Help us test our new Raspberry Pi Bootstrap #piday #raspberrypi

rpi_bootstrap

A while ago, Adafruit released Occidentalis, a derivative of the Raspbian project tweaked for hardware hacking:

Adafruit <3 Raspberry Pi – especially how easy it is to hack circuits using the electronics breakout pins! But sadly, the latest official distro “July 15 Raspbian Wheezy” did not have many of the delicious hackables built in. That’s why we decided to roll our own distribution.

Today we’re announcing a new open source project which includes:

  1. A graphical Pi Finder application that will make it easy to find and configure a new Raspberry Pi on your network
  2. A new version of Occidentalis, built as a package repository you can use from a normal Raspbian install
  3. Additional configuration helpers for controlling basic system settings from a simple text file on your SD card

This is still an early beta, and there’s a lot of work to be done yet, but we’d love your feedback on where we’re at right now.

Interested?  Head to GitHub and check out the README, which has detailed instructions, or jump right to the release page and grab an archive for your operating system of choice.


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



6 Comments

  1. The bootstrap works great on my Model B Rev 1.0. This program will be VERY handy. How about adding a convenient “Shutdown” button to gracefully shut down the Raspberry Pi?

  2. @Randy: I added a feature request here: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Pi-Finder/issues/17

  3. Shutdown can be done with sudo poweroff.

    I like Adafruit’s efforts and it should be well received by the Pi community.

  4. Can I install the text file config utility only? I have to clone some sad cards and it would make it much easier to set the host names so there isn’t any conflicts. Thanks for the great work!

  5. Sure thing – you should be able to add the Adafruit package repository and install the occi utility pretty easily. Try the following – first get a shell under sudo; it’ll save some typing:

    sudo -s

    Then:

    echo "deb http://apt.adafruit.com/raspbian/ wheezy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
    wget -O - -q https://apt.adafruit.com/apt.adafruit.com.gpg.key | apt-key add -
    apt-get update && apt-get install occi

    And you should have the configuration utility. “man occi” should have everything you need to get started with it.

    This is most of what the general install script does; you can see that here if you’re curious:

    https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Pi-Finder/blob/master/install.sh

    Let us know if any of that doesn’t work…

  6. Thanks Brennan,
    It worked perfectly. I had to reboot for it to work as I got an error because occidentalis package was not found.
    anyway, you made my life a whole lot easier.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.