Raspberry Pi

Category page of all posts on the web site that are tagged as related to the Raspberry Pi including guides / walkthroughs / projects

Raspberry Pi 4 USB Boot Config Guide for SSD / Flash Drives

Published: June 29, 2019 / Last Modified: February 3, 2024 / 1,024 Comments / , , ,
Raspberry Pi 4 with Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD

The Raspberry Pi 4 is finally here and has a lot of exciting changes. One very major downside is that it doesn’t support true USB booting yet out of the box (like the 3 series did).
The Raspberry Pi foundation states that it is being worked on and will be added back with a future update. No timeline has been given yet for that to happen but they state it’s one of their top priorities.

Most of my projects heavily depend on having good performing storage so sitting and waiting was not an acceptable solution. In this guide I’ll show you a workaround to use USB devices as your rootfs device and use a Micro SD card as bootloader only which gives us full SSD performance after boot!

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Official Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server on Raspberry Pi*

Published: April 26, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 174 Comments / , ,
Minecraft Bedrock running on Raspberry Pi

One of the most requested features in my Raspberry Pi Minecraft server Raspberry Pi Minecraft server guide is support for the Bedrock edition of Minecraft. This is the edition that powers Minecraft on iOS / Android / Xbox / Nintendo Switch as well as the free Windows 10 edition.

There’s one big problem though. The official Minecraft Bedrock dedicated server is only compiled for Windows and Ubuntu X86_64. Without ARM support it seems impossible to run the Bedrock dedicated server on a Raspberry Pi. I couldn’t find a documented instance of anyone doing it anywhere.

So naturally today in this guide we are going to do the impossible. But right off the bat let me point out that there is an asterisk in my article title. Why you ask? That is because unlike my other guides this one will not yield you a well performing server. That is because we will be emulating a x86_64 processor on ARM. This is slow. VERY slow.

Official Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server on Raspberry Pi* Read More »

Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks + Benchmarking Script

Published: March 16, 2019 / Last Modified: November 27, 2022 / 85 Comments / , ,
Pi Benchmark 2019 Contenders

Storage options continue to advance at a very fast pace. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the past couple of years with viable storage options for your Pi. Solid state drives are now so cheap that it can be cheaper to outfit your Pi with a SSD than buy a MicroSD card! MicroSD cards also continue to evolve with the new “Application Class” A1 and A2 certifications.

This year I wanted to do something more than just benchmark my ever-growing pile of MicroSD cards and solid state drives. Although I have a wide variety of storage to test I don’t have everything! So this time I created a benchmark that gives you a easy to compare score and anonymously submits the storage specifications and the results to this site.

Running the benchmark is a one-liner:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh | sudo bash

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Kali Linux P4wnP1 ALOA Guide – Setup / Usage / Examples

Published: March 11, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 52 Comments / , ,
P4wnP1 Kali Linux

P4wnP1 A.L.O.A. is a tool for the Raspberry Pi Zero W that allows you to plug a Pi into a host computer and send remote commands and share networking with a host computer all without any user interaction. A.L.O.A. stands for “A Little Offensive Appliance”.

There’s practically no defense to this type of attack other than physically securing your USB ports. Let’s jump right in!

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Raspberry Pi 4 Ubuntu Server 18.04 Installation Guide

Published: March 5, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 207 Comments / ,
Ubuntu Server logo

Ubuntu Server has been my favorite Linux distribution for years. On everything but the Raspberry Pi I run Ubuntu Server but felt stuck with Raspbian on the Pi. Until now!

The Raspberry Pi 4 is now supported. Previously Ubuntu Server for Pi (like many other distros) had broken or completely missing drivers for core components such as WiFi / Bluetooth. In the 18.04.2 update the firmware for the WiFi and other components is now included out of the box making it a fully functional distribution!

Raspberry Pi 4 Ubuntu Server 18.04 Installation Guide Read More »

Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server Setup Script w/ Startup Service

Published: February 11, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 1,104 Comments / ,
Minecraft 1.17 - Caves and Cliffs Update

Based on the comments and feedback from my older guides I have added many requested features and fixes. It has changed so much since 1.12’s World of Color that my old guide is now obsolete and it’s time for the 1.13 Aquatic era update!

This script and guide are written to help you get a great performing Raspberry Pi Minecraft server up and running in only a few minutes.

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Raspberry Pi Cheap SSD Upgrade Guide

Published: February 4, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 96 Comments / , ,
SSD now cheaper than Micro SD cards

I’ve covered the benefits of taking your Raspberry Pi to a solid state drive (SSD) before extensively in this article but in a nutshell you get around a 280% increase in raw throughput and a 1000% increase in 4k random read/writes over a MicroSD card.

In this article I will teach you how to upgrade to a SSD on your Raspberry Pi for under $30.

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Raspberry Pi 3B+ MicroSD / SSD Speed Benchmarks

Published: March 28, 2018 / Last Modified: July 22, 2022 / 14 Comments / , ,
The contenders for the RPI storage benchmarks

After publishing my Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server tutorial I got some feedback on Reddit to try using a USB SSD for storage.  I expected some marginal improvement but nothing spectacular due to the USB 2.0 bus data rates.  In fact the results were so spectacular that I’m changing my storage recommendations entirely.  Let the games begin!

Raspberry Pi 3B+ MicroSD / SSD Speed Benchmarks Read More »

Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server 1.13.2 / 1.14.4 Installation Script / Optimization Guide

Published: March 25, 2018 / Last Modified: September 4, 2022 / 65 Comments / ,
Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server Timings

Many things have changed since I wrote my last Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server guide.  OpenJDK is now the better supported Java for Raspberry Pi and Oracle is discontinuing support for Java 8 in January 2019.  Java 9 is out and Java 10 is soon to follow.  The Raspberry Pi 3B+ has also arrived!  After testing the server on the new 3B+ using Java 9 I was blown away by the performance and decided to write an updated guide and a script that will have you up and running in minutes.

To give you a taste of how smooth the timings are in Java 9 OpenJDK headless using the Paper Spigot Minecraft Server here is a nearly 2 hour session I played with my girlfriend.  This was played in survival mode on a brand new server so no blocks had been pregenerated and no settings were modified from the defaults.  Nothing is overclocked except the SD card.  There was even a village right by the spawn so many entities were in use.  Here’s the timings output report:

Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server Timings

Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server 1.13.2 / 1.14.4 Installation Script / Optimization Guide Read More »

UDOO X86 Microboard Breakdown

Published: November 18, 2017 / Last Modified: March 16, 2022 / Leave a Comment / , ,
Front of the board

The UDOO X86 is a single board computer that runs an Intel 64-bit chipset. It also has a separate chipset with a full implementation of Arduino. It runs Windows 10 and any flavor of Linux. The board is touted as as the “new PC that can run everything.” That is quite a bold claim!

In this breakdown we will examine the Udoo X86 and see how it stacks up against other SBCs!

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Old Skool NES Classic Case Fan Mod

Published: July 16, 2017 / Last Modified: March 17, 2022 / Leave a Comment / , ,
Pi Classic Fan Case Open

This is a followup to my awesome Old Skool NES Classic RetroPie build.  When I posted my build on Reddit several users that already had the case noted that the case tends to get very hot.

That’s not good, but since the case is so awesome I was determined to find a solution.  This mod requires no soldering, no drilling, and is dead simple and cheap.  It also does not modify the look of your NES Classic RetroPie setup at all!

Old Skool NES Classic Case Fan Mod Read More »

Raspberry Pi 3 NES Classic RetroPie Build

Published: July 9, 2017 / Last Modified: April 28, 2022 / 2 Comments / ,
Our PI Classic case has an opening lid!

I confess I have never been a big fan of emulation.  It never felt like playing the real thing to me.  However this setup really looks, feels and plays like the genuine article.  

We will use a nice case, premium controllers and a Raspberry Pi board with RetroPie to create a truly authentic retro gaming experience.  

Raspberry Pi 3 NES Classic RetroPie Build Read More »

Check If Raspberry Pi is Undervolted Or Throttled

Published: June 26, 2017 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 7 Comments / ,
Raspberry Pi 4

I uploaded a quick gist that will measure your Raspberry Pi’s true clock speeds using the vcgencmd. Don’t believe what other tools like cpufreq tell you that your Raspberry Pi is running at because they are lying to you! The true clock speeds are controlled by the firmware and vcgencmd is the official way to interact with the Raspberry Pi’s firmware and hardware and are the only readings you can really trust! Available at https://gist.github.com/TheRemote/10bda1ac790f959210db5789f5241436 or click read more to view it directly on my site.

Check If Raspberry Pi is Undervolted Or Throttled Read More »

Kali Linux 2017.1 + Raspberry Pi 3 + RPI 7″ Touchscreen = Plug and Play!

Published: June 18, 2017 / Last Modified: April 28, 2022 / 4 Comments / , ,
Kali actually running and connected to local WiFi using built in WiFi

The Kali Linux penetration testing distribution has been available for Raspberry Pi for quite some time. However, it can be quite a chore to set it up, especially with a touchscreen.

Recently I purchased the official Raspberry Pi 7″ touchscreen and was astonished when I put the SD card in and Kali booted up right to the desktop ready for me to log in!

Kali Linux 2017.1 + Raspberry Pi 3 + RPI 7″ Touchscreen = Plug and Play! Read More »

Overclocking Samsung Pro Plus MicroSD to 99MHz on Raspberry Pi

Published: June 18, 2017 / Last Modified: March 17, 2022 / 2 Comments / ,

In my quest for maximum performing MicroSD cards in the Raspberry Pi I decided to purchase the top performing card in most benchmarks which is the Samsung Pro+. However, the common overclock for the Raspberry PI SD port to 100MHz does not seem to work with these cards and they become unstable. However, through a little bit of tweaking and experimentation, I found that these cards can be clocked to 99MHz and work just fine and provide a substantial performance boost. Read on for the details!

Overclocking Samsung Pro Plus MicroSD to 99MHz on Raspberry Pi Read More »