How I setup a Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV camera with motionEye and Raspbian Stretch Lite

I had previously built a Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV camera with motionEyeOS which was connected to the Wifi network of my old DLink router.

After I started using Linksys AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Router as my home router, I could no longer connect to that Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV camera.

After reinstalling motionEyeOS a couple of times on my Raspberry Pi Zero W, I determined that motionEyeOS is not suitable for this new Wifi network.

On the other hand, my setup of WordPress on Raspberry Pi Zero W with Raspbian Stretch Lite, nginx, mariadb and PHP was able to connect to my new Wifi network, even after multiple system reboots.

Hence, I figured that if I wanted to build a Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV camera that can connect to my new Wifi network, I could use Raspbian Stretch Lite as the base operating system and install motionEye for the web frontend to view the camera footage.

This post documents how I setup a Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV with motionEye and Raspbian Stretch Lite.

How I setup Jenkins on my Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite

Jenkins is a renowned open source automation server that can help offload programmers from performing repetitive tasks like:

• running unit tests to make sure new code does not break existing codes.
• compiling and packaging the binaries from codes and dependencies.
• deploying new binaries to testing servers.
• checking whether production server is up and running.
• and etc.

If you have a Raspberry Pi 3 and you want to automate some of the tasks for your side projects, you may want to consider setting up Jenkins on your Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite as the operating system.

This post documents how I setup Jenkins on my Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite.

How to send an HTTP request to a HTTP Basic Authentication endpoint in Java without using any external libraries

One common task for Java developers is to write codes that communicate with API endpoints. Chances are these endpoints could use HTTP Basic Authentication for authenticating the HTTP request sender.

Although there are good libraries to help us craft and send HTTP requests to a web server in Java, I prefer to use the Java core library so as to keep my Java program lightweight.

Referencing my earlier post on how to construct a HTTP request to an endpoint with HTTP basic authentication, this post documents how to send an HTTP request to a HTTP Basic Authentication endpoint in Java without using any external libraries.

Setting up WordPress on Raspberry Pi Zero W with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, MariaDB and PHP as the LEMP stack

A Raspberry Pi Zero W is a small and capable computer that included a Wi-Fi chip for projects that requires an Internet connection.

Apart from running client programs on the Raspberry Pi Zero W, it is equally capable of being a web server. Since I had a spare Raspberry Pi Zero W lying around the house and there are good reasons to blog as a programmer, I decided to use it as a WordPress server to collect content for a new blog project.

This post documents how I setup WordPress on a Raspberry Pi Zero W with Raspbian Stretch Lite, nginx, MariaDB and PHP as the LEMP stack.

How to construct a HTTP request to an endpoint with HTTP Basic Authentication

The HTTP basic authentication is a mechanism commonly used by web servers to authenticate the sender of a HTTP request. Such a mechanism is usually used to guard server endpoints that are meant to be accessed programmatically.

Almost every new project that I got my hands on required me to create client side coding for accessing server endpoints that use HTTP basic authentication for authenticating the HTTP request sender.

To have a quick reference on how to construct a HTTP request to an endpoint with HTTP basic authentication, I created this post to as a documentation. The steps are agnostic to any programming languages.

How to reflect cart count at the cart icon as and when products are added or removed from the cart in WooCommerce

Although there is a hassle free option of using WooCommerce.com as your e-commerce store, you may prefer to host your own.

If you are familiar with WordPress and wish to host your e-commerce website, WooCommerce is also available as a WordPress plugin that augments WordPress with e-commerce website features.

Although more work needs to be done for self-hosted WordPress sites, we have the option of creating our own themes without having to pay additional charges on top of the web hosting fees.

When it comes to creating our own WooCommerce themes, one feature that we may want to implement would be to show the number of products that had been added to our WooCommerce cart near the shopping cart icon as and when products are added or removed from the cart.

This post documents how we can reflect cart count at the cart icon as and when products are added or removed from the WooCommerce shopping cart.

Types of modular interface design

After a lesson on modular architecture from a System Architecture course, I find myself referencing back to the topic of modular interface design to gather inspiration.

As described in Product Design and Development by Karl Ulrich and Steven Eppinger, there are 3 types of modular interface design.

To cater for future reference, I documented some information about 3 types on modular interface design in this post.

How to setup Raspbian Stretch Lite on Raspberry Pi Zero W to run Python 3 applications

With Wi-Fi included, the Raspberry Pi Zero W is very useful for implementing embedded projects that require Internet connection.

Apart from using the Raspberry Pi Zero W for CCTV surveillance, we can run customized Python 3 applications on a Raspberry Pi Zero W for various use cases.

Pairing the official operating system for Raspberry Pi with Python 3, we will be able to get a versatile computer to do our bidding.

Anticipating the need to setup a version of Raspbian Lite on Raspberry Pi Zero W for future Python 3 projects, I created this post to document the steps of how to do so with Raspbian Stretch Lite.

How to host multiple websites from home

A website is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, that people can access anytime from anywhere of the Internet.

A website facilities the exchange of information between multiple parties. For instance, when you read the content of this page, I would have, hopefully, share the information of how to host multiple websites from home.

With the proliferation of single-board computers, it is now inexpensive to deploy computing devices to serve web applications from home. If you do not switch off your Internet modem at home, you may want the option of accessing some of these devices when you are away from home.

For example, here are some web applications / websites that you may host from home:

• WordPress on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7 as the LEMP stack
• Static website on Raspberry Pi 3
• Raspberry Pi 3 Go Git Service
• Taiga project management system on Raspberry Pi 3
• Raspberry Pi 3 CCTV camera
• Raspberry Pi Zero W CCTV camera
• Codiad Web IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3
• ProjectSend on your Raspberry Pi 3 for sharing files

This post documents some procedures that we can follow in order to host multiple websites from home.