable Haveuserisset to tue, OB szttoterancvarinios Now, all this is well and good if all we sant to do is change content based on hard-coded values, but what do we do if we want to pass variables from our controllers through to our templates? Wel, that's. not too hard, Hoad back over to our app.go fe, ‘Just after package controllers, insert the line ‘eodesimport “time"/code>. Don't forge the quotes around time. Next, add the following lines tothe end ofthe fie: func (© Ao) TineQ) revel.Result current = tine, lonQ ‘return e.Renderurrent) > We've just created a new controle! Unlike the Index controller, this time were passing through a variable to the template we render. Inordertouse this new variable we need todo two things: the frst is create a new template for the endpoint and the second is declare route forthe controller. Pop on aver to /app/ Vviews/pp and copy index.html as Time html It’s important to remember the name of the file needs to be the same as the controller in ‘order fr Revel to find it, otherwise we have to ‘explicitly set the template that we want it to render to. Open up Time.html and change the following ines: It works! 0 hb It works!... and the current tinestanp is (Ceurrent)} Just ike the variables we set while importing templates into a view, we can access the value ofa variable withthe lovely (variable) expression. If you want to pass through ‘more than one variable, all you have to dois separate each valuewith a comma and access them exactly the same way. return c.fender(ourrent, myNane, location, ete) Generate webpage templates with Go + Revel Easily deal with the tricky business of creatinga server and handling network requests ee Recetas Not aside, it's bocome alittle unusual to 900 8 compiled anguage running a web service. This is largely due to most ofthe compiled languages having been conceived in atime before web dovelopment was realy in sing, ‘As such, things tke easy-to-use websockets ‘and the lke are tough to implement, so we have a plethora of Nodajs/Ruby Gems! Python modules to help us along with that because theyhavealowerbariertoentry. (Of course, the downside with. these langvages is that they aren't compiled - thoy are fast but they stil cant ute match the performance of @ compiled language. Go isthe best of both wari: it compiles so it is fast but i also modern, go funky new thingslke vebsockats aren’ problem, Define aroute good goss wd bo nad one fo ton owl mie ats bense eve Sat po afin he rue tere De Ie cpp ars elon ar at ine ie jou ht purecshestoncoime. you stones other toh svat ocolar hand ate ana Ther the a gig tae ul bs handlingthe values ofa form. 7 Batefomtanding Enter the app/views folder, create a new file form html and insert the following
    input yp "tot” rame=nessage" Pat ‘div class=row’> div class="spane’> (Ctemplate “forn-htel” 3)
    ‘and in the hero-text div, adjust it eo that we print out our message instead ofthe time ora generic resting.
    http://1iftoff .msf.nasa, gov! 2003/06/03, html ten73«/quic> FB 06 _ | i ‘Vector<: > titleVect=new Vector< 203 ‘onProgressUpdate will not be used in Vectors i-/> desclect=nen Vectors 0->0s cur eawele, urd fe shown here only fr didactic reasons. Long-urrng operations Suid prone tho user wth feedback about XelPullParser parser = Xn) newhullParser@); Fig @7 the progress; this can be done by calling parser. setFeature(iaIPl Parser, FEATURE PROCESS NWESPACES, F503 Bublhrogress from tha background workor parer.etlnput(urICanraction gtlrputStreen(, null); Iratod. Keop in rind tat onProgreesUpdate wiasorunenthe GU treadand shoulnot be -eventType = parser.getEventType(); used for long-running operations. ater (ur example must invoke the worker frm tho constructor of he activity Ths can be __——_accompiahad by modi ying errant, ig 06) while (eventType != XmlPul Parser .END_DOCUMENT) Fig 08 ‘An AsyncTask is started by calling its execute € function. Inokng dabBadkground drectis 0 4 f(eventtype — xalPulParser.TART_T46) serous err athe ope required fr spawning c aowthvedisslippedin aentietynthecase hat-parser.getianeO; Lf ghat.cempareTo¢ "== =) || wat.compareTot' rr! =) Get the data t ing oF one channel Classes derived from AsyncTask expect to states; recove ove more porereter. Fortunate, cur ) HTTPTask is ot intended fr reuse. we can else Af(ohat,compareto("itor")=0) simply tard-vre te poston ofthe element in « uoston This nade tothe method Fig 05 staterss (ur mettod tarts out by “crating. 8 > row taren of the URL cats has the tise if(state=t U8 what. comareTo('title")=0) Uiortuate habit of throwing an exception i t t @ malformed string is passed in, thereby seater; forcings to deca tho utCamecton outs of > thetryatntloc se if(state=) 68 wat. comareToC sr HttpUtConnocton ton connects iso to Freat tho URL specif. Iveture 8 reading stream, state=i; tic can be used for retrawing to data the Server provdedinresponse tothe qn 3 ) Parsing XML Ascisoussed previous both Atorand RSS are XML-based formats. Andro provides agroupof else if(eventType = XmlPullParser.END_TAG) Fig @9 helper functions that simplify the processing so t parsing the les by handis not necessary what=parser.getNane() The default parser provided by Google works 4if(what .compareTo( =" )=0) by simply reading the tags in as they come. € This forces you to creato a state machine, state; hich will receive that data and sort it into > ‘the corresponding data slots. For carwenionoe, ‘else if(state=2 && vhat.comareTo(" tt 1e")=0) the stores are created as member variables of {ea : the AsyncTask. (Fig. 08) state=i; (ur parsor must start cut with the else if(state=3) (parser.getText()); ‘Show the data With that, is time forthe fina act. The data must be written outinto the widgots used fer dspaying the data ~ but Andro makes creating lst views extraordinary ficult so fr nowa simple textbox shallsuffioe. This loads ustotheclassesin Fig. 10. Insidethe HTTPTask, the output is assembled via StringBuilder Fig. 11) Conclusion Aor workingthrough the steps inthistutorial, we have creat bas fed reader that downloads and parses RSS data found onthe internet. Even though the program is not particularly useful in iteal, ie demonstrates an array of intersting subjects that can be adjusted for other purposes Newt issue, we reveal how to get to grips with advanced user interfaces, so your app wil be picture-perfect Seeyounexttimel Network Android apps Make the most of networked apps by creating an RSS reader Android makes creating list views extraordinarily difficult a piblic static ¢ HITPrask mytask; TextView myview; PlaceholderFragnent extends Fragnent Fig 10 public PlaceholderFragnent() { ) eoverride public View or€reateView(LayoutInflater inflater, Vieroup container, Bundle savedinstancestate) ¢ View root¥iew = inflater.inflate(®.layout.fragrent main, container, alse); return rootView; d override public si enViewCreated(View view, Bundle savedinstancestate) { anyTask-nex HTTPTask() view = (TextView) getVien().findviewById(. ayTask.mViewmyView; anyTask execute( /t2 aTextView); shoard.org/files/sanple-rss-2.xn1"); siper-caViewreated(view, savedinstancestate); d ? piblic clo Fig 1 C public Textview m/View; HTTPTask extends AsyncTaskiv sy, Integer, Integer> protected v1 onPostExecute(Integer result) € StringBuilder assenbledDutput=new StringBuilder(); foe(oo sev kctitleveet.:. Osi) asserbledDutput.append(titlevectelenentAt(i)); asserbledDutput append \"); asserbledDutput append(descVect. elenentat i)); asserbledDutput.append( n") ? ayview-setText (assenbledDutput.(05! 0); stper .cePostExecute(result); d ~— couk rt melt Te eT os unwanted mri ela es ' PY & As : 1 | 4,000 monitors needed for — schools in Africa and Latin America On amen eel) CORRE Mla a / { SMMC ML eee le Pre Mid tne ite ip Reta on all PCs “It has a far superior battery to your phone and has the added bonus of being easily plugged in toa TV once you reach your destination” © CT) Cr 2° 20) 00 Re) oe) Ye) Pr 00, 0° Cr Cre) DiceBot - roll Make portable Controtservos Whats ARM? ‘Add vision to your dice withatweet Pivideo player with Raspberry Pi Robexplains all Raspberry Pi Components list oie ed ae as eee ue jp WWW.PDFMAGAZINES.ORG DiceBot * Request a roll from the tweet-powered dice machine, made from the unlikely mix of Ruby, Python and Pi with an antique game Co 3 ena ae Ce Cue Interactive, o that people could play against the tweet feed? | My Pi Project ene ee ce alr if See gee eat creer Poorer Paneer a: Part Een So did you rig up some motors with ener ste Se oo) 5) ents Tutorial Set up the PiTFT touch screen touch screen g Set up the PiTFT ‘models complex geraane This Simple little touch screen takes a bit more ‘eb developer porenntrree, than just plugging it in, as we show in the first of wemane” OUr hand-held Raspberry Pi video player tutorials EEE Wo Lice to talk about how portable the Raspberry Pi is, but one of the minor What you'll need issues associat wit this portaiity is the lack of a display. Carrying OD Mestratisrnetes ‘Thofirstthingwe needtodois download andinstall the necessary kernel files. Open up a terminal or SSH in and do the flowing: MSDeardwith up-to-date round a monitors tardy practal and $ weet htp://adafruit-dowload.s3.anazonaws.con/ version of Raspbian connecting via a phone with SSH takes Libraspberrypi-bin-adafruit.deb PITFT, fully assembled seme interesting ickery to get right. The | $ waetto:/adafruit-downlod 3. anazonaws.con! eyes PirPTacreenremovesaltesesuesty Lbrasnberrypi-dev-adafruit. eb requiring no extra power and being the sizpof theRaspborry Pitot. While Adaftuit—supples preconfigured Raspbian image for the screen, youll ned to add some extras to get it werking on your curent instal hich is exactly what were ging to cover ethis tutorial aa linuxuser.co.uk IE wace heto:adafrust- dowload 33 anazonas con! 1ibraspberrypi-doc-adarust deb Is waot heto:adafrust-dowlood s3.anazonas con! Libraspberrypid-adafrult deb IE weet heto:/acafrust-downlood.s3.anazonns con! raspberryp-boot loader-adafruit-l12613 deb IS sudo dpkg ~i -8 seb Set up the PiTFT touch screen ‘Peresobere = nt vaaat Hits tn fosr/hare/aee) engrish Gin Tap attenfocion tree OD viacntnesereen IF youre using Raspbian from an image after September 2013, turnoff the accelerated framebutfer using 15 sudo av /usr/share/Xt1/norg.conf.d/99-Foturbo.conf ~ Ator that's done, shut down the Raspberry Pi completely and plug the screen into the GPIO pins if you haven’ already done so. OQ instattnessreencrver We can doa test to make sure thatthe screen works at this point. This wll turn on the sereen but it wan't work after reboot Ssudo modprobe spi-bendT@8 Ssudo modprobe fbtft.device nane-adafruitts rotate- Sexport FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 Sstarte ‘Addithe modules There are two modules we need to get to auto-oad at boottime, including the actual PTFT drive. Open up the ‘modules Fi with the First command and adi the second 190 linestothetist 0. IF sudo nano /ete/nodules ‘spi-bon7ee Fotft_device Left Get the ocoossary ies mene ata ‘nei and ‘Sonrond them to your? OB Est contieuratonties We need to create/modify the necessary configuration fie go that the screen can turn an property The first line opens the file, while the second lineneeds tobe added to thisfile I's sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/adafruit.conf Hoptions Fotft_device name=adafruitts rotate=9@ Frequency=32000008 06 Mcrere ‘You may have noticed tha specif wording on those options: rotate allows you to have tat 0,90, 10 or 270 degrees ‘frequency of 32MHz gives ya about 20fps on seen; but ifthe soreeniplayinguptakeit dawn to TeNHe, Now ebat theP Installtouch sereen 7 cree ect wenn oct vo cont and peas aston Is sudo mkdir /ete/X11/x0rg.conf.d Ts sudo nano /etc/Kil/xorg.conf. maxdegree: degree = maxDegree setdegree(o, degree) elif key degree curses. KEY_UP: degincrease if degree < 0 degree = © setDegree(0, degree) curses. endwin() OG Bnet Place the code in the same divectory as. the Adatruit example code and run it with sudo python Servo.VoluneControl.py. The servo shouldrotatetotheright wwhen you press the up arrow and rotate tothe left whan you ~w What is ARM? bielyrieseo7 ityoutebraveand You know, ve never really thought about it before, but the Raspberry Pi runs.on an ARM chip, right? at's ight, the Broadcom Bt Okay, but what exactly is ARM? ARM is a type of CPU: the thing that Why is thisthe case? Solt's typeof CPU - what does that actually mean, though? vivitinuxuser co.uk mostly made for x86 architectures laptops have always really been it would create a lot of extra work for operating system developers and software developers. {Are there no ARM versions of major operating systems then? There are but they'e less common an Tho Linux kernel supports ARM just fine, which is wy you use @ Linux distribution on Raspberry Pi. Android is also based an Linux and Windows 8 has an ARM version as well although that’s partly based on the motile OS, There is an Ubuntu ARM version but it doesn't support the Raspberry ‘Wait, i's ARM but it doesn't support the Raspberry P's particular type of [ARM processor? Well, there are different of ARM chipsets: for example, th Raspberry Pi uses ARM v6, while modeen phones are up to ARM v8 and 64-bit ARM processors. Ubuntu requites ARM 7 to work and is no making an ARM. v6-compatile version, Ite @ bit of a sore sub) as Ubuntu was originally going to do 0, but pulled out very close to the release of the Raspberry Pi That's not very good. Stil, th seem to be quite a few on the Raspberry Pi at east. So intel mado x86—whomade ARM? The clue is actually in the acronym: Acorn RISC Machine, It was originally designed by the British computing company Acorn Computers to be popular in British schools during the Nineties thanks to a cou put on by a major supermarkot every year: Acorn computers were some of the rewards you could get with the vouchers. RISC is the operating system that ran an Acorn computers, signed to work specifically on ARM: Interesting! So ARM, which started off as a proper computer processor ‘became ubiquitous with mobile. Is it the same RISC that I can download from the Raspberry Pi website? ‘Near enough, yos. Th been some development over the ppast 15-20 yoars but it's the same ‘Operating system as the one you would have used if you wore going to fechool in the UX in that ime pet Midale-click and everythin. 80 a lot of the Raspberry Pls linked back to British school computing? From a. certsin perspectis youcould say tat Which chip does the Raspberry Pi use specifically, then?” As we mentioned earlier, ite the Broadcom BCM2836; it’s actually 3 system-on-a-chip, £0 t's got CPU and traphics with native 1080p decoding fn tho chip, Ire small, powerful and cheap, which makes itperfectly suited for the Raspberry Well, 1 feet iluminated! rt make ‘sure to look out for what kind of processor lusein the futur Excellent! twill make life that litle bit easier when youre looking to install packages, other software and even Operating. systems - it definitely Worth famiiansing | FAQ Lett Te ow power consumption ot ARM processors ledtothembechming ‘Bigutoustomodiepronesanctablets ee Back to school How do so many things onthe Pilink back to British school ey BBC Micro Hallstarsinthe Eighties wth te BBC Micro: ‘computer built by Acorn forthe BBC's Computer Utoracy Project which cretedagoneratonof txcllont Beth progranmers Ths clase Raspbory ree-erestar Eben Upton thetcro was cual the inspiration forthe Raspbery Acorn comy ter the BBCHere8 Bogan to cout, Aeorn Continuadtocreatethe Acorn brand of omputerssingthe ARM chips andRISCOS. ‘Then lasted throughout the Nineties before 2oornspunoft purely make ARN chip or ‘noble and ombesded computers Raspberry Pi “Thelatest computerforachools uss an ARM Sndreferencesthe BGC Meroinemiasion ord taming fs ohelpngturer AR asa deshcop processed making more ape Python column Add vision to your Raspberry Pi Joey Bernard Aaatve heepitshistime’ Brtwoen Dang researchers wth [Sentecompating problems and ‘ting ops Whi Python? — iethotal lengagot ne thodocset smayenonoe Add vision to your Raspberry Pi The Kinect can provide a very robust vision system to your Raspberry Pi — and all through Python! you do even acursory search ontine, ‘you wil be able to find any number of ‘modules that will add functionality to ‘your Raspberry Pi. Mary of thaso aro sensor modules that let you observe the world around you. What you may not know is that you probably already have ‘very powerful sensor module that you fan use with your Raspberry Py if you ‘wn an Xbox the Kinect sensor The Kinect connects through a regular USB cable, 30 theoretically it could be connected to your Raspberry Pi. All you need is a library to establish communication, Luckily, thisis provided ‘through the Openkinect project (ww. openkinectorg). I you use Raspbian, then you should have everything you need available in the package repository, The base Ubraries are available with the command: Iso apt-get install freenect IHyouwere to write C code, you could stop here. Since we are focusing on Python, you wil also need to install the Python wrappers. Youdo this withthe command: I sb apt et install python freenect The last stop to gutting set up is to connect the Kinect to your Raspbetry i. The USB ports on the Raspberry PI probably can’ provide enough power for the Kinec, so you will rood a poworod USB hub placed between the twodevices Now that everything Is. connected together, we wil lke at some Python code to start communicating with the sensor. We wil be borrowing heanily from the demos included in the Python wrapper source code. The fst step isto imoortthe freeneet module, with Jimport freenect Be sure that everyting Is connected land powered up before doing this. You should now have access to your Kinect. The frst thing you can do, just to verify that you do indeed have control of your Kinect. isto set the LED value. You can set it to green, red, yellon, blinking or off with the function, freenect.set_led(éev, led) sibere led is an integer from 0 to 6 representing the various options. The parameter dev contains a inter to the Kineot devioe. You can aso tit the Kinet by using the funetion set.1itdegsidev, tit degrees). Just be suze to keep it ‘between O and 20 degrees. Inorder to get the device parameter you need to getthe freenectmoduletotelyounhatits. (ne way odo this to use the runloop wrapper funeten, This function takes a function you wrote asthe body aie ‘the inact and runs the body nanatinte loop, But what fyou want to break out of the loop? You can use a glabal variabie to ‘vigger what toda, Buthow can youset i? Here wollnsedtointroduce signals ‘Signals are messages that are sent to your rogram by the kernel. For example, f you enter CTRL, this sands the signal SIGINT. or the interupt signal, to your program. Other examy ‘SIGKILL (thekilsignad,orSIGTERM (heterminate There are a lot of exciting things to discover when you combine the Kinect and Pi 7 monserouk signal. In Python, you can work with signals by importing the signal module. Youcan then set up ahandiertolisten for partcularsignalsanddo something when you get ore. Inthe exarnpe code, wehave 4 pobal variable named keep.running that tells freenect whether to continue in the runloop function or not. You can Create a handler function that looks lio the folowing fof handler(igrum, Franc): slobal keep_running eep.rurning = ‘Once you have ths function, you oan regjeter it to be fired when a particular sigral is rooeived. So, if you warted to fie thiswhen the user types CTRL, you vould use thefolloning: signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler) Now we should start tying to get some data frern the Kinect. There are both synchronous. and asynchronous versions of the get functions that can achiev this for us. The asynchronous versions requie callback functions, 60 we will sip these versions for now. The synchronous worsione block on each eal until the data is returned. On the return, ‘yu wil gota list of objects and you wil be interested inthe frst element. Tis looks semathing tke freenect.syne_getvideo()t! ‘The simplest thing to dof to display this video data. Since we are in Python, we ‘can use matplotib and get an arimates splay. Asimplified oop looks ike {mage_reb = matplotlih inshow(get_ Video(), interpolation nearest aninated=iru) hile keep.running: ‘nage_rgb.set_data(get_videoQ) natplotlib.draw() shore the function gat-video) 1 the call to freenect’s sync_get_video Again, we can use the signal handlor ws defined above to be able to let the user break out of this infinite loop. Thing get more inte n you sta Analyse all ofthis video data Opec and the ‘roject provides tools to do sorne prety serious data analyss. n order to do this, you will need to do some data version frst. The main difference that the data trom the Kinect isin carder, while OpenCV is expecting it to be in BGR order. Once you make this version, youcanrepreducethe display import ev evNanedindow( Video") while ‘cv Showtmagec Video’, get_video()) if evmaitkey(io) = break where gat_videod is 0 takes care ofthe apper that -rwersien for OpenCy. Along with the video information, there depth information, the last source of information available from the Kinact is accelerometer data, With this data, you can figure out the orientation of the Kinect to help you map out where the video data is lecated relative to tha kKinect sensor. The get.accel) func returns a set of x, y and 2 vals for the x.y and 2 partsf the local acceleration With all ofthis data, protiyintreating prpcts There is not a lot of documentation available on how to use the Python wrapper for freenect. so you will need to poke around a bit to discover exactly scmethingnew.be generous and shareit you can de, When you learn there are a lot of excting things to Full code listing moore Freenect mort ine moor’ random Inport signal keep runing = Tist_tine (den, €ts) elebal LaSt_tine pot keep_running: bise freenect KALI 1 tine tie() = last_tine < astctine = tine, tine() led = rendon.rondint(®, 6) 181t = random: randint(, freenect.set-ied(sev, 16d) Freenect set_tilt.degs(Gev, tilt) r(signum, frane): ‘sets up the kill handler, catches SIGINT slebal keep_running beep. running Signal. signal (signal SIGINT, handler) Freenect runloep(od=body) Inport matplotlib.yplot 25 mp keep running rp. i000) ro.aray Anage_rgb ~ mo. inshon(freenect. syn_get_vid60()0)] signal. signal(signal. SIGINT, handler) ie keep_ranning Iinage-rgp.set-data(freenect.syne_get_video()(0}) mcr) m waitforbuttonpress(.01) Python column ove Manypeopiomay notreliethat ‘heycan hanes the pomeo He bot escencorwithPython Give your robot vision —— ne project that might come to mind that uses a Kinact ard a Raspberry Pi is a vison systern fora robot do some erazig ‘and you could uff with this, But if you wanted to do even more extensive work, you should look at the robot tom (ww.ros.orgh This i lets ful sute of tools, libraries and conventions to provide platform to develop your ov ro operating 9 bullon Ubuntu asthe defauit tribution and is what is expected if you install t on your desktop or laptop. Bi Raspbery Pi people out there, there installed as the OS on your Raspberry Pi and then you can add an APT source painingtoROS. Youcaninstallit with fer you version Groovy, called "ined tohave Raspbian IE suco apt-get install. ros-gramvy- After ‘variables to set ua which is handled by a shel sept included with ROS, Then you isnt a complete port yet, but is certain Raspery Prpoweredrabat vutinuxuser.co.uk Subscribe subscribetoday start saving USA special offer Subscribe today and get 5 free issues* “~~ Exclusive subscriber < =. / benefits 4 + Subscribe today and pay just $130 for 13 issues* + Pay as little as $10 an issue — usually $16.99 in stores For more information and to order visit www.imaginesubs.co.uk/lud Or call +44 (0) 1795 418661 HOW IT WORKS ILLUSTRATED Every issue different, every issue amazing The unique new monthly magazine Fact-pacy oe ** Where to get your copy 79 info @ All good newsagents & supermarkets Online at imagineshop.co.uk On your iPhone, iPad & Android by visiting greatdigitalmags.com Arab cn te tewng gators What’s ng with this picture? 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