PI Dir Commands

Question

Hi I am a compete novice to all things Pi, Arduino ect but could someone please help me find a comprehensive guide as to how to

find directories,change to them and find files within them.

Plus would i be better off with an Arduino instead of the Pi as the coding in the pi is confusing. I understand the Arduino library's have project code written for you and you just download it

and away you go.
Something tells me it's not that simple.

All i want to do is control my heating system at our caravan over the internet without port forwarding or vpn.

Anyway thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Rae

shabaz · Answer

Hi Rae,

Check out something like the Particle Photon if you're looking for something quick and easy to use. I've not tried it but have it on good authority ( aminder ) that it's easy to use, and may meet your needs if wi-fi access will be used. If you want to use a mobile connection (cellular) then there is a Particle kit for that too, again I've not used it. The Pi runs Linux so when you ask for commands to change directory and so on, really you're looking for Linux shell commands and Linux programs. They will be compatible with the Pi (this is a broad statement, there will be exceptions). Going from learning to change directory etc to your end goal entails using some middleware or writing an app, and most likely using a cloud platform or service too. If you're interested in this approach, consider doing a free course, for example this one: Pi3 IBM IoT Learn Kit - Review

The course teaches how to connect to the cloud and create an application to monitor or control things remotely using a web browser for example. This is a subset of a field called IoT (Internet if Things) in case you want to Google more on the subject. However the course presumes some basic Linux and programming experience (although not much) so it may be best to first check out some beginners magazine like magpi https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/

It is very basic so you'll probably want to step up from there to a textbook on your programming language(s) of choice at some point.

So in summary Particle Photon or other Particle hardware could be the quick and easy way. Learning to use Linux and building an IoT solution with the Pi could be more rewarding because the knowledge will apply to all Linux platforms in the future too, but has the learning curve. There are also many other platforms like Arduino as you suggest or something known as ESP8266 and they're all valid solutions too.

All the above presumes you're ok with the hardware interfacing to your device that you want to control, I've only covered the platform/software side above. (I don't know anything about the voltage for the caravan and available interfaces/signals needed to control the heating system).