The Raspberry Pi Scrapbook

This is how to set up a Raspberry Pi Zero W from absolute factory new scratch to running the Raspbian Stretch operating system. You will need: a brand new Raspberry Pi Zero W; a micro SD card of at least Class 4, 8 or 16 GB Get the Raspbian image from the official website at https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ I like to use the version with the desktop. The ZIP version is about 1.1 Gigabyte:   Next, you will need to burn that image onto the SD card. I like to use a fine and free tool for Windows called BalenaEtcher, available at  https://www.balena.io/etcher/ : Insert the SD card into your Windows computer, run Etcher. Select the ZIPped Raspbian, point Etcher to the SD card and hit "Flash!". It will take Etcher 10 to 15 minutes to transfer and verify everything onto the SD Card.  Remove SD card from your Windows machine and insert it into your Raspberry. Attach a USB keyboard (preferably one with an integrated touchpad) to your...

This is the entire network that I have set up for my little project. Keep in mind that the idea is to have the two Raspi Zeros record the temperature and humidity inside and outside my house and send that data to the Raspberry Pi 3B+. The latter will decide if the outside air is cool and dry enough compared to the air inside the house. If yes, it will switch on a through the wall fan that pumps cool night air into my overheated tropical house - hopefully saving a bit of money on A/C! :-) The Windows 10 workplace: Runs the PyCharm IDE to develop, deploy and debug the Python code that runs on all the Raspberries; Runs the MobaXTerm tool to remotely access all Raspberries via SSH. The Raspberry Pi3B+ runs a Python code that: receives sensor data messages from the two Raspberry Pi Zeros via MQTT (see future post); analyzes the sensor data and switches the wall fan on and off; sends the sensor data via a RESTful call to an awesome data visualization service called ThingSpea...

There's tons of excellent blogs, YouTube videos, websites and other stuff out there, on absolutely everything you can do with a Raspi. Written by people who are light years ahead of me in programming, networking, Linux wizardry, electronics etcetera. So what am I trying to accomplish here? What value could I possibly add to that tremendous intelligence that is already freely available? Here's what. If you're like me, you have become interested in just playing with these wonderful little things and want to know how they work, and what you could do with them. They are a solution looking for a problem. So you are looking around your house, thinking: "What on earth could I possibly automate around here?" So you contemplate building a surveillance camera system. Or a smart energy meter. Or a weather station. Or automating your aquarium. Whatever. In my case, i thought I'd start with adding some cheap temperature and humidity sensors, and if that works, I coul...