Overview

The goal of this project is to create what is essentially an intranet webpage accessible only to those connected to my wifi. This would require setting up a server on the raspberry pi and to manage permissions from it. The added issue would be I have no available monitor for it, therefore, I will have to remote into it while setting it up.

Parts List

Raspberry PI 4
GeeekPI Case
PMW Fan
Power Supply
Keyboard
Mouse
VNC Viewer
Internet Connection

Project Demo

Working Landing page when typing in the address of the RaspberryPi while connected to the local network

Active, up and running raspberry PI view RealVNC Viewer not needing an additional monitor

Personal Reflection

To begin the initial setup process wasn’t that hard to be frank. I was expecting that since I couldn’t plug it in to another monitor as none was available nor did I have the right cords for it, it would be hard. That however was not true, in fact, the site Tom’s Hardware made it shockingly easy. Since what I did have was a direct ethernet cable, I was able to remotely access the files and settings needed to be able to remote desktop into it.

From there it was fairly easy and all I had to do was set up a server. Now, I do want to be fully honest and transparent, I work in terminal a lot for my own personal projects so working in terminal wasn’t hard. It was ensuring that I understood what was happening. I was able to get it up fairly quickly! In fact, once I did I was able to quickly take out any coding from the HTML file and simply put in Hello World, with some bootstrap thrown in to make it look not as bad. However, I wanted to save from using Visual Studio Code but since I didn’t have root permissions I had to figure it out. That was simple, all I had to do was find an article in stackOverflow and I found my solution. I later then realized I missed an entire section on the TomsHardware site that included how to change permissions for the files, so I just learned something extra.

Overall, I am satisfied, for this project and dipping my toes into the water, I didn’t want to do something crazy like a magic mirror (though that’s next on my list). This was more about getting back to the basics that I’ve lost after taking time away from tech after seeing how the job market is. With that being said, would I do anything differently? Yes, I would probably build out a full website or maybe tweak my permissions a bit more. However, since I bought the computer myself and get to keep it, I probably will go about that.