How start Raspberry Pi

Navindu Jayawardane

 


The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a capable little device that enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games.

What’s more, the Raspberry Pi  has the ability to interact with the outside world, and has been used in a wide array of digital maker projects, from music machines and parent detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infra-red cameras. We want to see the Raspberry Pi being used by kids all over the world to learn to program and understand how computers work.

 

 

Getting Started

Setting up your Raspberry Pi

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To get started with your Raspberry Pi computer you’ll need the following accessories:

A computer monitor, or television. Most should work as a display for the Raspberry Pi, but for best results, you should use a display with HDMI input. You’ll also need a appropriate display cable, to connect your monitor to your Raspberry Pi.

Note
 If your display uses an HDMI connection and has built-in speakers, you can use it to output sound.

A computer keyboard and mouse

  • Any standard USB keyboard and mouse will work with your Raspberry Pi.

  • Wireless keyboards and mice will work if already paired.

  • For keyboard layout configuration options see raspi-config.

A good quality power supply.

We recommend the official Raspberry Pi Power Supply which has been specifically designed to consistently provide +5.1V despite rapid fluctuations in current draw. Those fluctuations in demand is something that happens a lot with when you’re using peripherals with the Raspberry Pi, and something that other supplies—designed to provide consistent current for charging cellphones—usually don’t cope with all that well. It also has an attached micro USB cable, which means that you don’t accidentally use a poor quality cable—something that can be an issue.

For the Raspberry Pi 4, Model B and Raspberry Pi 400 you should use the type C power supply; for all other models you should use the micro USB power supply.

Finally you’ll need an SD card; we recommend a minimum of 8GB micro SD card, and to use the Raspberry Pi Imager to install an operating system onto it.

Optional items

A network (Ethernet) cable to connect your Raspberry Pi to your local network and the Internet.

If you aren’t using an HDMI monitor with speakers you might also need some form of sound hardware. Audio can be played through speakers or headphones by connecting them to the AV jack (not available on the Raspberry Pi 400). However speakers must have their own amplification since the output from your Raspberry Pi is not powerful enough to drive them directly.

Troubleshooting

You can get help with setting up your Raspberry Pi on our forums.

Installing the Operating System

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Raspberry Pi recommend the use of Raspberry Pi Imager to install an operating system on your SD card. You will need another computer with an SD card reader to install the image.

Note
 Before you start, don’t forget to check the SD card requirements.
Important
 NOOBS, or New Out Of the Box Software to give it its full name, was an SD card-based installer for Raspberry Pi computers; we no longer recommend or support using NOOBS. Going forward, please use Raspberry Pi Imager.

Using Raspberry Pi Imager

Raspberry Pi have developed a graphical SD card writing tool that works on Mac OS, Ubuntu 18.04, and Windows called Raspberry Pi Imager; this is the easiest option for most users since it will download the image automatically and install it to the SD card.

Download the latest version of Raspberry Pi Imager and install it. If you want to use Raspberry Pi Imager from a second Raspberry Pi, you can install it from a terminal using sudo apt install rpi-imager. Then:

  • Connect an SD card reader with the SD card inside.

  • Open Raspberry Pi Imager and choose the required OS from the list presented.

  • Choose the SD card you wish to write your image to.

  • Review your selections and click on the Write button to begin writing data to the SD Card.

Note
 If using Raspberry Pi Imager on Windows 10 with controlled folder access enabled, you will need to explicitly allow Raspberry Pi Imager permission to write the SD card. If this is not done, the imaging process will fail with a "failed to write" error.
Note
 You can see which operating systems are most often downloaded, on our statistics page.

You can now insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi and power it up. For Raspberry Pi OS, if you need to manually log in, the default user name is pi, with password raspberry, and the default keyboard layout is set to United Kingdom (UK).

You should change the default password straight away to ensure your Raspberry Pi is secure.

Advanced Options

When you have the Raspberry Pi Imager open, pushing Ctrl-Shift-X will open an "Advanced" menu. This menu lets you carry out tasks like enabling SSH, or setting your Raspberry Pi’s hostname, before first boot.

rpi imager
Note
 The Advanced Options menu is useful for when you want to configure a headless Raspberry Pi.

Downloading an Image

If you are using a different tool than Raspberry Pi Imager to write to your SD Card, most require you to download the image first, then use the tool to write it to the card. Official images for recommended operating systems are available to download from the Raspberry Pi website downloads page. Alternative operating systems for Raspberry Pi computers are also available from some third-party vendors.

You may need to unzip the downloaded file (.zip) to get the image file (.img) you need to write to the card.

Note
 The Raspberry Pi OS with desktop image contained in the ZIP archive is over 4GB in size and uses the ZIP64 format. To uncompress the archive, an unzip tool that supports ZIP64 is required. The following zip tools support ZIP64: 7-Zip for Windows, The Unarchiver for macOS, and unzip on Linux.

 


 

Installing Images on Chrome OS

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The easiest way to write images to an SD card and USB drives with Chrome OS is to use the official Chromebook Recovery Utility. It can be used to create Chromebook Recovery media, and it will also accept .zip files containing images.

  • Download the Chromebook Recovery Utility.

  • Download the Raspberry Pi OS zip archive.

  • Launch the Recovery Utility

  • Click on the Settings Gears icon in the upper right-hand corner, next to the window close icon.

  • Select the Use Local Image option.

  • Choose the .zip file you downloaded.

  • Insert the SD card and click Continue.

  • Read the warning and click the Create now button.

  • Wait for the progress bar to complete twice (for unpacking and writing). This might take a few minutes. Once the process is complete, a big green checkmark will be shown.

  • Close the program and eject the card.

 

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