Birdbox 2021 (Repost)

Jonatan — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:13:28 +0000

I wanted to try doing a Raspberry Pi project, so I got myself a Raspberry Pi Zero W (but Pi Zero 2 is better for this), a NOIR camera, a Bright Pi, a power bank, and a power cable. And then I put it all together, put my 16GB memory card into my computer, and installed Motion Eye OS following this guide:

Guide by Arrow.com

After following that guide, just put your Raspberry Pi in a birdbox and you're all set. We ended up not using the IR lighting, because we got enough light from the little entrence, but I'm glad we had the option. I think this was a fun project, but at the time the Raspi Zero 2 W didn't exist, but it would signicantly improve the quality of the video as well as the framerate.

Links:

MotionEyeOS

Balena Etcher

Virtualize Your Life

Jonatan — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:10:56 +0000

Chapter 1 - Installing Linux

Chapter 2a - Installing the needed software on Manjaro

Chapter 2b - Installing the needed software on Ubuntu

Chapter 3 - Downloading and Installing Microsoft Windows

Chapter 4 - Final Tweaks

Linux is wonderful. It really is, but sometimes compatibility isn't the best. I understand people need or want Windows, but I could argue it is better to virtualize. Security, privacy and more. So this is how I'd configure a system.

Chapter1

Backing up Windows and downloading as well as installing Linux.
Step 1: Backup all of you files to an external harddrive, a NAS and or in the cloud on something like BackBlaze (You get a 14 day free trial)

Step 2: Get a Linux ISO, I like Manjaro but it's all up to you. You can download this from the distro's website.
Get Manjaro from here or Get Ubuntu from here

Step 3: Download balena etcher to "flash" the Linux ISO to a USB flashdrive.
Get Balena Etcher from here

Step 4: Boot into the Live USB to install your Distro of choice.

Chapter2a

This chapter is for Arch-Based Distros (Manjaro), if you use Ubuntu, follow the steps in Chapter2b

Run

sudo pacman-mirrors -f && sudo pacman -Syu

Run

sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring

Run

sudo pacman -S qemu virt-manager virt-viewer dnsmasq vde2 bridge-utils openbsd-netcat

Chapter2b

This chapter is for Debian-Based Distros (Ubuntu), if you use Manjaro, follow the steps in Chapter2a

Run

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Run

sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils

Chapter3

Downloading and installing Microsoft Windows

Go to Microsoft's Website and select 10 or 11
You'll get an ISO file, similar to the one we got for Linux.

Step 1: Open Virt-Manager and select "New Virtual Machine", then select "Local install Media"

Step 2: Navigate to the ISO file in your Downloads using "Browse" and then "Browse Local", and select it.

Step 3: At the next page you choose how many Megabytes of ram as well as CPU cores you want to give it. I'd give it about half but choose what you're comfortable with. (This can be changed later)

Step 4: Choose the size of the harddrive (or ssd) you want to give it. (You can add more harddrives later)

Step 5: On the next page check "Customize Configuration Before Install" and then click finish.
Step 6: Here you want to change "Firmware" to one of the UEFI ones.

Step 7: Navigate over to "Boot Options and enable CD rom"
Step 8: Click "Begin Installation" and proceed Windows installation as normal.

Chapter4

Final Tweaks
Note: You would have to passthrough a GPU in order to use any GPU intensive application.

Step 1: Shut down the VM, and click the little (i) button to come back to the settings menu.
Step 2: Download the first ISO in the list

Step 3: In VirtManager, select the Sata CDROM and click "Browse" and then "Browse local"

Step 4: Boot the VM again, and open Device Manager, click on the dropdown menu called "display adapters" and then rightclick on Update Driver and browse to the driver on the D: drive.
Step 5: Rightclick the Desktop, go into display settings and select the resolution of your monitor.

Step 6: Restore from your backup