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diff --git a/build/cheap-portable-pi/index.html b/build/cheap-portable-pi/index.html index 5da494c..7a08484 100644 --- a/build/cheap-portable-pi/index.html +++ b/build/cheap-portable-pi/index.html @@ -3,11 +3,12 @@ <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light"> <link rel="icon" href="data:,"> <title>Portable Pi: Cheap Raspberry Pi Zero Hacker Terminal</title> <link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" /> <link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" /> -<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style> +<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}blockquote{background:rgba(0,0,0,0.1);border-left:4px solid;padding-left:5px;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style> </head> <nav> @@ -16,14 +17,10 @@ <main> <h1 id="portable-pi-cheap-raspberry-pi-zero-hacker-terminal">Portable Pi: Cheap Raspberry Pi Zero Hacker Terminal</h1> - <p>2020-09-16</p> - <p><em>I recently came across <a href="https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html">the incredibly cool design</a> for an “ultimate Raspberry Pi computer”</em> by NODE and was inspired to create my own “portable” Pi device. Although, with my concept, I decided to set a few restrictions on the build:</p> - <ul> <li>I wanted to keep the total cost as low as possible - <ul> <li>including the Pi Zero <em>and</em> extra hardware</li> </ul></li> @@ -31,23 +28,15 @@ <li>I wanted to make the full design extremely portable / lightweight</li> <li>I wanted to keep the build as user-friendly as possible (no soldering, odd hacks etc.)</li> </ul> - <p>With these constraints put in place, I built my very own Raspberry Pi Zero “hacker” terminal. You can see the finished product below:</p> - <p><img src="/public/images/portable-pi-1.webp" alt="Portable Pi front" /></p> - <p><img src="/public/images/portable-pi-2.webp" alt="Portable Pi back" /></p> - <p>I’m pretty happy with the final outcome and best of all - you can easily recreate this yourself with little-to-no effort!</p> - <p>So enough chit-chat - let’s build this bad-boy!</p> - <blockquote> <p><strong>Note:</strong> Most items in the hardware section are Amazon affiliate links</p> </blockquote> - <h2 id="table-of-contents">Table of Contents</h2> - <ol> <li><a href="#expectations">Setting Expectations</a></li> <li><a href="#hardware">The Hardware</a></li> @@ -55,19 +44,13 @@ <li><a href="#setup">Getting Setup</a></li> <li><a href="#summary">Final Summary</a></li> </ol> - <p><strong>This hardware will not</strong> replace your laptop or any other “high-powered” portable device. Honestly, you’re mobile phone would (most likely) work better in terms of a compact-sized computer. The concept behind this “portable pi” project was to make something <em>for fun</em>.</p> - <p>Please reserve any sassy comments about how buying a cheap $50 laptop off eBay would be more efficient than building out something like I have done here. You’re missing the point entirely.</p> - <p>Moving on for those still interested… </p> - <p>I live in Canada, so some of the options are based on available hardware near my location. You’re likely to find similar hardware close to your own country for better pricing / shipping costs.</p> - <blockquote> <p><strong>Note</strong>: I’ve decided to use a wireless, USB dongle-based keyboard. You can opt to use a bluetooth-based keyboard, but I just find them more trouble than they are worth (keeping a charge, losing connections, interference from other devices)</p> </blockquote> - <ul> <li>SBC: <a href="https://amzn.to/3jCVXHG">Raspberry Pi Zero WH</a></li> <li>Storage / OS: <a href="https://amzn.to/2GHm01R">64GB Micro SD Card</a> (Always have an SD backup!)</li> @@ -77,29 +60,17 @@ <li>Keyboard: <a href="https://amzn.to/2Gqkwt6">Mini USB Wireless Keyboard</a></li> <li>Adapter: <a href="https://amzn.to/36I6T3c">Micro USB OTG Cable</a></li> </ul> - <h4 id="raspberry-pi-zero-wh">Raspberry Pi Zero WH</h4> - <p>You will need a Raspberry Pi Zero W with GPIO header pins already soldered on to the board. (You could also do this yourself manually if you have the tools and skill to do so)</p> - <h4 id="li-ion-battery-hat">Li-Ion Battery HAT</h4> - <p>This HAT holds a single li-ion battery and for our purposes will connect with our Pi Zero via the GPIO header pins. You could also look into double-set battery HATs if that is something you would prefer - for my needs a single rechargeable battery works fine.</p> - <p>Since our main “OS” is purely terminal based, I find you don’t really need a li-ion battery with a massive amount of power storage. 2500mAh will easily last a handful of hours mucking about with emails, files and web browsing. Plus, you can always carry a few extras for swapping out on-the-go.</p> - <h4 id="3.5-inch-tft-display">3.5-inch TFT Display</h4> - <p>A simple and fairly cheap touchscreen display. We won’t require our display to render videos or pretty graphics (since we will be entirely terminal-based) so this works just fine for our needs. I am using version 6.3 for this build.</p> - <h4 id="micro-usb-otg-adapter">Micro USB OTG Adapter</h4> - <p>As mentioned above, this item is optional if you feel more comfortable with using a pure bluetooth keyboard. I just personally prefer this method.</p> - <h4 id="wireless-keyboard">Wireless Keyboard</h4> - <p>In my product demo image at the beginning of the article, I’m actually using an old Logitech wireless keyboard since this one still hasn’t arrived. I plan to swap them out once I have it - the Logitech is far to large to be deemed “portable”.</p> - <ul> <li>Operating System: <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspberry-pi-os/">Raspberry Pi OS Lite</a></li> <li>Display Driver: <a href="http://kedei.net/raspberry/raspberry.html">KeDei 3.5 Driver</a></li> @@ -108,29 +79,22 @@ <li>Text Editor: <a href="https://www.nano-editor.org/">Nano</a></li> <li>Code Editor: <a href="https://www.vim.org/">Vim</a></li> </ul> - <p>I will be setting up this “portable pi” via <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/headless.md">headless installation</a> with my main <a href="https://uglyduck.ca/my-pi-desktop/">Raspberry Pi 4 desktop</a>. Included below are some quick instructions on how to setup the Raspberry Pi Zero for <code>ssh</code> access.</p> - <h4 id="preparing-the-microsd-card">Preparing the microSD card</h4> - <ul> <li><p>Use Raspberry Pi Imager to write the Raspberry Pi Lite OS to your microSD card - <ul> <li>Once complete, remove the microSD storage device and then re-connect it</li> </ul></p></li> <li><p>Navigate to the <code>boot</code> folder of the microSD device - we will be adding 2 files here - <ul> <li>First add a completely empty file and name it <code>ssh</code> (no file extension)</li> <li>Next add an empty file named <code>wpa_supplicant.conf</code></li> </ul></p></li> <li><p>Open the <code>wpa_supplicant.conf</code> file in a code / text editor and paste the following (be sure to change <code>country</code> to your proper country code, as well as properly setting your network name / password):</p> - <p>ctrl<em>interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa</em>supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 country=US</p> - <p>network={ ssid="Your network name/SSID” psk="Your WPA/WPA2 security key” @@ -140,66 +104,45 @@ country=US</p> <li><p>Assemble the Raspberry Pi Zero with the Battery HAT (li-ion battery attached) connected via GPIO pins, and the 3.5 display connected on-top of the battery HAT’s pins</p></li> <li><p>Turn on the battery HAT switch to power the RPi Zero. Give the device roughly 90 seconds to perform the initial boot</p></li> </ul> - <blockquote> <p><strong>Note</strong>: the display will turn on but only show a white screen - this is normal</p> </blockquote> - <h4 id="connecting-to-your-zero-via-ssh">Connecting to your Zero via SSH</h4> - <p>Open the terminal on your Raspberry Pi desktop and enter the following command:</p> - <pre><code>ssh pi@raspberrypi.local </code></pre> - <p>You will then be asked if you wish to trust this device (say yes), then prompted for the <code>pi</code> user’s password - which is <code>raspberry</code>. After a moment you will be directly connected to your Raspberry Pi Zero. Hooray!</p> - <p>We just want to make a couple small configuration changes before going forward (mostly for security):</p> - <ol> <li>Run the command <code>sudo raspi-config</code></li> <li>Select “Change User Password” from the menu and change the password <img src="/public/images/raspi-config.webp" alt="Raspberry config" /></li> <li>After that, select “Network Options” and change your device name - <ul> <li>This will avoid any conflicts of connecting to newer RPi devices down the line</li> </ul></li> </ol> - <p>That’s it!</p> - <h4 id="installing-display-driver">Installing display driver</h4> - <p>Next we will need to download and run the drivers needed for our 3.5-inch display to play nicely with our Pi Zero (just a blank white screen doesn’t help us much). While connected to our RPi Zero via SSH, run the following commands:</p> - <pre><code>wget http://kedei.net/raspberry/v6_1/LCD_show_v6_1_3.tar.gz </code></pre> - <p>If you have snail-paced rural internet like I do, now is a good time to go and grab a coffee while this download completes.</p> - <p>Once the download has finished, extract the contents and navigate to the new directory and install the driver:</p> - <pre><code>sudo tar xzf LCD_show_v6_1_3.tar.gz cd LCD_show_v6_1_3 sudo ./LCD35_v </code></pre> - <p>Once completed, the RPi Zero will reboot and everything should work as expected!</p> - <h4 id="installing-software">Installing software</h4> - <p>I’m not going to jump into heavy details about installing terminal-based software for this setup. The links I’ve attached in the software section should provide you with more than enough information to get started. For reference, I’m using a very basic set of applications:</p> - <ul> <li>Neomutt (emails)</li> <li>Lynx (quick and simple web browsing)</li> <li>Nano (writing notes / blog posts in a hurry)</li> <li>Vim (making any config edits or project work)</li> </ul> - <p>There you have it - a terminal-based, portable Raspberry Pi Zero “hacker” device. </p> - <p>Is it practical? Not really. Can it replace any other <em>portable</em> device you might own? Probably not. Is it fun to make and experiment on? You bet! And in the end - isn’t that what matters most with pet Pi projects?</p> <footer role="contentinfo"> <h2>Menu Navigation</h2> |