Articles about Raspberry Pi 3

How to setup a reverse proxy server with nginx, Raspian Jessie Lite and Raspberry Pi 3

If you plan to deploy multiple devices at home and made them publicly accessible from outside your home network, you may want to consider setting up a reverse proxy server that will route HTTP traffic from the internet to the respective devices residing in your home network.

Tagged with an affordable price tag with good specifications, the Raspberry Pi 3 is an ideal candidate for the hardware of a reverse proxy server at home. And since the nginx server is a powerful reverse proxy server that can run efficiently on commodity hardware, it is an ideal candidate for the software aspect of a reverse proxy server.

This post documents how to setup a reverse proxy server with nginx, Raspian Jessie Lite and Raspberry Pi 3.

How to setup Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications

The Raspbian operating system is the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s official supported operating system. As of this writing, Raspbian comes in two flavours – one with a graphical user interface for us to build a low cost desktop computer and the other without the graphical user interface.

If you intend to use your Raspberry Pi 3 with sensors and build a web interface for you to manage those sensors, Raspbian Jessie Lite is one operating system which you may want to install on your Raspberry Pi 3.

And with the versatility of Python 3, setting up Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications will be one of the first task that you will perform before you embark on your next sensor based project with the Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents the steps that I took to setup Raspbian Jessie Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications.

How to setup Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 on Raspberry Pi 3 for running Python 3 applications

Most of the customers who wanted to try out my minimal viable products (MVP) would provide me with an instance of Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x these days. As such, it makes sense for me to trial my MVPs on the Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x to ensure that I spend minimal time in deploying my MVPs to validate my customers’ needs. Since I have a few Raspberry Pi 3s lying around in the house, I can install a version of Ubuntu Classic Server 16.0x to serve as the development server for me to trial my MVPs.

Fortunately, the good folks at ubuntu-pi-flavour-maker.org had put up an optimised Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 image for Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents the steps that I took to run Ubuntu Classic Server 16.04 on my Raspberry Pi 3 for running Python 3 applications.

How to assemble the Raspberry Pi 3 board with the Raspberry Pi Official Case

The Official Raspberry Pi Case was designed for housing Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 boards. This post documents how you can assemble a Raspberry Pi 3 board with the Official Raspberry Pi 3 Case – Red/White.

The instructions here should be applicable to the Raspberry Pi 2 board as well.

How to connect the Raspberry Pi Camera Module to Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3

Since the Raspberry Pi camera module connects to most of the recent Raspberry Pi boards via the camera serial interface (CSI), the Raspberry Pi camera module is an ideal peripheral for implementing Raspberry Pi based projects that require image capturing.

This post documents how to connect a Raspberry Pi camera module to a Raspberry Pi 3.

Setting up a low cost desktop computer with Raspberry Pi 3

With the advent of single-board computers like Raspberry Pi, we do not have to spend too much money on a computer that can fulfil our basic computing needs. The launch of Raspberry Pi 3 was like icing on the cake; it came with WiFi connectivity. Since WiFi is ubiquitous, the WiFi connectivity of the Raspberry Pi 3 made it a suitable candidate to be used as a low cost desktop computer in the house, office or school.

This post documents how you can setup a low cost desktop computer with Raspberry Pi 3.

How I setup Codiad web IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3 with Ubuntu Server 15.10.3, Nginx and PHP

There are times when I get the urge to work on project source codes that reside on my Raspberry Pi 3 LEMP server while I am on the move. Setting up a web based IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3 is one way to enable me to code while I am on the move, so long as I have a device with a web browser that is connected to the internet. Since I had already setup a LEMP server to run WordPress on my Raspberry Pi 3 and that Codiad is written in PHP, Codiad is an ideal web based IDE that I can set up on my Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents how I setup Codiad web IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3. To make this post complete, I had taken some of the steps mentioned in my other posts on Raspberry Pi and replicated it in this post.

How I make my Java programs run faster on my Raspberry Pi 3

When my first attempt to install GitBucket on my Raspberry Pi 3 highlighted to me that it was the JVM that caused GitBucket to have sluggish performance, I did not invest more time to improve the performance of the JVM that I had installed on my Raspberry Pi 3. Instead, I went on to install Go Git Service on my Raspberry Pi 3 to act as the Git server to manage the source codes of my hobby projects.

However, I just couldn’t get over my belief that Java programs would perform badly on my Raspberry Pi 3; after all Java was the first programming language that I learnt and I often use it to build software at work. Furthermore, with an Ubuntu Server 15.10.3 setup on my Raspberry Pi 3, I could use my Raspberry Pi 3 as an integration server for my Java hobby projects and be pretty sure that if my Java hobby projects run on my Raspberry Pi 3, they will most probably run on a Ubuntu Server 15.10.3 DigitalOcean droplet as well.

After spending some time researching the topic, I did manage to make my Java programs run around 10 times faster on my Raspberry Pi 3. This post documents the steps that I went through to speed up my Java programs on my Raspberry Pi 3.

Setting up Go Git Service on a Ubuntu Server 15.10.3 image on my Raspberry Pi 3

My quest in searching for a suitable self hosted Git Service didn’t stop at GitBucket. While GitBucket is easy to setup, running it on a Raspberry Pi 3 had not been ideal for me. If I had set it up on a more powerful computer / VM, I would have stuck with it.

To get a second opinion, I decided to give Go Git Service a try. This post documents my attempt in setting up Go Git Service on a Ubuntu 15.10.3 image on my Raspberry Pi 3. To make this post complete, the first eight steps are taken from previous posts.