Ricmedia PC Help

Tech Guides for Everyone

Build an AlexaPi with Amazon Alexa & Raspberry Pi

Build an AlexaPi with Amazon Alexa and Raspberry Pi
Build an AlexaPi with Amazon Alexa and Raspberry Pi

Introduction

Today I want to show you how you can build your very own Amazon Echo with Alexa, on a Raspberry Pi using the excellent AlexaPi package by renekliment at GitHub. It’s not as complicated as you’d think and works just like the real thing, and I offer a free, sleek 3D printed case plans to print on your own 3D printer, or use a 3D printing service (which are pretty cheap). I also highly recommend installing the Gordon Ramsay Skill Set (free) so he can tell you how bad your cooking is 🙂

[youtube=”https://youtu.be/MlJrmqjPZhQ”]

Contents

  1. Introduction, Hardware Requirements, Flash Raspbian to microSD card
  2. Create an Amazon Developer account, Setup Device & Security Profile
  3. Update Raspbian, Install AlexaPi, Summary

Hardware Requirements

The hardware required for this project is reasonably easy to acquire, but the speaker needs to be a specific type/brand if you want to 3D print the case as it’s designed to slot into the top, but I’ll give you all the relevant links.

Raspberry Pi

You can use either a Raspberry Pi 3 or 2B models for this project, along with a minimum 8GB microSD card and a good quality power adapter for your Pi. Best to buy a starter pack which you’ll find on the links below.

Microphone and Speaker

Pretty much any mini USB microphone will do the trick, and I have given links below for the specific speaker (A10 Mini Speaker) depending on whether you’re printing the 3D case, if you’re not printing the case, you can use any speakers you like.

Case

I am giving away the 3D case print files for nix which are available here. You will need to follow the instructions to build the case.

Once booted up, just say "Alexa" then ask anything you like
Once booted up, just say “Alexa” then ask anything you like

 

Flash Raspbian

Let’s get started. Now we need to flash your microSD card with the Raspbian operating system. You’ll need a microSD card of 8GB or more and the application Etcher to transfer the .img file to it (Etcher supports Windows, Linux and MAC).

  1. Download the latest version of Raspbian (full version, not lite) from raspberrypi.org
  2. Click on and extract the .img file and take note of it’s location
  3. If not already installed, download and install Etcher for Windows, Linux or MAC
  4. Insert your microSD card into a card reader, close any automatic windows, prompts or alerts
  5. Fire up Etcher which should detect the microSD card automatically (important! if you have multiple choices, be sure to choose the SD card we are working with)
  6. Click on the Select Image button, navigate to your Raspbian .img file, select it and/or click Open
  7. Once you’re sure you have everything right by double checking, click on the Flash! button
  8. Etcher will now start the flashing process, click Yes to the Windows prompt, and close any automatic alerts/windows that show shortly afterwards
  9. Flashing should take about 5 minutes, then you’ll be presented with the “Flash Complete!” dialog
  10. Close Etcher, remove the card reader and microSD card
  11. Insert the microSD card into your Raspberry Pi

Now we can move on to the next section Create an Amazon Developer account, Setup Device & Security Profile.

Fast video delivery using AWS S3 Bucket & CloudFront CDN

Fast web video delivery using AWS S3 Bucket & CloudFront CDN

Introduction

Website video delivery is a sorely neglected area of Web Development with YouTube being the exception, who basically dominate the entire video delivery spectrum. As far as I know there is no other video hosting service that delivers such a pleasant viewing experience, on any device and connection speed, as does YouTube.

But YouTube doesn’t offer a private hosting service that you can restrict to your own website, the best they offer is simply an unlisted video that anyone with the URL can see. You can disable embedding on other websites but that also means your own website, so that doesn’t work out.

The only solution I found was to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service which offers excellent speed and reliability, along with properly encoded videos in a widely supported format that plays on any device. So let’s go through how you can do the same with your website (including WordPress or other CMS managed sites).

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Encoding your videos
  3. Choosing a CDN service
  4. Embedding your videos
  5. Summary

Encoding your videos

Encoding video is painstaking, time-consuming, and frustrating, but I will give you two options: the easy way, and the harder (manual) way. But first, lets run through some video encoding basics.

Codecs

A Codec is a mathematical algorithm that aims to compress video or audio files as much as possible with the least amount of resolution/quality loss. To cut a long story short, the best codec for web delivery is H.264 (x.264 or MPEG-4 Part-10 AVC) as it has support on almost all devices and web browsers. Never use Flash as it requires both a plugin and user permission to play. Also never use AVI, MPEG-2 or MKV as they’re used for local playback, not website streaming.

Formats

File container formats are again an easy pick, MP4 is the most widely supported video format on the web (and a 99% of home media players). It easily embeds using HTML5 video tags, and offers built-in streaming capabilities. There are other container formats like OGG and WebM but they have not proven popular in the mainstream, so I recommend sticking with MP4.

Encoding (the easy way)

As I have already said, encoding a video correctly for web delivery is insanely complicated, the H.264 codec has voluminous options that are daunting. The talented guys at YouTube have the resources available to test and optimize H.264 for web delivery, so what we can do to "borrow" that effort and technology for our own use, is to simple upload our video to YouTube as a private video, let it process, and then download the fully optimized and shrunken video, and finally delete off YouTube. Follow the directions below.

  1. Make sure you video is already in a format that YouTube supports
  2. Make sure your video is in the size you need (usually 720p 1280×720 or 1080p 1920×1080)
  3. Create a YouTube account if you don’t already have one (click Sign In, then choose More Options > Create account)
  4. Go to the YouTube uploader, click the Privacy drop-down and choose Private
  5. Click on the large arrow and select your video file to upload
  6. Once your video finishes uploading, it will take a minute or two to process, copy the video URL
  7. To grab your new video go to: https://y2mate.com/ then paste your video URL and click Start
  8. Now simply download your video in your desired format (most common choices would be 720p and 1080p)
  9. You now have expertly optimized and shrunken video!

I can guarantee you will never be able to encode your videos as well as YouTube does. That beings said, if you want to try encoding, keep reading below.

Encoding (manually)

If you want to try (or just learn more about encoding videos) I will go through some basics with you here. Firstly, I have found the best encoder app is one called HandBreak as it supports Windows, MAC, Linux and encodes in both MP4/H.264 for web and MKV for local playback. It also has some good presets that make life easier.

Open HandBreak and choose your video to encode, select a location for the re-encoded file, then from the right-side pane choose either Fast 1080p or Fast 720p (match the size of your input video). For Output Settings, choose MP4 and check the Web Optimized check box, then change the following settings (or see slideshow further below).

  • PICTURE
  • (leave at defaults)
  • FILTERS
  • (leave at defaults)
  • VIDEO
  • Video Codec: H.264 (x.264)
  • Frame rate (FPS): same as source
  • Encoder Tune: Zero Latency
  • Encoder Profile: High
  • Encoder Level: 3.1
  • Quality: Avg Bitrate (kbps): 2000
  • AUDIO
  • Bitrate: 128
  • SUBTITLES / CHAPTERS
  • (set as required)

Now you can click Start Encode and you’ll end up with a small file sized, high quality video, optimized for web delivery.

Choosing a CDN service

CDN providers have large networks of servers (edge servers) in strategic locations around the world, which means they can delivery your video much faster than your web server can. CDN servers are also optimized for media delivery/streaming which is something you can’t do with your web server.

There are a number of CDN service providers out there and most do a good job. I will take you through how to set up an Amazon Web Services S3 Bucket and CloudFront Distribution for video delivery. Before I do that, here are some good CDN providers you can take a look at.

Create an Amazon S3 Bucket

Let’s go through how to set up an S3 bucket to store your videos, then we’ll setup a CloudFront distribution to serve your video on CDN edge servers located close to your website visitors.

  1. Create an Amazon Web Services account unless you already have one, in that case sign in
  2. Click on Services > Storage > S3, then click Create Bucket
  3. Give you bucket a unique domain name (IE. mybucket.mywebsite.com) and leave the Region option set at default US East (Ohio) and click Next
  4. Leave everything on Set Properties screen unselected, then click Next
  5. Change the Manage public permissions option to Grant public read access to this bucket, then click Next
  6. On the final page, review your selections, then click the Create Bucket button
  7. Once you bucket is created, click on the domain name link (ie. mybucket.mywebsite.com)
  8. You should now be inside your new bucket, click the Upload button, then click the Add Files button, then select a video to upload, then click Next
  9. Change the Manage public permissions option to Grant public read access to this object(s), then click Next
  10. Leave all options on the next screen at defaults and click Next, then review your selections and click the Upload button
  11. You can see the progress of your upload at the bottom of the page, please wait for it to finish before moving to the next section

Create a CloudFront Distribution

Now let’s setup our CloudFront distribution that will serve your video via edge servers located close to your website visitors, therefore speeding up delivery and making for an excellent user experience.

  1. Click on Services > Networking & Content Delivery > CloudFront, then click on Create Distribution
  2. Under the Web section, click the Get Started button
  3. For Origin Settings > Origin Domain Name > [click inside text-box and choose your S3 bucket domain name we created earlier, it will auto-populate]
  4. Change Default Cache Behavior Settings > Viewer Protocol Policy to HTTP and HTTPS
  5. Scroll all the way to the bottom (leave everything at defaults) and make sure Distribution State is set to Enabled
  6. Finally, click the Create Distribution button
  7. Once your CloudFront distribution is created, highlight and copy the Domain Name (ie. d144ftmy48805g.cloudfront.net)
  8. All done, you can now move on to Embedding your videos below

Embedding your videos

Standard HTML5 video embedding

For standard websites we just use some simple HTML5 video code as follows, but please note* If you want to use secure HTTPS you will need to wait 12 to 24 hours for Amazon to add your CloudFront URL to their *.cloudfront.net SSL certificate. Otherwise just use plain HTTP temporarily to make sure it’s all working, then wait for Amazon to update their certificate.

There are a number of other HTML5 Video properties, methods and events you can use to further control your videos, but the code above is all that is really necessary for basic function.

WordPress video embed code

WordPress has its own pseudo code that is pretty much the same as HTML5, but enables WordPress to handle the video better. Use the following to embed in a WordPress based website.

Check out WordPress Video Shortcode for a full explanation of available properties.

Summary

Although it’s not easy, it is well worth your time and effort to set up and use a CDN network so your website visitors experience fast, lag-free video. There is a lot more you can do with Amazon Web Services too from hosting your entire static website on their CloudFront network, to hosting a WordPress website and database too. But before you move on to those advanced options, try moving all your media content (images, audio, video etc) on separate CloudFront distributions and see how blazingly fast your website becomes!

Cheers!
Richie

Related Links

Website optimizations for a faster experience

Website Optimizations on Ricmedia PC Help

Today I installed a special WordPress plugin called WP-Rocket which optimizes this website for a much faster and smoother user experience. I also setup a CND via MaxCDN to further speed up delivery from Ricmedia PC Help. Part of this optimization is something called Minifying, which removes white-space in certain text files like JavaScript and CSS, and although this feature greatly increases speed, it can sometimes break the website and cause display issues.

I will attempt to keep on top of this issue as much as I can, but it would be terrific if you guys can also let me know if you have any problems…thanks 😉

Cheers!

Richie

How to install Debian Linux – Complete guide

How to install Debian Linux - Complete guide

Debian Linux, aka The Universal Operating System, is a Linux distribution created by Ian Murdoch in 1993 that has since become one of the most widely deployed Linux distro’s in the world, and for good reason. Debian has a massive repository of 50,000+ software packages, supports a range of CPU architectures including x86, x64, ARM, mips, PowerPC, and has become extremely popular in web server environments using the standard LAMP stack. Debian is also the engine behind more well-known Linux distro’s like Ubuntu, Knoppix and 126 others.

Today I will show you how to download and install Debian, just follow the steps below and remember that further below, there is a slide show with all the screenshots for each step.

Download and Burn Debian

Before we download Debian, you need to figure out if your target machine is x86 or x64 architecture, if you’re unsure, download the x86 (i386) version, otherwise download the x64 version if your hardware supports it because it will perform far better. Also, please remember that by installing Debian you will lose all data on the target machine’s hard drive, that includes personal files, music, video, everything unless you have previously backed up to an external device. Once you’re sure you’ve backed up your data (if necessary) follow the steps below:

  1. Download via BitTorrent
  2. If you don’t already have a BitTorrent client, download qBittorrent and install
  3. We’ll only need to download the first CD/DVD as Debian will download any other software as it installs
  4. For server installations (no desktop), download either i368 (x86) or amd64 (x64)
    • For x64, choose the CD-1 .torrent file, ie debian-X.X.X-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso.torrent
    • For x86, choose the CD-1 .torrent file, ie debian-X.X.X-i386-xfce-CD-1.iso.torrent
  5. For full desktop installations, download either i386 (x86) or amd64 (x64)
    • For x64, choose the DVD-1 .torrent file, ie debian-X.X.X-amd64-DVD-1.iso.torrent
    • For x86, choose the DVD-1 .torrent file, ie debian-X.X.X-i386-DVD-1.iso.torrent
  6. Take note of the download location (most of the time it will default to your Downloads folder)
  7. You will need a disc image burner app to burn the ISO to CD/DVD, I recommend Free ISO Burner, IMGBurn or ISO Recorder
  8. Open your burner app and burn the ISO image to a blank CD or DVD (see instructions here)

Install Debian

Now it’s time to install Debian on your target machine.

  1. Turn the target machine on and insert the CD/DVD, then reboot
  2. Hit the F12 key to bring up the boot menu and choose your DVD drive, or enter BIOS to set boot options
  3. Debian will boot into the main menu screen, you can now follow the screenshots and captions below:

Summary

So now you should now how to install Debian, congrats! If you ran into any trouble, just leave a comment and I’ll answer you asap.

Debian really is the Universal Operating System and is by far my favorite Linux distro. Linux is funny like that, the different flavors tend to suit different personality types (I’m not a big fan of Fedora type distro’s). I have used Debian for so many projects and it’s incredibly versatile, runs solid as a rock. Hope you enjoyed the guide.

Cheers, Richie

Build a Raspberry Pi RAID NAS Server – Complete DIY Guide

Build a Raspberry Pi3 RAID NAS Server – Complete DIY Guide

Introduction

Today I will show you how to build a Raspberry Pi 3 RAID NAS server using USB flash drives, the Linux native RAID application mdadm, and SAMBA so the drive will show up as a normal network folder on Windows PC’s. It’s a pretty easy tutorial and shows you how to create a Linux RAID array which is a good skill to have.

Contents

  1. Introduction, Hardware Requirements & RAID Levels
  2. Install/Update Raspbian 9.x “Stretch” and mdadm
  3. Setup RAID Volume & File System
  4. Install/Setup SAMBA, Summary

Hardware Requirements

Raspberry Pi

You can use Raspberry Pi’s from version 2 onwards, so 2B, 2B+ and RPi 3’s are fine, but I recommend the latest Raspberry Pi 3. You’ll also need a good quality microUSB power pack suitable for the Raspberry Pi you’re using, if in doubt, just buy a combo pack that comes with case, power pack and other goodies.

USB Flash Drives

We will be using USB2.0 flash drives for our RAID array because RPi’s (all versions) only support USB2.0, so there’s no use spending up big on USB3.0 drives (unless you want to). The drives should all be the same size and preferably the same manufacturer for a good RAID array however, if you have an odd one out, just make sure it’s the same size or larger than the smallest drive.

In terms of drive size, your budget will be the determining factor, so just get what you can afford. Remember that with RAID-0 you get the total amount of all drives put together, so 2x 64GB drives will give you 128GB. RAID-1 will halve your total capacity, so 2x 64GB drives will give you 64GB, and RAID-5/6 will give you roughly 2/3 of total capacity, so 3x 64GB drives will give you 128GB of storage. RAID-10 will halve you total capacity, so 4x 64GB drives will give you 128GB storage (more about RAID levels further below).

RAID Levels

The number of drives you have with determine what RAID level you will be able to create. I suggest 3 (or more) drives which is the minimum required for a RAID-4/5 array that offers a good balance between redundancy and speed. If you only have 2 drives, I suggest using RAID-0, and even though there is no redundancy, RAID-0 rarely fails on solid state media. I have had my workstation running on SATA-3 SSD RAID-0 for years and it never skips a beat, but If you’re storing important files, definitely go with RAID-1.

If you’re confident in your Linux skills you can create a RAID-10 array with 4 drives, which is 2 sets of RAID-1, then each set is used to form a RAID-0 array giving you the benefit of speed and redundancy (I will show you how to create all types of Linux RAID arrays).

Number of Drives RAID Level Availability
2
  • RAID-0 Stripe (Fastest, but no redundancy)
  • RAID-1 Mirror (Excellent redundancy, good speed)
3
  • RAID-0 Stripe (Fastest, but no redundancy)
  • RAID-4 Dedicated parity disk (Good speed & redundancy)
  • RAID-5 Block-level striping with distributed parity (Excellent speed & redundancy)
4
  • RAID-6 Block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks (Excellent speed & redundancy)
  • RAID 10 (nested RAID 1+0) (Excellent speed and redundancy)

Once you’ve chosen a desired RAID level you’re happy with, let’s move onto Install/Update Raspbian 9.x “Stretch” and mdadm.