February 23, 2019 – Linux Containers on the Pi: A Server Farm in the Palm of your hand

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

Another container technology which can also run on SBCs is Linux Containers (LXC/LXD). Each LXC Container appears to have its own network stack. And therefore is much more flexible than Docker.

We’ll run 20 webservers all with individual addresses, all listening on port 80, on the Pi, something that can’t be done with Docker in its NAT-constrained world.

See Craig’s documentation here.

November 24, 2018 – Docker and a webserver on rpi

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

10:00am
docker logo

 

Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization, also known as “containerization”. A Container is a lightweight application component including all the required elements (libraries, config, etc). Containers can be quickly started up without polluting your file system with libraries, and config files, and easily upgraded with one command.

In this presentation, we’ll install docker on the Pi, and get nginx webserver up and running in a container.  The presentation material can be found here.

Docker Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software)

 

September 22, 2018 – ESP8266 Web Controlled LEDs (part 1)

10:00am
Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 259 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users) presentation pdf

led

In this session, we’ll cover programming Neopixel LEDs driven by the ESP8266 using a Web Interface. We’ll cover the hardware interface to the LEDs as well as the web interface (running on the ESP8266 utilizing the PL9823).

In Part2, we’ll harden the installation by adding TLS/SSL and IPv6 support via NodeRed running on a Pi

May 26, 2018 – R part 2

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

Two views of Statistical Programming. The second in the series. R is a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that is supported by the R Foundation

May 12, 2018 – Node-red and MicroPython esp8266 sensing

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

A Double-header:

Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.

It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

Deid will connect his ESP8266 to nodeRed and show us how easy it is to put sensors online.

See the document here.

AND Mike will present MicroPython on the ESP8266. The presentation will share the Micropython breakthru that allows a $4 WiFi-enabled microprocessor to run a good portion of the Python standard library. It’s really quite amazing to have the Python REPL and filesystem built right into a microcontroller.

See this document here.

March 24, 2018 – Jupyter & Python

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text.

With the success of data science and big data analytics in the last decade, Python has emerged as a major language for data analytics. In 2014, Project Jupyter started as interactive, browser-based platform for data analysis and visualization in Python. Today, Jupyter is a widely adopted framework in industry and academia and has spawned many further applications. I will introduce the Jupyter Universe and discuss Jupyter’s advantages and its shortcomings. Together we will walk through a few of its various capabilities and extensions with Jupyter notebooks available at https://github.com/chritter/Talks/tree/master/VicPiMakers.

Finally I will discuss and demonstrate the rising star of the Jupyter project, Jupyter Lab.

Also, see notes here: http://vicpimakers.ca/tutorials/python-tutorial/the-jupyter-notebook/

March 10, 2018 – Intro 1 to Statistical Computing using R & Python

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

Two views of Statistical Programming.  Python using Panda & PyNum libraries for statistical computing. And a following meeting,  (28 April) with R  a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that is supported by the R FoundationTwo views of Statistical Programming.

See presentation pdf s here.

April 8, 2017 – File Systems on the Pi

The Basics of Filesystems on the Pi

  • 9:30 AM

    Victoria Computer Club

    85A Burnside Rd West (at Wascana), Victoria, BC (map)

    Filesystems is what keeps track of the files on your Raspberry Pi. Linux supports several types of filesystems (including the ones used by Macintosh and Windows).

    Chris K. will cover the basics of filesystems in the context of the Pi. We will look at the boot sequence, types of filesystems and their specific usages, and then we will dive into the structure of the both the boot and root filesystem (rootfs) partitions.

    See the presentation material here.

March 25, 2017 – Python Webservers

Python Webservers

  • Saturday, March 25, 2017

    9:30 AM

    Location:  Q-College

    Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC (map)

    Hayward will be talking about Python Webservers.  The presentation will cover the basics of what they are, how they differ from a traditional web server, and provide examples of (and discussion around) some projects that he has setup using a python web server.

    Presentation material is here.

    Python Web Framework Presentation

February, 25, 2017 – Python 6: String Formatting – tkinter

Saturday, February 25, 2017

9:30 AM

Q-College

Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC (map)

Why invent the wheel? Over the years Python has adopted of features from other languages, skillfully designed and proven useful and effective:

Two Python mini-languages: regular expressions, and string formatting.

As a plus an intro to Tkinter, the built-in Python GUI. Tkinter is a binding to Tk, one-half of the Tcl/Tk language, developed over the last 25 years.

July 9th Meeting

Serving The Web With A Slice Of Pi

Although small in size, the Raspberry Pi and other embedded Linux boards can be used as very capable web servers.

Instructor Don Woods will show you how to set up a Web server on a Raspberry Pi and get around the little snags to be able to access your Pi from outside your local network.

The entire tutorial is available here:

http://piserver.vicpimakers.ca/

Note: This will be our last Meetup before the summer holiday season. We will reconvene in early September. Have a good summer, y’all!

June 25th Meeting

Low-cost High-quality PiFi Audio

Presented by Stuart Hertzog

Tired of iTunes? Time for PiTunes! — HiFi audio from your Pi.

You don’t need a PC or laptop to enjoy listening to hifi audio from your personal collection or Internet streaming. And you won’t have to endure the convoluted iTunes interface.

A low-cost Digital Audio Converter (DAC) or DAC and Amplifier such as offered by HiFiBerry or IQAudio will turn any Raspberry Pi2 or 3 into a low-cost and energy-efficient MPD audio server controlled from a Web browser or an iOS/Android app.

Join us as instructor Stuart Hertzog explains how to set up a DAC on your Pi and demonstrates the free and open-source Linux audio software PiMusicBox, Volumio, RuneAudio, and MoOde Audio.

Discover PiFi audio and a world of listening pleasure!

Check out the links for this presentation: