My experience with Raspberry Pi

Finally, bought a Raspberry Pi 2 (Model B) Starter Kit from Amazon.in for Rs.5695/-. Had to see what all the hype is about. Following are the components that were packed in the box.

Raspberry Pi 2 with 1 GB RAM;

ProtoPi B+/2 prototyping kit;

Multicomp Raspberry Pi 2 enclosure - Black,

Breadboard - 400 pts, white;

Breadboard jumper wire pack - 75 pack;

Electronic Components:

5x RED 5mm LED; 5x GREEN 5mm LED;

10x Resistor - 10k, 1/4W; 10x Resistor - 560 ohm, 1/4W;

1x Capacitor - 220 uF, 25V;

2x Pushbutton;

1x Male breakable header strip,

8 GB class 10 microSD card with NOOBS pre-installed;

Miniature 802.11n Wi-fi adapter;

HDMI to HDMI cable;

5V, 2A USB Power adapter with micro USB cable

The mother board looks like this. The first trick is fitting it into the black box. You need to slide it at one end and push the holes on the other end of the board to the small sticks in the box to lock it. Once you push it in, it is not easy to remove it unless you have thin fingers or long nails. To remove the board from the box, you need to push the short sticks to the side to unlock the board and then lift it on one side. And once you put the top cover, it is very difficult to open it. That is my experience with the kit I got.

Now, as instructed in the manual, I pushed the 8GB memory card at the top end behind the board. Connected the wireless mouse and keyboard. Connected the HDMI chord to my 49 inches Samsung TV at home. Then, connected the white power chord.

But the HDMI chord was so short that the whole board was hanging from the wire connected to the TV. And the power connector was also too short to reach the power point. Fortunately, it supported a USB connection. So, I connected it to my laptop.

As soon as the white power chord was connected to my laptop, red and green light on the Raspberry Pi (RPi) board glows. Now, I switched on my TV, but the screen showed ‘No signal’. When I checked the source settings of the TV, I see that it has detected Raspberry, but still, it could not connect to it. Searched the internet and found out that I need to reinstall the latest NOOBs on the memory card. So, I unplugged the setup and took the memory card out of Raspberry Pi. Put it into my laptop, and extracted the latest NOOBs files on it. And then put the memory card back into RPi. But no luck, the TV was still not connecting. Again, searched the internet and learnt that I need to modify /boot/config.txt file. It contains some HDMI properties that needs to be uncommented. What I learnt here, is that, I cannot access config.txt by putting the memory card into my laptop. I can access it only if I login to the RPi OS which is not yet installed. Now, this was a deadlock for me. Disappointed.

Then, I took the RPi to my office and connected it to a compatible smaller desktop monitor which was also Samsung. It booted and installed the OS.

Now, I logged into the RPi with default credentials (user: pi, password: raspberry). By default you will be in /home/pi folder. I opened the file /boot/config.txt and uncommented the following lines:

hdmi_safe=1

hdmi_group=1

hdmi_mode=1

OS installation had already uncommented the other required lines:

hdmi_force_hotplug=1

config_hdmi_boost=4

I saved the file. Shutdown the RPi using the command ‘sudo shutdown -h now’ and took it back to my home and now it connected successfully to my home TV. Am happy now :-) .