09
Mar

Raspberry Pi rpi rasbian debian wheezy headless 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian minimal

I have stripped out loads of the development tools and extras in the 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian.zip image, I have installed minidlna on mine taking my rootfs up to 716MB.

My minimal image can be found here:
2013-02-09_minimal_wheezy_2013-03-09_updates.7z

After loading this to your sd card (1GB or more) with dd or Win32DiskImager (i haven't tested anything else) run

sudo raspi-config

and expand the rootfs to fill to the size of your sd card. This will load without expanding, swap has been disabled, all the display and sound drivers have been removed assuming a headless configuration. After installation you can see in a log file what has been removed.
Default Settings:
User:pi
Password:raspberry


Fresh install of this will give you ~16MB free in rootfs.

Please like to let me know you have downloaded / like my image! Read More
25
Feb

Raspberry Pi Updates

So, I completely forgot to update my rPi.
It's been up for a while now, as you can see down the bottom left (sometimes it might display loads of errors, my regex isn't always perfect). It's been chugging away, computing small things, streaming my media around the place for me without any interventions at all.
Crontab seems to have died, however i'm hoping the update will fix this.The 100 odd updates actually saved me some space rather than used more which I guess is a good thing.

Soon I am to be looking to get a media center remote for one of my other pi's running rasbmc. These also seem to be holding up pretty well, and work well enough with a free remote for windows phone and android. I just need to find a cheap half decent IR one. Any reccomendations? Read More


16
Jan

miniDLNA update database on raspberry pi

The defaults settings in the config for minidlna do not seem to work for most people on raspberrypi.
I decided I never really use the pi around 4am, so a cron job for forcing the database to update when i'm asleep wouldn't interrupt any videos mid stream.

edit crontab (sudo nano /etc/crontab)
The following line would cause the database to update at 4am every morning:

0 4 * * * sudo service minidlna force-reload


I now have an updated database every day that i can stream to my TV, Laptop and RasBMC! Read More
15
Jan

Windows hostname Raspberry PI

I was looking around to figure how to set the raspberry pi hostname to appear in windows. I came across this: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=25693 On the raspberry pi forums explaining various ways in how to get the raspberry pi to show a hostname in windows.

I did this on debian wheezy.

$ sudo apt-get install samba
$ sudo apt-get install winbind

$ sudo nano /etc/nsswitch.conf 
#to enable wins change 'hosts: files dns' TO 'hosts: files wins dns'

#To change the hostname
$ sudo nano /etc/hostname


$ sudo reboot


This worked perfectly for me! Hope the info can help out others. Read More
10
Jan

miniDLNA on raspberry pi (rpi), AllShare Play, Samsung TV, other devices

I had been struggling to get miniDLNA on the raspberrypi to work with my samsung smart tv and allshare play. I started playing with the configuration settings and this is what i have come up with:

# This is the configuration file for the MiniDLNA daemon, a DLNA/UPnP-AV media
# server.
#
# Unless otherwise noted, the commented out options show their default value.
#
# On Debian, you can also refer to the minidlna.conf(5) man page for
# documentation about this file.


# Path to the directory you want scanned for media files.
#
# This option can be specified more than once if you want multiple directories
# scanned.
#
# If you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you can
# prepend the directory name with a letter representing the type (A, P or V),
# followed by a comma, as so:
#   * "A" for audio    (eg. media_dir=A,/var/lib/minidlna/music)
#   * "P" for pictures (eg. media_dir=P,/var/lib/minidlna/pictures)
#   * "V" for video    (eg. media_dir=V,/var/lib/minidlna/videos)
#
# WARNING: After changing this option, you need to rebuild the database. Either
#          run minidlna with the '-R' option, or delete the 'files.db' file
#          from the db_dir directory (see below).
#          On Debian, you can run, as root, 'service minidlna force-reload' instead.
media_dir=A,/home/pi/minidlna/music
media_dir=V,/home/pi/minidlna/video
media_dir=P,/home/pi/minidlna/photos

# Path to the directory that should hold the database and album art cache.
db_dir=/var/lib/minidlna

# Path to the directory that should hold the log file.
log_dir=/var/log

# Minimum level of importance of messages to be logged.
# Must be one of "off", "fatal", "error", "warn", "info" or "debug".
# "off" turns of logging entirely, "fatal" is the highest level of importance
# and "debug" the lowest.
log_level=info

# Use a different container as the root of the directory tree presented to
# clients. The possible values are:
#   * "." - standard container
#   * "B" - "Browse Directory"
#   * "M" - "Music"
#   * "P" - "Pictures"
#   * "V" - "Video"
# if you specify "B" and client device is audio-only then "Music/Folders" will be used as r                                                                             oot
root_container=.

# Network interface(s) to bind to (e.g. eth0), comma delimited.
#network_interface=

# IPv4 address to listen on (e.g. 192.0.2.1).
# SET TO YOUR PI IP !!!!!!!!!!!
listening_ip=192.168.1.10

# Port number for HTTP traffic (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer).
port=8200

# URL presented to clients.
# The default is the IP address of the server on port 80.
#presentation_url=http://192.168.1.10:800

# Name that the DLNA server presents to clients.
friendly_name=dlnapimedia

# Serial number the server reports to clients.
serial=12345678

# Model name the server reports to clients.
model_name=Windows Media Connect compatible (MiniDLNA)

# Model number the server reports to clients.
model_number=1

# Automatic discovery of new files in the media_dir directory.
inotify=yes

# List of file names to look for when searching for album art. Names should be
# delimited with a forward slash ("/").
album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albuma                                                                             rt.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg

# Strictly adhere to DLNA standards.
# This allows server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images, which may
# decrease JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA products.
#strict_dlna=no

# Support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO.
enable_tivo=yes

# Notify interval, in seconds.
notify_interval=895

# Path to the MiniSSDPd socket, for MiniSSDPd support.
#minissdpdsocket=/run/minissdpd.sock


I hope this can help other people Read More
30
Dec

Raspberry Pi with WI-PI running wirelessly

I ordered some Raspberrypi's with cases and WI-PI (wifi) dongles from farnell a couple of weeks ago.
It was only yesterday I decided to sit down and actually sort these out. I have installed debian wheezey on the raspberry pi, updated, plugged in the dongle, and ran some updates.
The dongle was automatically picked up in ifconfig, and i just needed to enter the wireless information in wpa_supplicant to get the dongle to work. To my suprise, the rpi was then running wirelessly after a reboot on just a plug by itself. I can then do everything i want on the pi without sitting on the floor infront of a tv with a keyboard on my lap.

WIll be putting up more posts soon! Read More


04
Dec

Raspberry Pi Pinprick / Faint Green LED and Red LED

I have spent nearly 2 weeks wondering why my raspberry pi would not boot, i tried different SD cards, diffferent power supplies and everything. I just kept getting a red LED with basically no green led (or as some people put it, pinprick green led).
I tried using the alternate boot files from github which some people reccommended for class 10 SD cards, and still no luck.
I tried using rasbian, xbmc and the android release with no luck, until this morning i decided to give it one last go and try arch linux.

Hurrah! It booted, now i have use of my pi again! Read More