Setup Raspberry Pi and Camera

Setting up the Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi camera is covered in dozens of blogs and tutorials. The most recent version of Raspian Jessie with Pixel is April 2017.

Below are some of the links that provide excellent tutorials in setting up your Raspberry Pi and camera:

1. Preparing the SD card

2. Guides to setting up the Raspberry Pi

3. Guide to Raspberry Pi camera installation

Setup Gertbot

The GertBot is a motor/power controller for the Raspberry Pi. I amusing model B . Although it comes with a detailed manual you can be up and running quickly.

1. Connect the motors and power supply to the GertBot. I am m using 2 x 9 volt batteries.

2. Connect the Gertbot to the Raspberry Pi (which is powered down)

3. Download the software

4. Start the program with ./gertbot

5. Press on connect and you should see something like this :

Setting Up Node Red and Installing additional nodes:

Node Red is an easy to use tool that is already installed on the Raspberry Pi. More info can be found here:

https://nodered.org/

The most important step here is to update your version on the Pi:

sudo update-nodejs-and-node

Now check your version. I'm using Putty for this project as my terminal.

npm -v

3.10.10

node -v 

6.10.0

Now your Node Red is updated we are going to add some nodes to connect to our Raspberry Pi Camera and Sensor tag. The new version of Node Red allows a simple install through this option: <insert>

These are the additional nodes I needed for the project.

node-red-contrib-camerapi

node-red-node-dweetio

node-red-contrib-freeboard

node-red-contrib-cognitive-service

node-red-node-sensortag

node-red-node-dropbox

You need to get a free subscription key from Microsoft for the Computer Vision node.

https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-US/subscriptions?mode=NewTrials

The Dropbox node is perfect for this project. The new setup can be found here: Dropbox setup

To view you Node Red flow just open a browser. Below is an example

http://192.168.1.1:1880