Getting started with Raspberry Pi

Hello Everyone, here is our first weekly updating blog on a specific technology. Today we will be starting with ‘Raspberry pi’.

What is a ‘Raspberry pi’?

If you Google the same thing, you will be seeing it as a low-cost, small credit-card sized computer.

Yes, It is a credit card sized computer which can easily be connected to a display just as TV or PC’s monitor and there are many other displays such as TFT screens, LCD screens specially designed for ‘Raspberry pi’ with different sizes. As  every computer has an OS to access the system, Raspberry pi also has OS which are namely ‘RASPBIAN’ and ‘NOOBS’ and several third party Operating systems. You can also plug in a keyboard and mouse as you would do in your system .After  you  are done with setting up your raspberry pi you will be having a GUI(Graphical User Interface) from which you will be able to program your device.As our daily course, we will be using ‘RASPBIAN’ because it is an officially supported OS for ‘Raspberry pi’.

About Raspberry pi:

Let us have a look at Raspberry pi:

Contents of Raspberry pi 2 Model B  :

Raspberry pi is available in different versions and models comparatively Raspberry pi model A and   Raspberry pi model B with different versions and Revisions. The different versions of Raspberry pi differ in number of USB ports, RAM, Ethernet port, Audio and Video Jacks on it. We will be using Raspberry pi 2 Model B which is the latest version.

How to get started with Raspberry pi?

Requirements:

• Raspberry pi 2 Model B
• SD card (4GB up to 16GB can be preferred)
• Card reader
• SD formatter software
• Win32diskImager software

Today we are going to learn, how to burn OS in to SD card:

1. First you have to download the image file of Raspbian OS (i.e) RASPBIAN WHEEZY’ for our Raspberry pi from the below link:

Raspbian

2. Now you have to download software for formatting SD card and burning Image in to SD card (i.e.) by using SD formatter and win32diskimager.The links for downloading the software are given below:

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_windows/index.html

http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download

3. After downloading and extracting the files, install them. To learn why do we use ‘ SD formatter’ for formatting a memory card see the link below:

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

4. Now open the SD formatter ,select the drive and check the volume label then click on Option =>  select FORMAT SIZE ADJUST => ON
   
   
5. Now click on ‘OK’ then ‘Format’. Now we have formatted the SD card.
6. Now open ‘win32DiskImager’ to burn the image file. specify the path of the image file and click on ‘write’.
   
7. After the image file is successfully written onto the SD card, It is ready to get inserted into our Raspberry pi.

That’s all for this week and in the next week we will be learning how to connect raspberry pi to the PC’s monitor , TV and Laptop and access the GUI as we do it after installing the OS in our PC.

Please comment below if you have any suggestions and/or questions. 🙂