Simple Webcam on Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi’s low power consumption makes it well suited to the role of always-on server. This post describes how to attach a simple webcam to a Raspberry Pi and have it take a snapshot every few minutes, and how to view the pictures on the web. Just like a traditional webcam.

My Raspberry Pi was purchased from New It in the UK. It was installed with Debian 7 (“Wheezy”) by applying the image “2014-01-07-wheezy-raspbian.zip” downloaded from the raspberrypi.org downloads page. The following procedure was then performed without any further pre-work (other than enabling ssh in the basic setup). Continue reading

Install WordPress Blog on Raspberry Pi

The Pi’s low power consumption makes it well suited to the role of always-on web server. This post describes how to install WordPress on the Raspberry Pi and get a blog going. Hosting your own blog means you keep ownership of your data, and you are not dependent on blogger.com or whoever.  This procedure was UPDATED on 11th march 2020 for Raspbian 10 / Buster.

If you have already installed WordPress and just want to upgrade it, perhaps because a new version has been released, please see my article How to Upgrade WordPress on Linux

Install Apache

Install the Apache web server with these commands. It might take 10 minutes or so to complete. A few other packages will also be installed. Continue reading

Create a Basic Website on a Raspberry Pi

This article was revised and updated on 29th May 2017.

The Raspberry Pi is a small Linux computer designed to help children learn programming. Being a full Linux System, it can also be used as a server or as the basis for various projects. This post describes how to install Apache onto the Pi and set up a basic web site.

My Raspberry Pi was purchased from RS Components in the UK. It was installed with Raspbian “Jessie” (Debian 8) by applying the image “2017-04-10-raspbian-jessie-lite.img” downloaded from the raspberrypi.org downloads page, where it is described as “Minimal image based on Debian Jessie”. The following procedure was then performed without any further pre-work (other than enabling ssh in the basic setup). Continue reading

File Serving: Sheevaplug vs Pi vs WDTV vs Linkstation vs Home Hub 3

In need of some network storage in the home ? Well, you could go off and buy a proper NAS unit, offering RAID, several Tb of storage, fast access speeds and so on. On the other hand, you might have something lying round the house that will do. It won’t be as good as a proper NAS, but it might just be good enough. Continue reading