Simple Webcam on Raspberry Pi

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Jim

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 →

bc Rounding Errors

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Jim

There must be a few people out there who still use bc as a desk calculator. bc is a simple application that comes as standard on most unix and linux systems. It’s nicer to use than a graphical calculator app: less fussy, no mouse needed and you can see what you have typed.

bc Gets it Wrong

A recent mix-up with financial calculations lead me to discover that – unbelievably – bc was getting its sums wrong. This post explains the problem. Continue reading →

Install WordPress Blog on Raspberry Pi

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Jim

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 →

BT Home Hub Cannot Access SSL Website

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Jim

This article explains why the BT Home Hub routers appears unable to access SSL/TLS (https) websites on your internal home network. It may interest users in the UK, where the Home Hub is a popular router/ADSL modem.

Hosting your own website(s) at home is pretty easy these days. You have a small server running Apache, and configure your router to forward port 80 to it. For SSL sites, you forward port 443. That’s about it. Continue reading →

Create a Basic Website on a Raspberry Pi

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Jim

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 →

Raspberry Pi Basic Configuration

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Jim

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.

Here are some adjustments you might want to make to a new Raspberry Pi. The examples refer to a Raspberry Pi Model “B” bought from UK distributors New IT in February 2013. But they are pretty universal. Continue reading →

WordPress WP-Super-Cache vs Quick Cache

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Jim

Joomla, Drupal and WordPress are the world’s most popular blogging platforms. Right now I’m staring at the WordPress “Add New Post” page, because this blog is built on WordPress. WordPress is great. And incredibly slow.

Here’s One I made Earlier

This post appeared quickly in your browser ? Great. You have been served a page that was built several hours ago. Without the pre-fabricataion, you would have had a 5 or 10 second wait while WordPress created the page from scratch. Who waits 10 seconds for a page to load these days ? Nobody, that’s who. This post compares two WordPress caching plugins and finds that WP-Super-Cache is the best because of its ability to cache compressed pages. Continue reading →

WordPress Login Hangs: Fix with MySQL

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Jim

Having problems logging into WordPress ? It’s a tricky area, with a seemingly endless list of problems, causes and recommendations. In my case, the “login” link would hang before even asking for a user name or password. The browser window would eventually give up saying “no response from server”. The blog was up and healthy, but logging in as admin (or any other user) was not possible. Continue reading →

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

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Jim

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 →

Mounting BT Home Hub 3 USB on WD TV Live

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Jim

This post may be of interest to UK users who own both a BT Home Hub 3 router and a WD TV Live media streamer. Both are Linux based systems, but getting one to work with the other can be a bit of a challenge.

The USB port on the back of the Home Hub 3 can be used to share storage over the network. Plug in a disk or memory stick, and it is automatically shared out as a windows share. Using a large capacity memory stick offers the possibility of NAS like, always-on access to your media files from any connected device. Low power consumption too. This post explains how access the USB connected drive from the WD TV Live. Continue reading →

Unix etc.

Unix, Linux and related technologies.