Monday, January 28, 2013

Setting up a webcam with Raspberry Pi

As a small device Raspberry Pi is easy to place almost anywhere. I got an idea to try to hook a webcam with the Pi. I found instructions on the web and the job was quite easy. I got my Logitech quickcam deluxe working by running the following commands:

sudo apt-get install motion
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg


sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

made some modifications to the config file the following way:

daemon on
webcam_localhost off
webcam_port 8081
snapshot_interval 60


and run the server program:

sudo motion -n

I used VLC media player to test the webcam stream with the IP and the port. The webcam didn't work when it was connected directly to the Pi's USB port and had to be connected with a powered USB hub.



Sunday, January 27, 2013

Installing Quake 3 on a Raspberry Pi

I found out Quake 3 runs on Raspberry Pi, so I had to install it to my Pi. I managed to do this with the following commands.

cd ~
wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1816557/quake3.zip
wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1816557/Q3%20Demo%20Paks.zip
unzip quake3.zip
unzip Q3\ Demo\ Paks.zip
rm quake3.zip
rm Q3\ Demo\ Paks.zip
mv ./baseq3/pak* ./quake3/baseq3/
rm -rf ./baseq3/
chmod +x /home/raspbian/quake3/start.sh
chmod +x /home/raspbian/quake3/ioquake3.arm
chmod +x /home/raspbian/quake3/ioq3ded.arm

cd ~/quake3/
./start.sh


I got an error "failed to open vchiq instance", so I had to enter the following commands:

echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="vchiq",GROUP="video",MODE="0660"' > /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vchiq-permissions.rules
usermod -a -G video raspbian


After that it started working and runs like a charm.


My Raspberry Pi setup

I found Raspberry Pi,credit card-sized computer, interesting and purchased the following components for my setup:

  • DeLock Dual USB power adapter - 10.28€
  • SanDisk Extreme SDHC 16GB Class 10 - 12.74€
  • 3.5" LCD TFT Monitor - 28.40€
  • ASUS USB-N10 - 150Mbps Wireless Lan USB Adapter - £12.98
  • RII ProMini 2.4GHz Tiny Wireless Keyboard - £21.79
  • Raspberry Pi Case - £7.99/£9.98

I already had a micro-USB cable for the Pi and a 12V power adapter for the TFT. Here's a photo of my setup.


I wanted to play media easily with my Pi so I installed RaspbianXBMC to the 16Gt SD card.

http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianXBMC

I added the following lines to the config file /boot/config.txt to scale the screen on the 3.5" TFT better.

framebuffer_width=640
framebuffer_height=480

overscan_left=-30
overscan_right=-30
overscan_top=-30
overscan_bottom=-30




To get the WLAN up I entered the following commands.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wireless-tools usbutils
sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

sudo nano /etc/wpa.conf

    network={
    ssid="ssid"
    psk="password"
    }