Advanced Robotics Training in Noida by Waayoo.com: Setting up your RPI- Embedded Linux board (A Low Level Guide to RPI-series)

Raspberry Pi -(a SoC Embedded Linux Board) powerful enough for your daily Embedded & Robotics projects

Sporting a meager 256MB of RAM and a 700MHz ARM-11 processor, the Pi is a modest piece of kit. Keep in mind this chip's main purpose is to power a cheap computer with a basic level of functionality, mainly geared towards education. The Model B also sports two USB ports, HDMI out and a 10/100 Ethernet port. For your audio needs, you've got a 3.5mm audio jack and that HDMI output, which also supports audio transmission. The Raspberry Pi's GPU boasts 1 Gpixel/s, 1.5 Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general purpose compute power and is OpenGL 2.0 Compliant.

In this article we're going to take you through the setup steps to get your Raspberry Pi Model B up and running with Raspbian, the Debian-based Linux distro used here.

You'll also need the following:
▪ One SD card (min 4GB)
▪ An SD card reader so you can write the OS image to your SD card
▪ A means of supplying power to the unit. At the very least, you'll need a 5v micro-USB adapter.
▪ An HDMI cable and HDMI-to-DVI converter if you're using a monitor instead of a high-definition television. If you're just using a TV or a monitor that supports HDMI, you won't need an adapter.
▪ A USB mouse and keyboard
▪ An Ethernet cable

The officially supported Linux version is Raspbian

Raspbian – the Raspberry Pi recommended distribution, best for those that want the 'default standard' - nearly every Pi out there runs Raspbian http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

Making an SD Card – Using Windows 7

There is a very useful utility that we can use to write a SD card available for Windows 7 and Vista.

Step 1.

Download Fedora ARM Installer from:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ARM_Installer#Windows_Vista_.26_7

Step 2.

This will download a zip file that you must extract. The result will be a folder called 'faii-1.0.2-3-x32'. If you keep this outside of the Program Files area then you will be able to run it without changing its priveledges. You can just leave it on your Desktop.

Step 3.

Right click to run the file fedora-arm-installer.exe as an administrator. This will launch the following application

Step 4.

Select the image file and device.

To do this, click the Browse button and navigate to the .img file for the distribution that you want to install and the select the device from the drop-down.

Check that you have the right device, as it will be reformatted, and then click Install.

It will take a few minutes to install, but once the SD card is ready, you will see the following.

BOOTING YOUR PI FOR THE FIRST TIME

The first time you boot the Raspberry Pi you'll see a configuration tool called "raspi-config." (If you ever need to revisit this configuration screen again, you can always call the "raspi-config" command from the terminal of your Pi.) While you're there, you'll need to change a few options.

First off, we need to select "expand_rootfs". What this does is expand the installed image to use the maximum available size of your SD card. If you are using a larger card (16GB, say), you'll definitely want to make sure you can use the full capacity, since the install image is only about 2GB.

Highlight that "expand_rootfs" option and press Enter. You'll then see the confirmation below, at which point pressing Enter will take you back to the main raspi-config screen.

Next up is the overscan option. If you notice, the screen is not taking up the entire real estate afforded by your monitor; it's best to disable overscan so that you can utilize your monitor or television to its entirety. If your screen looks fine, though, you can skip this step. In any case, assuming you do go through with this step, select "overscan" and press Enter.

Here you get the option to disable or enable. If you ever upgrade to a new monitor you may need to re-enable overscan at a later point.

Back at the main menu, the next step is to set a user password.

Select "change_pass" and press Enter. After a confirmation screen, you'll be prompted to choose a new UNIX user password.

The next dialogue will show you a list of zones within that region. We think you know what to do here.

Back at the main setup, you can safely ignore the remaining options for now and select "Finish." You'll be prompted to reboot to make changes; do so. Once your system is back online, you'll get a login prompt like so:

Your login is "pi" and the password will be what you set it to earlier.

USING YOUR RASPBERRY PI

Now that you've logged in to your freshly baked Raspberry Pi, the first thing you want to do is type "startx" to get your GUI environment loaded, which from here on out we'll refer to as your Window Manager.

After a quick screen flicker you should end up with this.

Welcome to the LXDE Window Manager. LXDE is a very lightweight, full-featured UI that runs pretty well on the Raspberry Pi. If you've never used LXDE before, it drives very similar to Windows. If you click the lower left icon, you'll see an application list. It works exactly how you'd expect it to.

After you've got your Pi powered and the LXDE WM up and running, you essentially have a full-fledged Linux box running Debian. At this point you can browse the web with Midori, setup a webserver, or do general computing tasks.

What's next?

In my next articles you will be learning about -

- Low Level Interfaces available to RPI

- writing your first program on the Raspberry Pi

- Controlling DC motors from GPIO