Building a portable minecraft server

My son is pretty into minecraft - just like nearly all kids under the age of 14 at this point in time. He wanted a server that he could use to host a minecraft world on that he and his mates could play on.

Being the security conscious person I am, having some device wide open to anyone wasn't going to fly. Instead we flipped the interaction to create a mechanism where they could play and be physically present with each other.

As a result of my robotics work there were plenty of Raspberry PIs and LiPo batteries laying around so it was a fairly straight forward process to get it all up and running.

Minecraft is a lot of fun, especially when you play with friends. Minecraft servers are great but they aren’t very portable and rely on a good Internet connection. What about if you could take your own portable server with you - say to the park - and it will fit inside a lunchbox?

The build process for this is published over at Packt Building a portable minecraft server for LAN parties in the park

There's also some code if you just want to get stuck in.

Minecraft server in a box - image (CC) ajfisher

If you've got a child who has a group of friends who want to play together, this is a nice safe way to do it where they get the benefit of collaboration along with a device that can be more physically secured.