Raspi: zero to hero.

So I'm at step zero here. Let me just give a quick intro first to what I want to do along with a little background.

The goal is to create a hacking challenge for some friends. The prize is a can of "r00t" beer. This beer will be locked away in a fridge. The lock is controlled by a Raspberry Pi. There will be several stages to pass before the fridge will unlock and the prize will be gained.

Now the background. I have owned a Raspi for about 2 months. In that time I have rather sadly not done much with it. It currently sits as a XMBC server for my television, but it's lack of YouTube support and limited Codecs means that it's not all that great. I know that Raspis have support for electronics but my electronics know how is very "trial and error" (see the Glone if you don't believe me).

My goal of blogging about this is I feel my position now is very similar to many people out there. We have a Pi, we want to build something cool, but we don't know where to start. Well I will try to get this project seen through to completion and along the way blog about the various resources and mistakes I run into that may help you all out there.


So... the first step. I want to get a raspi installed with a *nix build that will support the IO functionality. A basic layout is here. If I can get an LED to turn on and off with a command then that's level 1 completed. The next step will be getting it to drive a motor. Stay tuned :-)