Previously, in RasPipe: A Raspberry Pi Pipeline Viewer, Part 1, we explored writing a visualization of standard streams using Python and the Pygame library to render simple graphics on a PiTFT.

Next, we'll talk about making that visualizer (or other code) available over the network, so that you can easily send it traffic from other computers, including Linux, Windows, OS X, and mobile devices.

We'll use a grab bag of tools to accomplish this:

  • netcat - a command-line utility for easily pushing traffic around a network.
  • Node.js - a fast, capable server-side JavaScript implementation with a bunch of useful library code available.
  • Flask - a fast and easy Python web application framework.

By the end of this guide, you should be equipped with a useful toolkit for bridging the gaps between networked machines for all sorts of projects.

Before we get started, make sure you have a copy of the Adafruit-RasPipe repository which contains all the code samples for this guide. You can update an existing copy from your terminal like so:

cd Adafruit-RasPipe
git pull

...or get a fresh one like so:

git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-RasPipe.git
cd Adafruit-RasPipe

This guide was first published on Mar 26, 2015. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 19, 2015.

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