In this tutorial we are assuming you’re planning on buying your Raspberry Pi but aren’t quite sure what you need. Unfortunately you can’t just buy a RPI and then you’re good to go, you need some extras. If you haven’t already read the Introduction, we recommend you read it first.
Previously, we briefly mentioned that the Raspberry Pi has no storage facilities. Located on the bottom of the board is a slot for an SD card. It is recommended that you use a 2GB so that there is space for the operating system and then some. In our tutorials we will be using a 4GB card.
The Raspberry Pi has two options for display: the yellow RCA or the HDMI port. The RCA connector is used for old TVs that don’t have any digital inputs. We won’t be using this port since pretty much any TV these days has an HDMI port. If you don’t want to use a TV, you can use a computer monitor that has a digital DVI input. This can be achieved using an HDMI-to-DVI cable as shown below.
However if your monitor doesn’t have a DVI input then you can still use an HDMI cable to your TV or monitor.
USB and Networking
On the side of the board, there are 2 USB ports and an Ethernet port. We won’t be dealing with the network features of the RPi in the early tutorials but there is always the option to connect it to the internet. To do this you simply need to connect an Ethernet cable from the RPi to your home router.
We recommend using the 2 USB ports for a mouse and a keyboard. If you are going to use the USB ports to connect to other devices, be aware that the RPi won’t be able to supply power to them. For example, if you are using a portable hard drive that doesn’t have its own power supply, it will need to be connected to a powered USB hub before being connected to the RPi, the hub will then supply the power.
The Raspberry Pi is powered by a micro-USB port on the side of the board.
You will need to buy a micro-USB cable and a USB power socket. The Power socket needs to be able to supply at least 1.2A of current. This means that you won’t be able to power your RPi from another computer or laptop. Most tablets these days will come with a USB power socket which can supply higher currents than computers. Alternatively a quick search on eBay should return plenty of results.
Next to the Analogue video connector is the Audio Out jack. This can be used to connect 3.5mm auxiliary cable or some headphones.
Once you have all of your cables connected and you have your SD Card ready, we can then proceed to install Raspian.