Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. We want to see the Raspberry Pi being used by kids all over the world to learn to program and understand how computers work.

In the February of 2015 the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Raspberry Pi 2 It was launched with an awesome tag of being 6 times faster. With a 900MHz quad core broad-com processor and a GB of RAM, it has well lived up to the hype. the most popular OS for the raspberry Pi is Raspbian. Which is the official distribution of the Debian Wheezy operating system for the Raspberry Pi Let's see how to install it on the Raspberry Pi 2 though the Raspberry Pi is called one of the cheapest computers, it can't run on its own It needs a couple of input and output devices Here's what you will need to setup your Raspberry Pi

A Micro-SD card 16GB, class 4 is the minimum requirement but using a higher class card is recommended.

Basic Requirements

A Keyboard and Mouse I will be using Logitech wireless Keyboard and Mouse But most of the wired keyboard and mouse will work just fine. Next up, you'll need a display and a respective cable All displays will "HDMI or RCA" input work just fine with the Pi but if like me you want to use a monitor with VGA input, you'll have to use a "HDMI to VGA" converter cable. You'll also need a power adapter. 600mA is the minimum requirement but 1A is recommended. Internet connectivity is optional while setting up the pi but is required to get the updates. You can either use a "LAN cable or a USB Wi-Fi" Dongle.

Installation Of OS

If you have all these, lets get the microSD card ready On your PC goto raspberrypi.org/downloads From here, download the latest version of Raspbian It will be a zip file and you will need Balena Etcher a software to unzip the file head over to google and search for Balena Etcher Click on the https://www.balena.io/ link and download the exe file Install this when its done downloading you'll need this to write the raspbian image to the SD card When the download is complete open the raspbian image with Balena Etcher and extract the iso file to any location you wish. Wait for it to extract, it may take a couple of minutes. Now, insert the SD card into your PC format it once using the windows format tool To write the image to the SD card open the Balena Etcher Select the correct drive letter for your SD card and select the iso image file from the location you extracted it to. remember to close any Windows Explorer windows and any music player that might be running in the background.

These programs can lock your SD card and you might not be able to write to it. You can now hit write. Writing the image can take anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes depending on your hardware. After that is complete you can safely eject the card. Now, to setup your Raspberry Pi, insert your Micro-SD card, Plug in your keyboard and mouse the Ethernet cable or Wifi Dongle, and the HDMI or the RCA cable The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a physical power switch Just plugging in the power turns it on After the first boot is complete, you will be grated with the configuration tool. you can navigate this menu using the keyboard the first option is Expand File System Go ahead and hit enter, this will allocate all of the Micro-SD card's space to the OS The second option lets you change the default password We will leave it as it is for now.

Building Compilation After Installation

The third option is boot settings This lets you choose whether to boot into the desktop environment, scratch or the command line. since most of the work on the command line done through the command line, we will leave it to that the fourth option is internationalization options this lets you change the keyboard layouts and languages I am gonna go with the defaults for now. If you don't know what overclocking means then you should not touch the seventh option. Going into the advanced options, you should enable SSH even if you don't know what it is right now, most of the projects use it and it is a very helpful tool in general since it lets you control all the aspects of your raspberry pi without a dedicated display. SPI and I2C are methods of connecting various devices and modules to your Pi We can leave these options untouched for now. if you have connected external speakers to the 3.5mm jack then you can force the audio through that jack with this option You can navigate to the bottom buttons by using the left or right arrow keys Exit this menu and select 'finish' and then 'yes' to reboot. if you ever wish to change any of these options later on, you can always come back by running the command "sudo raspi-config' in the command line or the terminal after the reboot is complete you will be asked for login The default username is "pi", type that and hit enter The password is "Raspberry" The password won't be visible while typing, this is a security feature in Linux systems You are now successfully running Raspbian!!! to go to the desktop environment type "startx" (without space) and hit enter If you had plugged in a LAN cable then you should be now connected to the net but if you had plugged in a Wi-Fi Dongle, you need to configure your Wi-Fi connection to do that click on "menu" in the upper left hand corner and then on "preferences" and select "WiFi Configuration" In the window that pops up click manage networks and hit scan.

A list of available Wi-Fi networks should pop-up double click the one you want to connect to and enter your password in the PSK window. DO NOTE THAT that the "@" key and the ' " ' key might be interchanged depending on your keyboard layout If so, then you can correct this int he internationalization options in the raspi-config tool After entering your password hit "add" and you should now be connected to the Web. Before you start enjoying all that extra horse power the Raspberry Pi 2 offers you should probably update your software you can do that by entering the following commands into the terminal or the command line raspbian is now set-up and fully configured and you are ready to enter the awesome world of raspberry pi.

For More goto https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-raspberry-pi/

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