Saturday, January 25, 2014

My new toy: Raspberry PI

I just bought a Raspberry PI (short as "PI" in the future) and plan to play with it for various projects. 

The hardware I bought from Amazon includes the following items: 

1) a PI Model B, a transparent plastic case and a wireless adapter;
2) a HDMI cable to connect the video output to my TV;
3) a micro USB charger of 5V/2A. 

The input devices are a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. The visual display is my TV. My first project is XBMC, which turns the PI into home multimedia center. 


The following is the log of what I have done to my PI until it works as Lubuntu machine. 




After restart PI, a GUI shows up (similar to Lubuntu)
  • default user and password

    • default user: pi
    • default password: raspberry
  • Now you can login PI remotely using SSH and tools such as putty. If you want a GUI from PI, you need a VNC server.
  • install VNC server
    • type this command to install VNC server:       
      • sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
    • type this command to change VNC password:
      • tightvncserver
    • type this command to start VNC server:
      • vncserver :1 -geometry 1250x950 -depth 24
        • screen resolution 1250x950 is good for my Gateway monitor at Norfolk home
    • From now on, we can access to PI from my laptop!
      • to know the IP address of the PI, type command:
        • ifconfig
  • update system and reboot

    • sudo apt-get update
    • sudo apt-get upgrade
    • sudo rpi-update
    • sudo reboot


  • web browser

    • NetSurf has problem that some adjacent characters overlap each other and I can not select a whole line using mouse
    • Midori has no such problem


In next post I will report my experiments on XBMC.  

No comments:

Post a Comment