Introduction

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• What are the steps to setting up a Raspberry Pi

Objectives

• Getting Started with Raspberry Pi

In this course, you’ll be using a Raspberry Pi single-board computer for most of the work. There’s nothing magical about the Raspberry Pi: it’s just an inexpensive computer running Debian linux. You could do many of the same kinds of things with your laptop or an old desktop computer. But we’re going to use a Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi comes in several different flavors depending on how much RAM the board offers. For most basic projects, the least expensive is entirely adequate. The only exception would be for doing extensive computation, for example, image analysis or audio processing. And for these, it might worth looking at other platforms that are specialized for those purposes.

The Pi itself is a single board. The other necessary components include a micro-SD card, which acts as the computer’s long-term storage (ie, hard drive) for the operating system and associated files, and a power supply. It turns out SD cards are highly variable, so check the Raspbian documentation for information about choosing one. Until your Pi is configured, you’ll need to borrow a keyboard and a display (and a mouse might turn out to be handy). And you might want a case to keep your Pi in, so you don’t accidentally damage it.

Your kit may come with head-sinks or a fan. Check the documentation carefully to set up the board with the fan and heat-sinks before you assemble the kit.

Important:

Be sure to wait to insert the SD card until after you have put the Raspberry Pi into the case. Otherwise, you may accidentally get the card caught and put force on the connector damaging it.

Key Points

• Once you have everything it’s easy.