CENG$260$ L$01-$ Setting Up Environment

Overview

Our target device for this course is the Raspberry Pi Model $4($RPi$).$ The RPi has an ARM microprocessor and operates the Raspberry Pi OS $($which is based on Debian distribution of Linux OS$).$ While the execution of our programs will take place inside the Raspberry PI$,$ we will learn how to develop these apps inside our PCs or within RPi itself.

To run Python programs inside RPi we will need to have couple of components including:

A$.$ Python Executables which come preinstalled with the OS in two major versions $\{$V$2\mathrm{.}7$ and V$3\mathrm{.}11$ as of Dec $2023).$ We will always use V$3.$x for our labs.

B$.$ Python Libraries specific to the task we need to accomplish. Many of the python libraries that we will leverage are cross$-$platform ones that can be used inside a PC or RPI. Few others are specific to Raspberry Pi such as the Sense$-$Hat library that interfaces with RPi Sense Hat.

C$.$ To develop and debug apps inside the RPi, we will need a development environment. The simplest is bare text editor. However, Raspberry OS comes preloaded with some very good IDEs for Python development. For our labs we will use Thonny IDE.

The RPI can use a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to develop the apps or can be with a remote network connection service.

The goals for this lab are to:

$1.$ Set up a USB$-$Ethernet adapter to communicate with the RPi from PC or Mac.

Use the PuTTY terminal program $($SSH Terminal in case of MacOS$)$ to connect to the RPI command line interface.

$3.$ Use WinSCP or FileZilla to connect via FTP RPI for file transfers some files.

$4.$ Use the Real VNC viewer to log remotely into the Raspberry Pi Linux GUI system.

$5.$ Configure Python IDE and Virtual Environment

$6.$ Create couple of python programs and learn how to install necessary libraries for the programs to run.

$7.$ Learn how to submit your assignments for evaluation.