iPad and Raspberry Pi setup

Starfighter.local is my iPad with Raspberry Pi setup. Here I’ll document the setup and process of how I set it up and run it.

It was inspired by TechCraft’s video Mobile Raspberry Pi Setup with iPad Pro and has been my daily driver outside home for a good amount of time now. I use it because my laptop is at the end of its lifetime and cannot be used outside of a dock setup.

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 5 Model B, purchased from Verkkokauppa.com
• Kingston 256GB MicroSD, purchased from Verkkokauppa.com
• Aluminium case with a fan (RB-AlucaseP5-06B), purchased from Verkkokauppa.com
• USB-C cable to connect to Macbook
• UltimateGuard Deck Case 100+ as case
  • Fits the Pi in the case + the cable + a few batteries for my keyboard
• Genki Shadowcast capture card

Software

• Raspberry Pi OS
• VS Code Server
• tmux
• NeoVim
• kiwix

Dev environments

• Python with pyenv and Jupyter Notebook
  • I have a iOS shortcut that opens the Jupyter Notebook + a start script on Raspberry Pi to activate the virtualenv with jupyter installed and starts the server
• Javascript with node & npm

Todo

• Set up a easy way to create a full SD card snapshot weekly or monthly in case the running one gets corrupted so I don’t have to start from complete scratch.
• Set up USB-C shared internet
• Set up kommuuniwifi connection
• Configure tmux
• Configure NeoVim
  • Debian’s package manager comes with an older version
  • I tried run with released binaries but apparently the ARM processor became an issue there
• Install Rust
• Clone 235 and build a Debian version
• Set up a wifi access point so I can connect to it for ssh and kiwix when there’s no network (see: Pyssel: NetworkManager UI and access point, hotspot)

Access

Having an access to Internet you can share this via an access point (AP), also called Hotspot. There is a quick way to set up this via the command

sudo nmcli device wifi hotspot con-name Wifi_AP_wlan0 ifname wlan0 ssid RPi_AP password 12345678

Device ‘wlan0’ successfully activated with ‘37237db5-515e-400c-b744-f1b1b8a0a719’.

Hint: “nmcli dev wifi show-password” shows the Wi-Fi name and password.

To break it down

• ifname what Wi-Fi device is used.
• con-name name of the created hotspot connection profile.(Optional)
• ssid SSID of the hotspot.
• band Wi-Fi band to use.(Optional)
• channel Wi-Fi channel to use. (Optional)
• password password to use for the created hotspot.

On my last trip I used it on the train and it’s just like using a laptop!

Notes

kiwix

• Downloaded Python, PHP and iFixit docs zims
• Installed kiwix-tools with sudo apt-get install kiwix-tools
• Created a symlink ln -s /usr/bin/kiwix-serve /opt/kiwix-serve
• Created a library with all the zims with kiwix-manage library.xml add [doc].zim
• Created a systemd service to autostart kiwix (/etc/systemd/system/kiwix-server.service)

[Unit]
Description=Serve all the ZIM files loaded on this server
 
[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=15
User=juhis
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c "/opt/kiwix-serve -p 9000 --library /home/juhis/kiwix/library.xml"
 
[Install]
WantedBy=network-online.target

• Restart with sudo systemctl restart kiwix-serve if needed. Logs with journalctl kiwix-serve
• When starfighter is booted up, it can be accessed in the same network from http://starfighter.local:9000/

iPad as an extra screen

From The Best iPad Accessories To Make An iPad Worth It 2024 - YouTube I learned that iOS supports capture cards so I installed Orion and tested with my Genki Capture Card and Raspberry Pi and it does work!

This way I can debug my Raspberry Pi setup if for some reason I cannot access it over ssh/mosh or VNC. In a pinch, I can also use it as an extra, slightly larger screen for my Steam Deck.