Getting ready for Winter Storm Stella

I've setup a webcam for folks to watch Winter Storm Stella from my house in Merrimack, NH.

Click on the live stream on here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MarcNo

There is a Raspberry Pi 3 with a picamera pointing out my front window. It is running this script:

raspivid -o - -t 0 -fps 30 -b 6000000  | ffmpeg -re -ar 44100 -ac 2 -acodec pcm_s16le -f s16le -ac 2 -i /dev/zero -f h264 -i - -vcodec copy -acodec aac -ab 128k -g 50 -strict experimental -
f flv rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD

Where AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD is my secret YouTube key.

Essentially raspivid is sending the video to ffmpeg which add a silent audio loop and then forwards the flv stream to YouTube's ingestion server.

The info came primarily from:

• ffmpeg Install On Raspbian

• How I made a $50 HD Livestream Camera with a Raspberry Pi and Youtube

HOWTO get your Raspberry Pi running owncloud, tt-rss and thinkup

Today a case for my Raspberry Pi arrived from Adafruit arrived and it is time for some spring cleaning.

I was running the XBMC distro on the pi, but found it cumbersome to listen to music in the home office that way. So time to start with a fresh Raspbian install.

Here are my notes:

• Get the current Raspbian release from Raspbian.org and install it on a
  4GB flash disk.


• Boot the new disk and make the following configurations using
  raspi-config which is run the first time it starts up.
  
  - Use only 16M for GPU since I'm not running an X desktop
  - set appropriate timezone
  - set appropriate locale
  - expand fs to use entire 4GB disk
  - change pi passwd
  - enable ssh access
  - update
  - reboot
  


• Now some miscellaneous setup to make life easier later on. Both tt-rss and thinkup require MySQL, but I'll also want to use it for
  owncloud too. So install MySQL server:
  
  sudo apt-get install mysql-server
  
  Avahi (aka bonjour) is a very nice network tool that is a DNS-less way
  to announcing your hostname on the local network. Most (all) linux
  tools support it, but you'll need Apple's Bonjour kit for Windows.
  That means you can just 'ssh raspberrypi.local' or browse to
  http://raspberrypi.local/

sudo apt-get install avahi-utils
  
  I like emacs and screen is useful.
  
  sudo apt-get install emacs23-nox screen
  
  At this point I stop using the keyboard/monitor connected to the Raspberry Pi and use an ssh session from my laptop to do the rest.
  
  


• First install ownCloud by taking a look here: http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=isv:ownCloud:community&package=owncloud. Then connect to your Raspberry Pi:
  
  ssh pi@raspberrypi.local
sudo -i
  
  Now run this script which I slightly modified from their page:
  
  wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:ownCloud:community/Debian_6.0/Release.key
apt-key add - < Release.key

echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:ownCloud:community/Debian_6.0/ /' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list
apt-get update
apt-get install owncloud
  
  At this point you'll have all the required packages are installed. Now point a browser to http://raspberrypi.local/owncloud
  
  You will need to create an owncloud admin account and will want to then expand the Advanced tab and to use a MySQL server instead of SQLite. Fill in root, mysql root password (I didn't bother to set an mysql admin password, so null in my case). For the database, use owncloud and database host localhost. It may take a couple minutes to be complete, so be patient.
  



• Now install tt-rss doing the following steps:
  
  cd /var/www/

wget -c https://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS/archive/1.7.4.tar.gz
  
  And follow the instructions here http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki/InstallationNotes which are essentially:
  
  tar zxvf 1.7.4.tar.gz
mv Tiny-Tiny-RSS-1.7.4 tt-rss

chown -R www-data:www-data tt-rss
  
  You will have to manually create a mysql database and import the schema
  
  mysql -u root
  mysql> create database ttrss;
  mysql> quit
  
  Now import the database schema (a fancy way to say the database tables and some initial data)
  
  cd tt-rss/schema
mysql -u root ttrss < ttrss_schema_mysql.sql
  
  And a little editing the configuration file...
  
  cd /var/www/tt-rss

cp config.php-dist config.php

emacs config.php (or use vi, nano, etc)
  
  I made the following edits:
  
define('DB_TYPE', "mysql");
define('DB_HOST', "localhost");
define('DB_USER', "root");
define('DB_NAME', "ttrss");
define('DB_PASS', "");

define('SELF_URL_PATH', 'http://raspberrypi.local/tt-rss/');
define('SINGLE_USER_MODE', true);
  
  Point a browser to http://raspberrypi.local/tt-rss
  
  From there login with default login/password of admin/password and you are done.
  



• Finally install http://www.thinkupapp.com/docs/install/quickstart.html
  
  The one package you'll need that isn't already installed at this point is php5-curl.
  
  apt-get install php5-curl
  
  Now get the kit. I used wget and the site provided the kit, but with an unusual name.
  
  
cd /var/www
wget -c http://thinkupapp.com/download/
mv index.html thinkup-1.3.1.zip
unzip thinkup-1.3.1
chown -R www-data:www-data thinkup
  
  Almost done. Point a browser to http://raspberrypi.local/thinkup and complete the configuration.
  
  database host: localhost
  
  database name: thinkup
  
  user: root
  
  password: blank, in my case or whatever you set the mysql root password to.
  
  I (and probably you) don't have a smtp server configured, so in order to activate your account, you'll need to do this: http://www.thinkupapp.com/docs/troubleshoot/common/advanced/directdb.html
  
  # mysql -u root thinkup
  
  mysql> select id,full_name,is_activated from tu_owners;
  +----+-------------+--------------+
  | id | full_name | is_activated |
  +----+-------------+--------------+
  | 1 | Marc Nozell | 0 |
  +----+-------------+--------------+
  1 row in set (0.00 sec)
  
  mysql> update tu_owners set is_activated=1 where id=1;
  mysql> quit
  
  Done! Now go back to http://raspberrypi.local/thinkup and configure the plugins to your favorite social media sites.
  
  

Installing owncloud on a Raspberry Pi

Spoiler: Just follow the official installation guide and you'll be fine. Although you'll probably want to put owncloud data on external storage. Surprised? It is just another linux server!

Below are the commands I used. Those in bold are where I did something slightly different in order to change the location where files are stored. In my case I have a powered USB disk mounted on /mnt.


$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for marc:
# apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-gd php-xml-parser \
php5-intl php5-sqlite php5-mysql smbclient curl \
libcurl3 php5-curl
...a bunch of packages installed...
# cd /var/www/
# tar jxf ~marc/owncloud-4.5.5.tar.bz2
# chown -R www-data:www-data owncloud/apps
# chown -R www-data:www-data owncloud/config
# mkdir /mnt/owncloud-data
# chown www-data:www-data /mnt/owncloud-data
# ln -s /mnt/owncloud-data/ /var/www/owncloud/data


Then point a browser to http://raspberrypi.local/owncloud and take all the defaults. That is leave the file location as /var/www/owncloud/data

Finally go download the sync clients from http://owncloud.org/sync-clients/ and drag-n-drop files in your ~/owncloud.

For testing I had ~180M of files in my ~/owncloud directory and the apache2 process hammered the RPi cpu for a while for the first sync from my desktop.

Working powered hub for the Raspberry Pi

A cheap 7 port Staples-branded powered hub gives my RPi problems, but a new 4 port Staples-branded powered hub works just fine.


root@raspberrypi:~# lsusb|grep -i Port
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
root@raspberrypi:~#


Just a random data point for people to find via google ;-)

Raspberry Pi Show-n-Tell @ManchLUG

Tonight I brought my Raspberry Pi to the Manchester (NH) Linux Users Group for a show & tell session.

Here are my slides:

• OpenOffice format



• PDF Format

For the record, some of us were drinking Lindemans Framboise Lambic Beer in honor of the topic.

ThinkUp on Raspberry Pi

Tonight I installed the cool social networking monitoring tool ThikUp on my new Raspberry Pi with the lastest debian code drop.

1. Downloaded the new (11-Jun-2012) test Debian/Wheezy image as announced on http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=8071
   
   
2. Since I'm using a new 4GB MMC card and the image was built for 2GB, ran "sudo rasp_config" to resize the disk and bias memory toward SoC instead of the video card. Rebooted. Realized it didn't reboot, pull power and boot
   



3. 
   
   3) I run a a local apt-proxy to save bandwidth, so created /etc/apt/apt.conf that contains:
   
   Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.168.2.109:3142";
   



4. 
   
   4) Update the apt-cache:
   
   sudo apt-get update
   




5. Install useful bits:
   
   sudo apt-get install emacs screen mysql-server php5 php5-curl php5-gd php5-mysql
   
   This installs ~61M of new packages and pulls in a suitable apache server.


6. 
   Now time to install thinkup:
   
sudo -i
cd /var/www/
unzip ~pi/thinkup_1.0.7.zip
chown -R www-data /var/www/thinkup/data/
sudo touch /var/www/thinkup/config.inc.php
sudo chown www-data /var/www/thinkup/config.inc.php

   




7. point a browser to http://192.168.2.120/thinkup/install



8. Since I didn't bother to setup outbound email, need to manually
   update the thinkup table. See
   http://thinkupapp.com/docs/troubleshoot/common/advanced/directdb.html
   
   mysql -u root -p
mysql> use thinkup;
mysql> select id,full_name, is_activated from tu_owners;
+----+-------------+--------------+
| id | full_name | is_activated |
+----+-------------+--------------+
| 1 | Marc Nozell | 0 |
+----+-------------+--------------+

1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> update tu_owners set is_activated=1 where id=1;
mysql> commit;
mysql> exit;

   
   



9. Point a browser to http://192.168.2.120/thinkup and setup
   connections to your favorite social media sites.