These programs should allow you to easily save files as plain text, without any of the fancy styling that will create errors when the Pi operating system tries to get the information from the files.
To edit the files I use Atom on Windows or TextEdit which is built in on Mac.
If you do want to go the keyboard and mouse route, you can just plug the SD card into the Pi, power it up, and set up the WiFi like you would normally do on your laptop.
This is most useful if you’re not going to plug in a keyboard and monitor and just want to control the Pi from your computer (more on how to do this later). You’re going to have to edit some files on the SD card to give the Pi the information about the WiFi situation so that it can automatically connect. We’re going to set it up so the Pi can automatically connect to the WiFi, which will make it easier to talk to. When the flashing is done, don’t take the SD card out of your computer (or put it back in if you have) just quite yet. You may see some warnings pop up about Unrecognized Files Systems or similar.
InstallingĪs of this writing, I’ve been using balenaEtcher to install the operating system on the SD Card.īalenaEtcher is free and pretty easy to use.
You can find the operating system at the Raspberry Pi website’s download page. On the Raspberry Pi the data for the operating system is not stored on a built in hard drive, but on an SD card (or microSD), which means that you’re going to have to install the operating system yourself to get your Pi running. And when your apps want to do something, like save a file, they have to ask the operating system to do it.
Then when you interact with the computer (type on the keyboard, click the mouse etc.) you’re interacting with the operating system: you tell the operating system what to do, like start up a web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Explorer, Opera etc.), and it does it. When you start the computer the first thing it does is read the files that make up the operating system from the hard drive and set them up in the active, processing memory (RAM). Your typical computer has a built in hard drive that stores the data you save, the programs/apps you install, and the operating system (OS) that runs it all. We’re going to use the Raspbian Desktop version with the recommended software. Installing the Operating System Downloading the OSĭownload: The operating system files can be downloaded from the Raspberry Pi website. This one is specific to my needs: it’s an introduction to the Pi’s for students who are new to them I’m setting it up with a web server so we can control the devices through a webpage and I’m setting it up so you can control the Pi “headlessly”, which means you don’t need the keyboard, mouse, etc. You’ll find lots of great tutorials on the internet. This is a quick introduction about how to set one up.
They are small and cheap, but what makes them really useful is that they have little slots (called GPIO’s) that you can stick wires into that allow you to build circuits that can get information from sensors and control devices like LED lights or motors. You can plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into one and it will not look too different from your desktop.
The family of Raspberry Pi’s are just really small computers.