My trusty RPi3 twitter bot server "starkiller". |
So let's say you've got a twitter bot that you want running 24/7, but you don't want it running on your personal system. What you need here is a server, which is really just a dedicated system. Note, if you're looking for a web server, you'd be better off with Amazon's AWS .
If you're running automated tasks and answering tweets however, a Raspberry Pi is an excellent choice.
The steps are pretty straightforward:
1. Setup a computer (raspberry pi) to run your program.
2. Write a script to launch your program.
3. Run the script automatically at startup.
Setup your computer
The starting point here is simply to buy a Raspberry Pi. RPi3 is great because it has build in wifi, and it's very affordable, any generation will work though. Once you've got the hardware, you need to install an OS. I strongly recommend Raspbian Jessie with Pixel (download and install guide can be found here).