Raspberry Pi 3 Model B setup

After my partial success with the Arduino chip button test I thought I’d dust off my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that I’d bought years ago.

I hadn’t played with it, I’m not sure why. I’d taken it out of its packaging but hadn’t even installed the micro SD card with Noob setup. So I decided to see mr YouTube for advice and came across video below, also quick start guide was a good reference of connecting everything before turning on the power.

I’d plugged in the power and SD card before reading Quick Start instructions so it had loaded the software already. In the vid it says about 20-25 min to setup, so my install was much quicker when I finally plugged in all the peripherals.

I had a mouse and ethernet cable but not a keyboard with USB so had to go and get one for $15. On plugging everything in & firing it up, with HDMI cable to TV it was up on the TV. On looking through menu it even has LibreOffice installed, Cool. So this is basically a mini computer. Now I have to get my head around that, then think about how to use it for IoT devices.

So preliminary interface done. What next?

Well, I’m a little excited because this initial Noob setup is in Linux, which I’ve been interested in fiddling about with. Also it has a wifi connection so can connect via wifi with either SSH (PuTTy) or Remote Desktop, so you can use your computer to manage it without all the other peripherals, so can have it set-up doing something and just log into it when you want.

Other videos from Sentdex

I was looking on some tutorial video’s and Sandex has a playlist on the device which is here, I like his videos, he has a good pace and explains well, so I’ll be watching these. This is also where I saw the remote desktop connection to the device:

Getting remote desktop access to RPi 3 form PC

After reviewing a couple of the Sentdex videos I was interested in Remote Desktop connection so followed his tutorial in his video below:

It linked straight away after I found the IP address for the wifi from this video and downloaded the Advanced IP Scanner and ran the .exe file. It asks if you want to install, which I didn’t and it searched and found the other devices. You need to enable SSH and download the XRDP programme on the RPi first before trying to use Remote Desktop inside Win 10. But works fine, so I can play with that on my PC rather than using the TV.

So I’ll need to do a couple of tests to see if I can move Pi down to the other end of the house and see if I can still link to it. Issue being either a poor signal or via the wifi booster connector. So that is a small test I have to do.

Windows 10 IoT core

In Sentdex’s video one of them showed other Operating System’s that could be put onto your RaspPi, and one was Windows 10 IoT core. There is a tutorial on that here as well as a good basic video. The interesting thing is that some of the samples are in Python, which is good, and C#.

So I’m wondering if I can get another Micro SD chip and run it on Windows IoT to try that avenue too. I need to make sure that the SD chip is fast enough (over a 10 , and 16Gb min)- So that is another exercise, testing the device with different OS’s ( a bit like the initial PC’s that you needed to boot from Floppy disks (yay new technology, just like the old technology).

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connecting to devices

In the presentation by MS they talked about free services where you can read your devices remotely, one beginning with S…., I didn’t get the info or a photo so I’ll have to do a bit more research on that.

I just found this free site https://remoteme.org/ that looks quite interesting and has arduino and RPi links too.

Getting my head around it and finding a project

I think there is a lot of information out there. I need to do some basic research to identify the area I want to explore.

In the IoT space I think something like an initial temperature logger and monitor would be nice. So I need to find a compatible sensor chip that I can use.

I also need a breadboard and some resistors and a couple of LED lights for testing and a meter for testing current I suppose, (although that always confuses me). This is for testing Proof of Concepts. I think the stuff on Ali Express is cheaper but takes a while to come, so maybe buy in Jaycar for prototyping and then buy in bulk on AliExpress or similar. Most probably I’d only go to PoC stage.

Storing Data

The IoT devices can also store data as well as transmit it. Sometimes you only want it to monitor and log and only send if it either has 1/ enough info or 2/ A set-point has been exceeded. So looking at storing info too is an interesting area to look at.

Batteries not included

This is another area I want to explore, having remote devices run on battery and not requiring mains power when set-up, again, maybe not communicating with anything but only storing data, a bit like the temperature loggers I’m using.

Now that I have the RPi running I need to break it a few times and learn how to connect sensors to it and get readings from those sensors. That looks a bit scary with all the pins and what you connect to. Still its worth a crack.