How to Check GPIO Status

How to check GPIO status

The GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins of the Raspberry Pi are how the device can interface with external hardware components. It is how things like sensors and actuators plug into the Raspberry Pi, and allow users to control such devices from the Raspberry Pi itself. Something as simple as turning an LED on or off will require setting the pin to which it is plugged in to either true or false, which changes the current status of that pin.

Read more

introduction to lvm thin provisioning

Introduction to LVM thin provisioning

LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is a technology which allow us to create a layer of abstraction over physical storage devices, and implement flexible partitioning schemes where logical volumes are easier to shrink, enlarge or remove than classical “bare” partitions. While LVM “thick” provisioning requires the allocation of a fixed amount of storage space to a LVM logical volume at creation time, by using “thin” provisioning, storage is allocated only when needed.

Read more

Working with RAM Disk Devices in Linux

Working with RAM Disk Devices in Linux

Linux users and system administrators alike are always trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of their system. A big bottleneck for system performance frequently comes from file transfer speeds – that is, system read and write times. Although recent disk technology like SSDs (Solid State Drives) and NVMe (Non Volatile Memory Express) have sped up transfer times significantly over traditional hard drive disks, none can measure up to the speedy performance of a RAM disk.

Read more

How to check power consumption on Raspberry Pi

How to check power consumption on Raspberry Pi

As you can probably guess just from its small size and light weight, the Raspberry Pi does not use a lot of power. While it is nice to know that your Raspberry Pi will not be adding much onto your electric bill, exactly how much power does it actually consume? This can be tricky to answer and we need to rely on external devices, since power consumption can’t be accurately measured from software alone.

Read more

How to enable ZRAM on Raspberry Pi

How to enable ZRAM on Raspberry Pi

Most Linux systems tend to use a little bit of storage on the hard drive as swap space, where temporary files can be stored by the system and then easily recalled later. This speeds up operations, without needing to take up any space inside of the physical memory (RAM). On a Raspberry Pi, this same convention can prove problematic due to the majority of devices relying on an SD card as the primary (or only) storage device.

Read more

How to check USB devices on Raspberry Pi

How to check USB devices on Raspberry Pi

Since the Raspberry Pi is frequently accessed remotely, such as through an SSH or VNC connection, we can’t always take a peek at the device to see which USB devices are physically connected to it. Furthermore, it can be useful to query the USB ports from the system itself, just to see if the devices or connections are actually being detected. In this tutorial, you will see how to check the USB devices that are connected to a Raspberry Pi.

Read more

Raspberry Pi 4 enable/disable Bluetooth

Raspberry Pi 4 enable/disable Bluetooth

Newer Raspberry Pi models such as the Raspberry Pi 4 come with Bluetooth capabilities built in. To get started using Bluetooth on your Raspberry Pi, you will have to make sure that the service is enabled. This allows the device to utilize the Bluetooth hardware to connect to peripheral devices like mice, keyboards, and headphones. If you are not planning to use Bluetooth, then you may want to keep it disabled in order to minimize unnecessary overhead. In this tutorial, you will see how to enable or disable Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi model 4.

Read more

How to check temperature on Raspberry Pi

How to check temperature on Raspberry Pi

Although the Raspberry Pi is small, it packs a lot of power into that small space. When doing intensive tasks, the Raspberry Pi can generate too much heat, and it does not come with a fan to help keep the temperature down. For this reason, it is important to keep an eye on your Raspberry Pi’s temperature to make sure it does not get too hot and risk damaging components. Furthermore, the Raspberry Pi will not perform up to par if it needs to throttle itself to keep temperatures down.

Read more

How to change keyboard layout on Raspberry Pi

How to change keyboard layout on Raspberry Pi

In this tutorial, you will see how to change the keyboard layout on your Raspberry Pi. This will allow you to access all of the necessary characters available in the language of your desire, as well as give you an opportunity to switch between a QWERTY or other type of keyboard layout. We will assume that you are using the official Raspberry Pi OS, from which the keyboard layout can be configured via both command line and GUI.

Read more