Turning the Raspberry Pi into a Wireless Access Point

Hi! Following my latest posts on how to get started with the Raspberry Pi "headless mode" and Using Bluetooth with the Raspberry Pi now I'll show how to turn the Raspberry Pi into a Wireless Access Point. Most of this post follows what is described here but I added a few more steps. Moreover, I ran into some troubles and had to do some troubleshooting. I used a D-Link DWA-140 Rangebooster N Adapter which contains a Ralink RT2870 chipset.

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 The process looks a little long but it can be done in under 10 minutes :) . Every time you need to edit or create some file (for example /etc/udhcpd.conf) among this process you can use "sudo nano /etc/udhcpd.conf".

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Installing Bluetooth tools in Raspberry Pi

Hi there!

Following my previous post on how to get started with the Raspberry Pi "headless mode" I'll now show you how to install the Bluetooth tools.

On the project that I'm working on right now I'll be using Bluetooth with the Raspberry Pi so that later I can connect to several devices via Bluetooth. For this purpose I have ordered some USB Bluetooth dongles from ebay and some HC-05 Bluetooth modules, also from ebay.

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The first thing to do is type "lsusb" in the terminal to see if your USB Bluetooth dongle is being recognized. As an example, the ones I ordered from ebay show up as:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)

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Headless start with the Raspberry Pi

Hi! Some time ago I made two posts about the the Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi has Arrived and First Impressions on the Raspberry Pi) and unfortunately since then it has been closed inside its box. I really wanted to do something with it but other projects always got in the way. Finally I'm doing a project where I'll use the Raspberry Pi and I hope to make some posts about Raspberry Pi stuff while I work on it. To begin I'll show you how to start playing with your Raspberry Pi without having to connect it to an external HDMI monitor or screen with RCA connector and using Ubuntu on your computer.

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The first thing to do is get yourself a 4GB (or greater) class 4 SD card. Branded cards are usually better and more trustful. If you have one, then its time to prepare the card to be used in the Raspberry Pi.

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How to install Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04

Hi! Today I'm just going to provide a very quick and easy tutorial on how to install Google Chrome browser in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

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It's really, really easy. First go to this link and download the .deb package for you CPU (32-bit or 64-bit). Then open the terminal and get into your Downloads folder and enter the following command:

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current*.deb

If you get some error regarding unmet dependencies you can fix them by entering:

sudo apt-get install -f

And that's it! Google Chrome will be installed in your system! :)

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Coursera: Interactive Programming with Python

Hi there! :) About two and a half months ago I found about the new trend in web education, the MOOCs. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Basically, there are a few sites where you can take lots of courses from top universities such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. The greatest thing is that it costs absolutely nothing to take the courses. They're FREE! :) I'm sure that these learning systems are starting a new era in higher education since now anyone with access to internet can have access to high quality courses.

So, after browsing through the lots of courses available and seeing which ones were about to begin, I decided to start with a course provided by Rice University on Coursera: Interactive Programming with Python. I already knew how to program in Python before the course but I knew there were still some details to master and some good practices to learn in applications with GUI and animations. Also, is there a better way to learn that than by making classic games like Pong or Asteroids? Guess not! :)

So, I'm going to make a short review on the course so that you can understand how it works and if you should take the course :)

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The course has weekly lectures that you can watch online whenever you want and at your own pace.

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How to install HeeksCAD in Ubuntu 12.04

Hi! In a previous post where I wrote about the CNC Software Toolchain for Linux I mentioned HeeksCAD, which is a great software to generate the toolpaths from the 3D models for CNC machining. Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 I started having some problems with the HeeksCNC plugin and some features like the pocketing and profile operations stopped working. I tried to reinstall it in Ubuntu 12.04 but then I found out that it wasn't a so straight forward process as with previous Ubuntu versions. As such, I decided to make a small tutorial on how to install it under Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

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So, the first trick is that you cannot install the official version from the official HeeksCAD git repository.

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