How to set up a Node.js-environment on your Raspberry Pi and have it run on boot.
Running a basic setup of Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi is very easy and clearly explained in their Getting Started Guide.
Download NOOBS, extract it on your SD, plug it in and turn on the Raspberry Pi. When prompted, choose to install Raspbian and let it run.
Make sure you have internet connection and open up the terminal on the RPi.
Installing an ARM-version of Node has become very easy:
wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb
That's it, basically. It shouldn't take too long to download and install.
To make sure it ran correctly, run node -v. It should return the current version.
Running npm -v or npm --version still gave me the known Illegal instruction error. However, installing modules with npm install works.
You can do anything here. I used it to take a picture every 3 minutes and have it sent to a remote server.
Run node app.js and make sure it doesn't give any errors.
This is the hardest part if you don't really know what you're doing.
You can define things to run on boot in /etc/rc.local. In that shell script, you don't have the same path as when you log in, so just running node app.js won't do the trick.
I tried a lot of different things that all gave errors like Illegal instruction or Permission denied or File not found.
What does work, is running one command as the default pi user. Because that user does have node in his path, the command is known.
su pi -c 'node /home/pi/server.js < /dev/null &'
I suggest using an absolute path to your Node.js-file just to make sure.
Running this will try to install Node.js and create an empty app.js file in your home directory that will run whenever you boot your Raspberry Pi.
wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb
touch /home/pi/app.js
su pi -c 'node /home/pi/app.js < /dev/null &'
