Hungry? Grab a Byte of Raspberry Pi

Yeah! New gadgets arrived.  A quick intro if you have no idea what it is.  Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer developed in the UK for educational purpose.  If you need a power-up-and-ready-to-go computer this is definitely NOT what you want.  This one was ordered directly from the RS Components website, with a black case and plus the shipping fee, the total cost is USD $49.49 (TWD $1480).  Still pretty affordable.

Shipped from the UK

Raspberry Pi and the black case

The Raspberry Pi (model B)

Since the Raspberry Pi was designed for educational purpose, we need to get the essential accessories and put them altogether to make it work.  Required items are:

• 5V micro USB power supply
• The standard USB to micro USB cable (the black cable shown below) is an accessory of an old Nokia 5310 mobile phone
• AC to USB converter is an accessory of iPhones (the white one shown below)
• An SD card (2GB or more recommended)
• A USB keyboard and mouse (not needed if remote login is enabled after configuration)
• TV or monitor with HDMI input (not shown below)

Required accessories

Optional but highly recommended items:

• A USB hub, at least 4 ports, with external power source
• An external USB hard drive
• Internet connectivity
• Will be used by software update and time sync via NTP protocol as there is no real-time clock integrated in the Raspberry Pi to keep the cost down.

Optional but highly recommended stuff

Next, we need an OS for the Pi to boot.  We'll be using Raspbian "wheezy" as it's the recommended Linux distro from the official site.  You can download it HERE, and follow the instructions on that page to dump the OS image to the SD card to make it bootable.  Once everything is ready, plug in the micro USB power supply and have fun.

• By default, login as pi, with password raspberry
• Type "startx" for the X Window, the graphical UI

Dinner is served ;)

Raspbian "wheezy" up and running