The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV . It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.A keyboard & a mouse can be connected to the dual USB port (type B) .
Raspberry PI comes in 2 models. Model A & Model B.
Model A has 256MB RAM, one USB port .There is no Ethernet on the Model A version
Model B has 512MB RAM, 2 USB ports and an Ethernet port.The Model B version of the device includes 10/100 wired Ethernet. But Wi-Fi will be available via a standard USB dongle.
Both models have HDMI connectivity. Beyond this, mice, keyboards, network adapters and external storage will all connect via a USB hub.You can also attach a USB stick or USB hard drive for storage.
The Raspberry Pi has a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (System On Chip), which includes an ARM11 700 MHz processor (ARM1176JZF-S) & and a Videocore 4 GPU. The GPU is capable of BluRay quality playback, using H.264 at 40MBits/s. It has a fast 3D core accessed using the supplied OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG libraries.
The RAM is a POP package on top of the SoC, so it’s not removable or swappable.You cannot add extra RAM.
It does not include a built-in hard drive. An SD card is used for booting and storage.
When you order for a Raspberry PI you will get only the Board.. The power supply & SD card are not included & to be purchased separately.
There is composite as well as HDMI out on the board, so you can hook it up to an old analog TV, to a digital TV . There is no VGA support, but adaptors are available, although these are relatively expensive.There’s a standard 3.5mm jack for audio out. You can add any supported USB microphone for audio in.
The device is powered by 5v micro USB.
The OS is stored on the SD card.There are many Distros available ,but Debian is the default distribution. It’s straightforward to replace the root partition on the SD card with another ARM Linux distro if you want to use something else
By default, Python is supported as the educational language. Java is also supported.
At present Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi .Also Android is not stable enough with PI.
However development work is continuing on these platforms.
Now let us see how to install the OS on to the SD card. SD cards up to 32GB can be used.
We shall make use of 8GB micro SD card.You need an adapter to hold this micro sd card , so that it can match the slide slot of Raspberry PI.
The wheezy-Raspian is a stable OS for Raspberry PI. Recently NOOBS is available ,which is a collection of 5 operating systems.You can download NOOBS & select any one OS to install.As it is a huge download of over 1GB we shall stick on to raw image of wheezy-raspbian.
Download it from :
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
It is easier to fuse OS on to SD card from within a Windows PC.For this you need a win32disk imager tool .Get it from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
These two are to be kept ready before starting fusing of OS.
Place the micro SD card in to the SD adapter .Plug this on to a Card Reader & then plug it on to your PC.
Now start the WIN32 Disk Imager. The SD card is detected as an USB device .Here it is drive I:\
Click the browse button ( a file icon) & browse to the location where you’ve stored the image file.Select the image file & click Open.
Now click on Write to start loading the OS on to the SD card.
You can see the Progress window in action.
Once Write is completed , click on OK.
Remove the SD card from the card reader.Slide it on to the slot at the back of Raspberry PI.Connect an USB Keyboard & mouse to the USB ports at PI.
We can connect the PI to an old TV through the yellow RCA connector of PI. This is the composite video output from Raspberry PI .A RCA cable can be used to connect this pin to the Video IN of your TV.This connector is also yellow in color on your TV (AV IN).
For demo purpose we’re making use of a small 7 inch LCD monitor with AV IN capability.
Now power up the Raspberry PI with 5V /2Amp adapter (micro usb type ).
You can see on the screen , Raspbian booting up.
Following are the one time initial settings to be made.Settings are made through the Keyboard connected to the PI.
First option is “Expand File system “.
Select this to use the full storage area of the SD card.On next reboot this allocation will be done.
Next is the “Change User Password “.If you need to change the user password , select this & proceed as directed.
The third one is the most required one “ Enable Boot to Desktop”.
Select that & press Enter.
On the next screen Select “Desktop log in as user pi at the graphical desktop”.
Other options are for Language & regular settings,Enable camera,Overclocking & Advanced settings like Host name,SSH,SPI ,Update ,etc.,
Click on Finish to boot Raspberry PI on to Graphical Desktop.
To connect with Internet use a RJ45 cable to connect to Ethernet port of Raspberry PI to the Router/Modem which is providing Network connection.
Under Start –> Internet – > NetSurf Webbrowser is provided which is the default browser for PI.
Under Programming –> you see IDLE which is the IDE to develop Python scripts.
Watch this support Video :
alselectro 