Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Getting started - Installing Raspbian

Hello Friends,
In last post I have introduced RPi in brief. In this post I will explain in breif about installing OS on RPi and getting Started.

Thing required are Raspberry Pi board, 8 or 16 GB micro SD card, Power supply with microUSB connector (5V, 2A) or Mobile charger with 5V rating. Also initially we require it to connect to monitor so for VGA monitor we need HDMI to VGA cable or simply  monitor having HDMI input. And important...an Internet connected PC.

After collecting these we can start with formatting memory card first. For this you will need SD Foramtter tool (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_windows/index.html). Then using card reader plug it to the PC.

After that open SD formatter tool, your memory card will be detected. (Beware!!..do not plug any other Pen drive or USB drive, because other drive can get formatted if you fail to choose wrong device). 
After that select Options and follow the procedure:





After formatting SD card. We need OS image File which can be downloaded from  https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
Here you will get various OS options

For now we are interested in Raspbian So select Rasobian. After that you will get two options Raspbian Jassie (based on latest Debian build) and Raspbian Jassie Lite (light version with limited features). From that we will select Raspbian Jassie.


Download the zip file and extract that file. You will get .img (disk image) file. Now you will need Win32diakimager tool to load that image to SD card (https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download).

Open  win32diakimager, it will detect your memory card and select the image file using browse button then select write, click YES for two prompts appearing after that.




After completing the operation you will get this message


Now safely remove memory card from PC and plug in to RPI board in given slot. Then connect Power cable, HDMI cable, USB mouse and kayboard. THe arrangement will look loke this


After that power on the Sypply and RPi LEDs will activate. Red LED for power and Green LED for activity. and it will boot. for first time.


After that you will get GUI lime this


This is how we can get start with RPI.
There is another method to install OS in RPi using NOOS setup, you will get information about that hare - https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/ 

Also if you get any difficulties in  this procedure you can refer - https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md

After this we need some initial set-ups are required to perform further experiments. I am not writing that procedures because you can get better literature on following links.

1. Connecting RPi to internet - Google it and follow Adafruit's PDF file
2. Configuring I2C and SPI - https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-4-gpio-setup/configuring-i2c
3. Installing WiringPi library (GPIO control and operations like I2C -SPI communication, PWM control ) - http://wiringpi.com/download-and-install/ 

Now we will start with some simple experiments in next post. If you need explanation on some point or have any suggestions then write it in comments.

Thank you..!!!  


Raspberry Pi : Introduction

Hello all,
The Raspberry Pi (RPi or RasPi) is a ultra low cost single board PC. This board has capacity to run various operating systems like Linux (Ubantu Mate, Raspbian etc), Windows 10 and some RTOS also. The primary aim behind creating such device is teaching programming to children but it has became popular for implementing various projects which require remote access support for various protocols and most of input - output devices.

There are many models available in market with different configuration. The Pi I am going to consider is Raspberry Pi 2. Specifications of this are as follows
  • A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (by Broadcom)
  • 1GB RAM 
  • 4 USB ports 
  • 40 GPIO pins 
  • Full HDMI port 
  • Ethernet port 
  • Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video 
  • Camera interface (CSI) 
  • Display interface (DSI) 
  • Micro SD card slot 
  • VideoCore IV 3D graphics core
You can buy RPi online on Amazon, Sanpdeal or Flipkart, for near around 4000. Also there is one site www.crazypi.com where you can find all accessories required for RPi and their service is good.
Prerequisites for getting started with RPi are, RPi board, Memory Card (microSD, 8GB or 16 GB), micro USB 5V 2A power supply (It can be powered from PC using USB cable also).

You can find other details on the links below.
http://elinux.org/RPi_Beginners
https://www.raspberrypi.org

In next post I will tell you how to start with RPi and installing Raspbian OS on it.

You can post any queries or suggestions in comments.

Thank you. 

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Welcome !!

Hello friends,
Here Presenting the series of some posts related to my experiments using Raspberry Pi. For my M. Tech. project work I have been working on raspberry pi (an awesome single board computer), so I want to share what experiments that have been done using it, these are not very sophisticated but still can help beginners to get confidence for working on raspberry pi or similar single board computer. So, I hope that you will find it useful for your projects or hobby, and please don't forget to suggest improvements in my posts, I will appreciate it.
Thank you all !!