Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
Starting From the Basics
I found myself in need of a separate Discord account connected to a voice server this past week. With one account on my main computer and myself unable to use Discord mobile, I chose to work with my Raspberry Pi 400. I downloaded a build of Debian 12 for the Pi, flashed it with balenaEtcher, and it booted to the command line with no Internet access.
I was challenging myself by trying to maintain a conversation while setting things up. As I lacked a free Ethernet connection, that meant working with Wi-Fi. I only got as far as failing to get wpa_supplicant up while only using far fewer tools than were assumed by the tutorials I was using. In the end, I moved a connection over from my main computer temporarily.
Desktop Environment
The MATE desktop environment has been good to me for my old laptop. Once I got it installed on the Pi, even it felt a bit heavy – a note for next time, I suppose. I was able to easily connect to Wi-Fi and restore my desktop’s Ethernet.
Firefox went on next because Discord doesn’t have a client for ARM processors outside the same Android app I cannot use, but the browser version loaded. It didn’t see my USB microphone, and neither did Firefox even after bumbling around with allowing web pages to see my mic. Only then did I find and enable the PulseAudio daemon so Firefox could see my mic and pass it to Discord.
pulseaudio --start
Since I was working quick and sloppy as root, I had to use the following instead:
pulseaudio --system
Takeaway
I can tell my skills are improving. I believe a full Arch install may be in my future.
Note
An interesting problem I keep running into is the system clock. Extreme low-end computers frequently don’t include the circuitry to measure time while power is otherwise off because of monetary cost and circuit board real estate. This week, it meant I had to reboot after connecting to Ethernet, though I could probably have found a way to manually set it.
Final Question
What is the craziest project you’ve ever done starting with a command line?
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.