Hello, World.
This awesome cartoon by the ever-beloved XKCD sums up how I'm worried this week is going to go for my shiny little Raspberry Pi Zero and the security camera project I've earmarked it for.
Have you ever heard the phrase 'yak-shave'? It's very much a Dad-ism for me - Dad introduced the term to me when it was still in relatively new usage, and still uses it today. This is a reasonably simple explanation of what I mean by yak-shave:
"An activity which, in an of itself, seems pointless, but is needed as part of a chain of similarly pointless activities to solve the real issue that cannot be fixed until the pointless activities are accomplished".
I was going to find a quote to explain it on a popular, informal online dictionary famous for having colloquialisms aplenty explained, not always politely. I chose not to link there as I do not wish to be held responsible for what else you might read.
Instead, here is Seth Godin's very pleasing explanation of how the term came to be. It's well-written, and has the added benefit that while I tend to overembellish when I tell my version to the detriment fo the story, he does not. So you've dodged a mind-bullet there (tiny yak-related reference to Tenacious D's 'Wonderboy'). You also get to avoid the impolite colloquialism depot mentioned above. So points all round to Mr. Godin.
So my concern is this: I've got to get Motion (a motion sensing software that's hackable for Raspberry Pi) onto my Raspberry Pi zero. Which is fine. Except that the Pi Zero doesn't come as internet accessible. So I'm going to need to make it internet accessible. This, too, presents a problem. Its micro-USB port is going to be used up by my connecting the Pi Zero to my laptop to parasitise its keyboard and monitor. So I can't get a dongle in that way.
The most reasonable-sounding solution I've been able to find so far is this one, from David Maitland, who suggests that I SSH (Secure Socket Shell - or remotely access) the pi zero from another linux machine. I don't have another linux machine available immediately, but I do have a very old Raspberry Pi which I could get up and running.
My thinking is, I'm best off getting the original Pi (model B) going (so I'll need another SD card). I'll use that to format my Pi Zero's Micro SD Card (so I'll need an SD card reader) so that it can be accessed via home WiFi (to get it there, I'll of course need a WiFi dongle). After that, I'll be installing PuTTY on my Windows machine so that I can use it to SSH to my Pi Zero directly.
Gosh. To a total newbie, this is all a bit daunting, but I'm slightly heartened by the fact that once again, the Raspberry Pi community has made the inaccessible accessible. I can organise the above into a series of small-ish, achievable goals. Let's see if they work out. Do feel free to get in touch if you can see me making an egregious error in the above and would like to rescue me from disaster.
As always, wish me luck!
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