Raspberry Pi fun

It's been way too long since I made a blog post. Last December I was given a Raspberry Pi model B as a present from my brother-in-law, and I've finally got together and done some things with it.

This is the list of things I already had (besides the Pi):

• an old 14" CRT TV
• a yellow RCA video cable
• a 3.5mm stereo cable
• a USB keyboard
• a USB mouse
• a Seagate 2TB external self-powered HDD
• an HP PSC1310 wired USB printer
• a Linksys ADSL2+ router

 This is the list of new things I had to buy:

• a 16GB SD card ($NZ20)
• a 5v power adapter ($NZ7)
• a self-powered 7 port USB brick ($NZ7.50)
• 2 USB2.0 female/male 2-metre extension cords ($NZ13.80)
• an ASUS WL-167G V3 USB wifi adapter ($NZ23)

To make a long story short, as there are lots of blogs out there already on what people have done, I got the Raspbian OS installed on the SD card and everything running through an ethernet internet connection displayed on the old CRT television. Afterwards, I hooked the wifi adapter, HP printer and USB hard drive to the self-powered USB brick. Then:

1) Network savvy

 I edited the /etc/network/interfaces file to use my wifi adapter for a wireless connection, and assigned a static IP address to it. I also installed samba so that Windows computers in my home network could access the Pi.

 2) Connecting remotely

I installed the putty program on my Windows 7 laptop, so that I could log in by ssh console to the pi using the static IP address. Once I was in, I turned off the GUI mode by using raspi-config (why waste resources on a little Pi device?)

3) File server / file shares

I set up a file share for others in my home network. I also mapped the networked USB drive connected to the Raspberry Pi to a Windows drive (Z:):

4) Printer server

 Then I got the wired printer working with the CUPS printer service on the Pi. I had to change the CUPS config file and check the settings in the CUPS web interface. Then on my Windows laptop, I had to add the networked printer and choose the right drivers for it:

5) Torrent device

 Lastly, I wanted to use the pi as a low-powered torrent downloading device, and store what it downloaded on the USB HDD. I was already using Deluge as a torrent client in Windows, which I liked. I found out there is a Windows thin client available to connect deluge to a network Linux machine running a deluged daemon. So I had to install deluged and its helpful deluge-console on the Pi. Then I could use the Windows desktop Deluge client to connect to the deluged daemon on the Pi.

It didn't really cost much to get a little low-powered device going with these useful services. I'm hoping that using a Pi instead of a laptop will save some money off my power bills  :-D