Getting started

This page contains a simple tutorial to help you get started by creating a Mythic Beasts account, creating an API key, using the command line interface and the Python module.

Create a Mythic Beasts account

Sign up: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/user/login

Create an API key

  1. Log in to your Mythic Beasts account: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/user/login

  2. Open the API Keys page: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/customer/api-users

  3. Enter a descriptive name for your API key, for your own reference

  4. Check the Raspberry Pi Provisioning box

  5. Click the Create API key button

6. Make a note of the API ID and Secret. You’ll need them to use this Python module, and you can’t retrieve them after this screen is gone.

Note

If you lose your keys, you can simply reset them or create a new API key.

Install the hostedpi module

For a system-wide installation of the CLI only, we recommend you use pipx. See the pipx docs for more information.

$ pipx install hostedpi[cli]

To install the Python library, you can install into an activated virtual environment:

$ pip install hostedpi

To include the CLI dependencies, you can install the hostedpi[cli] extra:

$ pip install hostedpi[cli]

Set your environment variables

You can either set your API ID and secret in your shell’s config file (e.g. ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc), or you can create a .env file in your working directory.

Shell config

Add the following lines to your shell’s config file (e.g. ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):

export HOSTEDPI_ID='YOUR ID'
export HOSTEDPI_SECRET='YOUR SECRET'

Be sure to restart your terminal after setting these.

.env file

Alternatively, you can create a .env file in your working directory with the following:

HOSTEDPI_ID='YOUR ID'
HOSTEDPI_SECRET='YOUR SECRET'

Test your API keys

To test your API connection, try running the following command in a terminal:

$ hostedpi test
Connected to the Mythic Beasts API

This message means your API credentials were found and a successful connection was made.

You may prefer to test by setting your API ID and secret within the test command line:

$ HOSTEDPI_ID='YOUR ID' HOSTEDPI_SECRET='YOUR SECRET' hostedpi test
Connected to the Mythic Beasts API

If you already have Pis in your account, you can list them with:

$ hostedpi list
pi123
pi234
pi345
pi456

You can provision a new Pi with the following command:

$ hostedpi create --model 3 --wait