Cross Compiling Golang Applications For Use On A Raspberry Pi

I recently invested in yet another Raspberry Pi, this time the new Raspberry Pi Zero W, which has wireless and bluetooth. I also made a leap and bought the camera module with it because the new official case by Raspberry Pi has a camera attachment. Probably the most popular development technology for Raspberry Pi is Python, but I am not a fan at all. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of Go development and figured that would be my best bet when it comes to developing a camera application for the Raspberry Pi. The problem with this is that if I were to compile a Go application on the Raspberry Pi Zero itself, it would probably take ten years (I joke).

Cross compiling is a thing and we’re going to see how to do this via a different operating system and architecture, yet have it be compatible on the Raspberry Pi.

Automatically Apply A WiFi Network Configuration To A Raspberry Pi

As you probably know, I’m a fan of the Raspberry Pi and Pi Zero Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Well, I recently had a moment where I felt like a total newbie. I go through a lot of installations of Raspbian Linux and during every installation I go through a network configuration process. This process of configuration is either by Ethernet or UART connection. Well, it turns out there is an easier way.

It is actually possible to apply a network configuration through the FAT mountable partition saving the hassle of having to connect over UART or Ethernet first. We’re going to see how this is possible.

Using A Raspberry Pi For Distributed Object Storage With Minio

So I was researching object storage and I came across the open source distributed object storage software, Minio. This lightweight software was written with Golang and accomplishes similar things to that of Amazon S3. After all they are both object storage solutions. The difference here is that Minio can be deployed on your own hardware.

Being that Minio was written with Golang, it is cross platform for different computing architectures, ARM included. This means that the server software can be installed on Raspberry Pi micro computing devices. Object storage is great for data backups so it gave me the idea to turn my Raspberry Pi into an object storage backup solution.

Connect To A Raspberry Pi And Pi Zero With A USB To TTL Serial Cable

When it comes to configuring a Raspberry Pi for the first time, there are a few options, many of which can be a pain. This includes configuration of a Raspberry Pi and the smaller Pi Zero. Previously I had written about using a Raspberry Pi as a headless unit, but in that tutorial there was an ethernet requirement. Recently I had written about connecting to a Pi Zero through a standard micro USB cable and SSH, which wasn’t difficult, but it required a few potentially time consuming steps.

Is there a better way to connect to and configure these Internet of Things (IoT) devices?

I wouldn’t necessarily call it a better way, but more of another option towards Raspberry Pi configuration. You can actually connect to the Raspberry Pi and Pi Zero through the available GPIO pins with a USB to TTL serial cable. We’re going to see how to do that.

Scan For Bluetooth Enabled iBeacons Via A Raspberry Pi IoT Device

Lately I’ve been working a lot with iBeacons and Raspberry Pi Internet of Things (IoT) devices. I’ve been building an office monitor for logging foot traffic around the office. I planted a few Raspberry Pi devices around the office and distributed some Gimbal iBeacons to a few of my coworkers so I could determine what part of the office experiences the most heat.

While Raspberry Pi 3 devices come with integrated bluetooth, Raspbian Linux is not configured to support BLE scanning. There are a few packages that must be installed to make BLE scanning possible.

We’re going to see what is necessary to scan for BLE iBeacons using a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Linux installed.

Deploying Docker Containers On A Raspberry Pi Device

Recently I’ve been using a good amount of Docker for various deployment pipelines. As everyone knows, I’m a huge Raspberry Pi fan, so I figured it would be a cool idea to bring the two together. After all, Docker was built using Golang which is cross architecture.

We’re going to see how to create Docker containers on a Raspberry Pi and figure out the limitations of using Docker on IoT based architectures.

Record IP Camera Surveillance Video With A Raspberry Pi

As some of you may know, I have wireless surveillance cameras around my home. Many years back I even released an Android application called SpyFi to be able to view the video feed from these cameras. Up until recently I would have these cameras upload a sequence of images to a remote FTP server every time there was motion. The problem with this is that these were only a sequence of still-images rather than video, and the server was not free or necessarily cheap.

Being that I own a few Raspberry Pi computers, I figured it might be a good idea to utilize them for surveillance storage. The cool thing about this approach is that it is cheaper and that I can record video rather than pictures.

We’re going to take a look at how I’m recording video on a Raspberry Pi device to keep my home safe.