Meltwater has just published information on Pi Kitchen, which is a way to pre-create your SD card images. You create ‘recipes’ which inject various settings and scripts into your SD card image when it boots up… at least I think that’s how it works!
Here’s a list of things it can do:
- Injection of network and WiFi settings so we can have full networking and remote access enabled immediately.
- Automatically enable the settings for a direct network cable link to use the Raspberry Pi with a laptop/PC
- An automated install script which we can trigger on the first power up of the Raspberry Pi following the NOOBS installation (so we can install SAMBA, VNC etc as needed)
- Enable a bluetooth keyboard to work on the first boot
- Automatically run background scripts to check for and respond to attached hardware (such as hardware buttons)
- Build stand-alone projects which can be quickly deployed by selecting a specific OS flavour
- Possibility to setup scripts which automatically run on start up
- Option to setup mapping of data and recovery partitions automatically
- We can create a range of different flavours which then can install a unique combination of ingredients (=a particular feature/setup). For example, you could create one flavour for a workshop and another flavour which runs an automated demonstration of the workshop as soon as it is switched on
- Create installations which can be run without a network but can be easily updated when required.
- Pre-load the installation with relevant data-sheets, resource materials or web-links.
- Ability to share and develop common ingredients with others.