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raspberries make great servers

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Real Time Streaming Protocol and the Raspberry Pi – Video for Linux 2

I wanted my Raspberry Pi to generate an RTSP stream. In order to use video streaming on a lot of Home Automation systems, you need a true RTSP stream to integrate your camera with the rest of the system. I googled v4l2 RTSP server and I found just that! (Good name Guys!) v4l2 stands for […]

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How to Watch Unifi Video with Alexa Video Show

Yes, you CAN integrate the Amazon Alexa Video Show 5 with your Ubiquiti Unifi Protect Video System! “Alexa, show me the nursery!” will display the RTSP stream from your Ubiquiti Instant that’s aimed at the baby on your Alexa Video Show! There are a couple of pieces that need to be configured, but they are […]

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How to Upgrade from Buster to Bullseye on a Raspberry Pi

First, back up the system. Copy your important files and any .conf files that you worked on and would hate to lose if this process goes sideways. You’ve already got backups? Good for you! Let’s go! Next, update the existing packages and reboot the Raspberry Pi OS 10 system. sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade […]

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Running Kodi on the Raspberry CM4

I really struggled to get Kodi running and functional on the Raspberry Compute Module 4. The CM4 didn’t work with CEC. The CM4 wouldn’t play BluRay rips or any really big MKV files. I’ve never been an advocate for streaming movies over WiFi, so I made sure I bought a CM4 carrier card with gigabit […]

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Sky Colors

This is generated image. Each row represents a single day. Each box represents the color of a patch of sky above my house, sampled every 5 minutes. The program running on the Raspberry takes a picture, crops out a chunk of sky, finds the average color, and saves it as an RGB tuple. I can […]

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Waveshare CM4-IO-BASE-BOX-B Kit

I just got a new Raspberry Compute Module 4 enclosure! Check it out on Amazon. It’s got an internal controllable fan, dual camera connectors, full-size HDMI connectors, and 4 USB connectors. The enclosure itself is two steel halves that fit together and are held in place with 6 screws. The carrier board has a great […]

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Using Adafruit-Blinka on the Pico with Micropython

It’s so confusing trying to find good code on the Internet. Between people not dating their webpages and not documenting what version of python they’re running, I’m out of my mind! Then compound that with Adafruit switching away from their old libraries and only supporting Blinka! OK. Let’s get Blinka up-and-running in Thonny so we […]

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Soldering Basics – What to Buy for Success

As you get into hardware programming on your Raspberry Pis, you’re going to be tasked with soldering on header strips. Header strips on your PICOs. Header strips on your Zeros. Even a couple of pins on the little sensors so you can attach the jumpers to connect to your GPIO pins. Here’s a little shopping […]

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My First PICO Project with MicroPython!

My Raspberry Pi PICO finally came! I’ve been studying the Getting Started Guide for days. I soldered on a couple of header strips and plopped it onto a breadboard. I wanted to explore using the GPIO since my last project involving GPIO failed miserably. To get the PICO running MicroPython, you need to install it […]

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hardware services

How to Watch Movies on a Raspberry Pi

You probably have a nice media collection on your server: .mkv files, .mp3 files, .jpgs, playlists and you’ve been looking for a way to organize them and enjoy them. Enter KODI, the multi-media player. KODI is a great way to view all your media files. With a little bit of reorganization, planning, and installing, you […]

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