Category Archives: Tech Articles

PiServer Client Image Adjustments

After running PiServer for a few years now, we have the process of adjusting our client images fairly well documented. I thought I would share that process here for others making the move from PiNet to PiServer.

Some of the packages we install / uninstall may not be relevant to you; please adjust accordingly!

After installing PiServer certain software needs installing and uninstalling from the standard Raspbian Full image (1). First make a clone (2) of the Raspbian Full image in PiServer and then open a shell (4) for the new software image.

Adjust existing software / configs

Perform these following steps inside the shell (4) for the operating system you have just cloned.

APT Sources

We run an APT Cache server in our school, here we update the APT sources to use the cache server.

sed -i 's+http://+http://<APT Cache Server FQDN>:3142/+g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sed -i 's+http://+http://<APT Cache Server FQDN>:3142/+g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list

Now update and upgrade through APT:

apt update && apt dist-upgrade -y

Enable BASH Tab Completion

Open the bash.bashrc file for editing in nano:

nano /etc/bash.bashrc

Uncomment the “# enable bash completion in interactive shells” section:

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
if ! shopt -oq posix; then
    if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
        . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
    elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
        . /etc/bash_completion
    fi
fi

“Ctrl + o” followed by “Enter” to write the file, “Ctrl + x” to exit. Now close and reopen your CHROOT shell.

Turn off screen blanking

raspi-config
  • Select “Display Options”
  • Select “D4 Screen Blanking”
  • Select “<No>”
  • Select “<OK>”
  • Select “<Finish>”
  • Select “<Yes>”

Chromium Managed Policy

We now apply a custom json policy file to the Chromium install on the clients. There is absolutely loads that you can set here; you should probably go and read over here to work what you need to set in your environment!

nano /etc/chromium-browser/policies/managed/sch-policy.json

Add the following to the file and save:

{
    "HomepageLocation": "https://<Home Page URL>",
    "BrowserGuestModeEnabled": false,
    "IncognitoModeAvailability": 1,
    "RestoreOnStartup": 1,
    "PopupsAllowedForUrls": [
        "http://<Smoothwall FQDN>", 
        "https://<Smoothwall FQDN>"
    ]
}

Install Smoothwall SSL certs

We run Smoothwall for our filtering and have it set to use IDex agents running on our Domain Controllers for authentication. The great thing with this is that as users are logging into the Raspberry Pi devices using their AD credentials, the IDex agent on the DCs sees the log on as a standard log in and filters all access for the Raspberry Pi devices as if they were Windows devices on the network… I might do another write-up with more detail about this later!

As well as setting up IDex for filtering, we also install the Smoothwall’s root CA certificate on the Raspberry Pi devices.

  • Download the root CA certificate from Smoothwall here: https://<smoothwall FQDN>:441/ui/admin/trust
  • Rename the file to: smoothwall-<YYYY>.crt
  • SCP this to the PiServer pi user’s home directory
  • Copy it to this directory in each OS image from a SSH connection directly to the PiServer:
sudo cp /home/pi/smoothwall-<YYYY>.crt /var/lib/piserver/os/<CLIENT OS NAME>/usr/local/share/ca-certificates/

Pi Dual Monitor fix

Using dual monitors on the Raspberry Pi with an image from PiServer does not quite work… I have my teacher’s Raspberry Pi connected to a monitor and the projector!

Back in the CHROOT shell for your new OS:

mv /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf.fubar

Disable Overscan

echo "disable_overscan=1" >> /boot/config.txt

Enable the camera module

raspi-config
  • Select option 3 “Interface Options”
  • Select option P1 “Camera”
  • Select “Yes”, then “OK” then “Finish”
  • Select “No” when asked to reboot

Install new software

Aptitude installs

apt update && apt install gimp sl imagemagick gpac gnome-screenshot python3-matplotlib blender inkscape libnss3-tools mariadb-client dia dia-shapes gsfonts-x11 -y

Python 3 PIP Installs

pip3 install bluedot Pillow guizero network

FanShim library and service

All our Pi 4 devices use the Pimoroni Fan SHIM for cooling; so here we install and configure the software.

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/fanshim-python
cd fanshim-python
./install.sh
cd examples
./install-service.sh --on-threshold 65 --off-threshold 55 --delay 2

User login scripts

In this section we create logon scripts that run each time a user logs into the Raspberry Pi devices.

Smoothwall Cert install

Create the user login script to import the Smoothwall cert:

nano /etc/profile.d/import-Smoothwall-SSL.sh

Enter the following into this file:

certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -n "Smoothwall <YYYY>" -t "TCu,Cu,Tu" -i /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/smothwall-<YYYY>.crt

Apache User Dir setup

Create the user login script to create the public_html directory and fix permissions for Apache to read it:

nano /etc/profile.d/apache-user-dir.sh

Enter the following into this file:

mkdir $HOME/public_html
chmod 711 $HOME
chmod 711 $HOME/public_html

Uninstall software

apt update && apt remove bluej greenfoot-unbundled wolfram-engine wolframscript nodered claws-mail realvnc-vnc-viewer realvnc-vnc-server -y && apt autoremove -y

Overclock the Pi 4

These settings in the config.txt file overclock the PI 4. The [pi4] and [all] ensure that older Pis do not get these settings applied.

echo -e "\n\n# Pi 4 Overclock\n[pi4]\nover_voltage=6\narm_freq=2100\ngpu_freq=750\n[all]" >> /boot/config.txt

Teacher’s RPi Image

If you are setting up a teacher’s Raspberry Pi Image then follow these additional steps:

Install Remmina

Adjust the URL that is being echoed to match your APT Cache server…

apt update && apt install dirmngr fswebcam -y
apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://www.remmina.org/raspbian/remmina_raspbian.asc
echo "deb http://<APT Cache Server FQDN>:3142/www.remmina.org/raspbian/ buster main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/remmina_raspbian.list
apt update && apt install remmina -y

Pi 4, Buster and PiServer – Part II

This post is an update to my earlier post “Pi 4, Buster and PiServer” where I talked about the tweaks and adjustments I had to make to get Pi 4s working with the PiServer application. Since that post, the Buster version of the “Raspberry Pi Desktop for PC and Mac” has been released and all of the tweaks I had to make have been added to the standard version of PiServer.

This post is based heavily on our internal documentation for setting up PiServer so some parts may not apply in your setting!

I will be writing a follow-up post soon about the process we use to customise our Raspberry Pi client operating systems using PiServer.

Continue reading Pi 4, Buster and PiServer – Part II

Raspberry Pi Zero Heart Rate Monitor

This blog post is an updated version of a chapter from my book “Wearable-Tech Projects with the Raspberry Pi Zero“.

Wearable-Tech Projects with the Raspberry Pi Zero

It has been updated for the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Buster at the time of writing). You will need a copy of this on an SD Card, all of the parts listed in the bill of materials below and to be comfortable with working on the command line and over SSH to follow along.

Let’s begin…

Continue reading Raspberry Pi Zero Heart Rate Monitor

Pi 4, Buster and PiServer

Note: There is an updated version of this post here: https://www.jonwitts.co.uk/archives/1422

I was very excited with the release of the Raspberry Pi 4, not just because I am a great fan of the Raspberry Pi and wanted to get my hands on the latest and greatest; but also because I have been teaching my Computer Science classes pretty much exclusively using the Raspberry Pi computer for the past few years.

I say “pretty much” because there had always been a few sticking points when we had to leave my RPi CS classroom and up sticks to the Windows PC lab. In the most part it was when we needed to do any graphics editing (in Photoshop) or anything that relied on using Google Drive and Docs heavily.

It was with great excitement that I saw the new Pi 4 with 4 Gb of RAM and full gigabit networking… However as network boot was not available out-of-the-box and the PiServer software was not yet updated to be used with Pi 4s and Raspbian Buster; there was a bit of work to do…

With great thanks to the devs over at the PiServer github page, I now have a working PiServer setup for use with Pi 4 devices! Set up instructions below 😀

Continue reading Pi 4, Buster and PiServer

NeoPixels, DotStars and Raspberry Pi

We took the family away to Camp Bestival this summer (as we do most years) and as we have three young children we took a festival trolley with us to help move the youngest child and associated paraphernalia around with us. Each year we try to decorate the trolley a little bit to brighten it up and this year I thought I would use a 1 m strip of 144 NeoPixels I had at work which were sat around not being used!

Having used these in class before I knew that they were sometimes a tricky beast to get working with a Raspberry Pi, but also having recently completed a chapter in my book using a similar DotStar strip to create a LED matrix across the front of a laptop bag; I felt sure that I could get a portable solution up and running for the NeoPixels and a Raspberry Pi. Now this solution is perhaps more involved than how you could get things going in the lab; but to get it working for our festival trolley the whole solution needed to be portable and powered from battery packs.

Continue reading NeoPixels, DotStars and Raspberry Pi

Using a Proxy with your Raspberry Pi

This is the steps we have followed so that we can get our school Raspberry Pi computers to run behind our school proxy without too many issues:

  1. Configure an apt-cacher NG server to handle your apt-get updates – See this post for more details
  2. Whitelist the Python PIP domains and use the –proxy:server:port configuration when installing with PIP – See this post for more details
  3. Open UDP port 123 and TCP port 9418 for the IP range of your devices on the school firewall so that they can use GIT and NTP without issue
  4. Create a new desktop launcher for Chromium so that it auto-detects your school network proxy (this is assuming you are pushing your proxy servers .pac file out via DHCP and/or DNS!) – The guide for this part is detailed below…

Continue reading Using a Proxy with your Raspberry Pi

Creating Animated GIFs with GIMP

Whilst creating some lesson slides in Google recently I wanted to add some moving images to the slides. You can see an example of one the slides I am talking about embedded below. It is a session that I delivered with Dan Aldred at the ExaBytes17 conference about using the Raspberry Pi Sense Hat.

By using the Sense Hat Online Emulator over on Trinket, I could model what the program was going to do and then use a screen recording program to capture this back to an mp4 file. On my Windows PC at work I used the Snagit software to record my screen, but at home on my Ubuntu PC I used SimpleScreenRecorder.

Continue reading Creating Animated GIFs with GIMP

Installing Python Libraries on a School Network

This question keeps coming up on various forums and on Twitter so I thought I would share how we install Python and the extra libraries we use across our school network. A recent discussion on Twitter between Chris Sharples and Laura caught my attention.

Chris was asking Laura for an MSI package version of her fantastic GUI Zero Python library.


So I offered to write up a blog post about how we install extra Python packages across our school network.


Now all school networks differ and, as they say, YMMV! But for what it’s worth here’s how we do it…

Continue reading Installing Python Libraries on a School Network

Detecting keyboard input in Python

At our last Hull Raspberry Jam, one of our budding Python coders asked me how she could detect keyboard input in a Python script and perform different actions dependent upon which key was pressed.

We both did a bit of searching around and found a few sample pieces of code, but none of them quite did what we wanted. As we were leaving I said that I would research it a bit more, and if she had not found out how to do it before the next Hull Raspberry Jam, I would have some working code for her to use.

I don’t want to ruin the surprise about what her plan is, but needless to say, it will be a very cool project if she completes what she wants to do, more on that later!

Continue reading Detecting keyboard input in Python

Embed a Twitter Feed into Moodle

In a recent #NT2tEU Twitter chat someone posed the question about how you link Twitter and Moodle together. There were suggestions about using your Twitter account to post messages about upcoming events and assignments in Moodle, linking back to them with the URL.

The way I tend to use Twitter and Moodle together is the other way round. I let Moodle take care of sending out the emails it needs for notifications, and I use Twitter as a way of pulling interesting feeds of information back into my Moodle courses.

To do this we are going to set up a Twitter Widget and then embed this code into a HTML block on our Moodle course page

Continue reading Embed a Twitter Feed into Moodle