Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi - Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

1. What Is a Raspberry Pi?

We dive into what a Raspberry Pi is and what are some of the things you can do with the hardware platform.

2. Overview of the Raspberry Pi 4

Since the Raspberry Pi 4 was released, this video describes all the new features of the Raspberry Pi 4 and compares the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 3 so you will understand the differences between the two boards.

1. Hardware Components That You Will Need

We will cover all the components and hardware that are needed to set up your Raspberry Pi.

2. Let's Connect Everything Together

We will demonstrate how to connect all the components together before booting up your Raspberry Pi.

1. Understanding Some Basics about SD Cards

You will learn about the recommendation for sizes of SD cards for various OS distributions for Raspberry Pi and understand terminology around SD card class and the physical sizes that are most common.

2. Accessing SD Cards

In this lecture, we will discuss the various sizes of SD cards and the adapters that can be used to access (read and write to them) them from your computer.

3. Downloading and Installing Etcher for Flashing Your SD Card

We look at the process of flashing and preparing SD cards with the Etcher software.

4. Download and Install the Raspberry Pi Imager for Flashing Your SD Card

The Raspberry Pi Imager is a new software that was created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and can be used for flashing and preparing SD cards for the Raspberry Pi. In this, video we will look at how to download and install that software.

5. Introducing the Raspberry Pi OS (Formerly Raspbian)

In this video, I introduce the new Raspberry Pi OS, which has become a recent replacement for Raspbian.

6. Installing the Raspbian Operating System by Flashing Our SD Card

We will go through the process of downloading the latest Raspbian build and use the Etcher software to flash and prepare our SD card for a first-time boot-up.

7. Using the Raspberry Pi Imager to Install Raspberry Pi OS

In this video, we look at how easy it is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager software to prepare and flash your SD card with any operating system for your Raspberry Pi.

8. Resource for Checking the Validity of Your SD Card

We discuss a resource that shows the results of tests that were performed on SD cards to see which ones are compatible with the Raspberry Pi.

9. Tips for Preventing SD Card Corruption Issues

We will review a list of tips that help prevent SD card corruption issues.

1. Standard Configuration Settings and Best Practices

We will review some configuration changes that you can make to your Raspbian install that will help you be more productive.

1. Overview of the Setup Process in Headless Mode

We will review what is Headless Mode and the overall steps that are involved in setting your Raspberry Pi to Headless Mode.

2. Flashing Your SD Card with the Latest Version of Raspbian

We will show you how to flash your SD card with the latest version of Raspbian.

3. Set Up SSH and wpa_supplicant.conf

We will need to add a couple of files to the SD card to facilitate the process of connecting to the wireless network and being able to interact with the Raspberry Pi through SSH.

4. Getting the IP Address of Your Raspberry Pi

We look at how to get the IP address of your Raspberry Pi from your router once the PI boots up.

5. Connecting Through SSH to Change raspi-config Settings

We show the process of connecting through SSH to make the configuration changes we need in raspi-config to allow us to connect by a VNC client.

6. Using VNC Viewer to Connect to Your Pi from Your Computer

We show how VNC Viewer can be used to connect remotely to your Pi in headless mode.

1. SSH (Secure Shell)

I demonstrate how to connect to your Raspberry Pi from the Terminal on a Mac or Linux machine and use the Putty client from Windows.

2. VNC (Virtual Network Computing)

You will learn about Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and how to install a VNC client to connect remotely to your Raspberry Pi.

3. SFTP (Secure (SSH) File Transfer Protocol)

You will learn about SFTP (Secure (SSH) File Transfer Protocol) and will install the FileZilla client to transfer files to our Raspberry Pi.

4. SCP (Secure Copy)

Here, we will demonstrate how to securely copy files across the network from a computer to our Raspberry Pi through the SCP utility.

5. RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol connection - Windows)

We show how you can use the Remote Desktop Protocol to connect to your Raspberry Pi from Windows.

1. Introduction to the Terminal

We discuss the Terminal and why it is important for Raspberry Pi.

2. Understanding User Modes in Linux

We will discuss the different user modes of operation when working with the Terminal in Raspberry Pi.

3. Useful General Terminal Commands for the Raspberry Pi

We will go through some common general commands that can help you be more productive on your Raspberry Pi.

4. File and Directory Commands

We will cover the most popular file and directory commands that are used in Linux.

5. Networking Commands

We will cover commands that can be used to give you information about your network and allow you to perform network-related functions.

6. System Commands

We will be discussing system commands that give information in general about our Raspberry Pi environment.

7. Keyboard Shortcuts

In this lecture, we will discuss keyboard shortcuts that can help you be very productive at the Terminal.

1. Understanding the APT Ecosystem

You will learn about the Advanced Package Tool (APT) Ecosystem and how it makes installing software and resolving dependencies a breeze in a Debian-based operating system, which Raspbian is built on.

2. Installing Software Using APT

In this lecture, we take a hands-on practical look at how to install software using APT commands from the terminal.

1. Creating a One-Line Web Server with SimpleHTTPServer

SimpleHTTPServer is a quick and easy way to get a web server running using Python. In this lecture, we will demonstrate how to set it up.

2. Installing the Apache Web Server

We will install the Apache web server, which is one of the most popular web servers on the Internet.

3. Installing the PHP Application Server

PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages on the web. We will see how to install it on our Raspberry Pi.

1. Introduction to GPIO Pins

You will learn what GPIO pins are and why they are important in the world of Raspberry Pi.

2. Standard Components Needed

Here, we will discuss the standard set of components that you will need for the GPIO pin projects.

3. Downloading Code and Resources for the Course from GitHub

We will discuss how to get the code for the various projects in the course.

1. Powering an LED

We will see how the power pins on the Raspberry Pi can be used to Power an LED.

1. Wiring Change to Blink an LED

We will perform the wiring change necessary to allow our LED to be controlled programmatically.

2. Demo the Circuit

We will execute the code to demo the circuit.

3. Code Review

We perform a code review to understand how the Python program works to blink the LED.

1. Introduction and Components That Are Needed

We review the components that are needed for the project.

2. Wiring Up the Circuit

We review the circuit diagram and wire up the components for our project.

3. Demo the Circuit

We will execute the code to demo the circuit.

4. Code Review

We perform a code review to understand how the Python program works to determine when the button is pressed.

1. Introduction and Components That Are Needed

We review the components that are needed for the project.

2. Wiring Up the Circuit

We review the circuit diagram and wire up the components for our project.

3. Demo the Circuit

We will execute the code to demo the circuit.

4. Code Review

We perform a code review to understand how the Python program works to manage our circuit.

1. Introduction to PIR Sensors

We discuss what a PIR sensor is and how it works.

2. Components That Are Needed

We review the components that you need for the project.

3. Wiring Up the Circuit

We review the circuit diagram and wire up the components for our project.

4. Demo the Circuit

We will execute the code to demo the circuit.

5. Code Review

We perform a code review to understand how the Python program works to manage our circuit.

1. Introduction and Components That Are Needed

We review the components that are needed for the project.

2. Wiring Up the Circuit

We review the circuit diagram and wire up the components for our project.

3. Demo the Circuit

We will execute the code to demo the circuit.

4. Code Review

We perform a code review to understand how the Python program works to manage our circuit.

1. Introduction

We discuss the USB webcams that we will be using for the Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi Camera module.

1. Connecting Your USB Webcam

We look at how to connect your webcam to the Raspberry Pi.

2. Installing and Configuring Motion to Set Up a Webcam Server

We will be using the Motion software to create a webcam server on our Raspberry Pi. We discuss how to install it and tweak some configuration settings.

3. Demo of the Motion Webcam Server

Now that Motion has been installed, we will access the webcam server in a browser.

4. Preparing Your System and Installing fswebcam

We will look at how to install the fswebcam software, which allows us to interact with a USB-connected webcam through the terminal and scripting.

5. Using fswebcam

We will take a look at how to use fswebcam using terminal commands to take images and invoke a USB camera.

6. Using a Script to Take Images with fswebcam

We will look at how a script can be executed to use fswebcam to take a photo with a USB camera.

7. fswebcam Script Code Review

We will do a code review of the script that was created to take a photo using fswebcam.

1. Introduction to the Pi Camera Module and How to Connect It to the Raspberry Pi

We discuss the Pi Camera module for Raspberry Pi and demonstrate how to connect the module to the connector on the Pi Board.

2. Getting a Preview Using the Pi Camera

We will show how you can pragmatically start and stop a preview of the Pi Camera module.

3. Capturing a Still Picture of Image with the Pi Camera

We will show how you can use Python to capture an image using the Raspberry Pi Camera module.

4. Capturing a Series of Photos with the Pi Camera

We will demonstrate how you can use Python to take a series of photos with the Raspberry Pi Camera module. This can be used to create a time-lapse video or effect.

5. Recording Video with the Raspberry Pi Camera Module

We will see how to use Python to record video with the Raspberry Pi Camera module and use the MX player to demonstrate how the saved video can be played back.

6. Using Special Effects with the Pi Camera Module

We will show how you can use Python code to iterate over all the special effects that can be applied to images using the Pi Camera.

1. Why Build an Amazon Echo Clone?

We will discuss the benefits of building an Amazon Echo clone with the Raspberry Pi.

2. Components That Are Needed

We discuss the components that are needed to build our Amazon Echo Clone.

3. Setting Up Your Amazon Developer Account and Registering Your Amazon Echo Clone

We will go through the process of setting up your Amazon Developer account and registering your Amazon Echo Clone Device.

4. Installing Git and the Alexa Pi Software

We will walk through the process of installing Git and cloning the Alexa Pi repository software from GitHub. We will then install the Alexa Pi software for our Amazon Echo Clone.

5. Demo of the Amazon Echo Clone

We will complete one final step in the setup and then do a demo of our Amazon Echo Clone!