Working and Now On To Cross Compiling

Ok, looks like I now have the Raspberry Pi up and running. I currently have had the RPi running for over two days now and everything seems to be running smoothly. As you can see in the following picture, I have it running, with the USB connections going through a powered hub. In addition, I have the ethernet plugged in and a second USB to ethernet connector plugged into the same powered usb hub. The display shows a couple of xterminal windows and the backdrop of the RPi logo. I haven't really explored all of the ins and outs yet.

I have added a VNC server so that I can pull up the screen from anywhere, including outside the house through a vpn connection. Technology is great, you get to experiment and do things when you want to do them.

I have the current SD load on a 16GB card. I felt that I needed to have something a bit bigger in case that I get really inventive and want to load a whole bunch of crap on the card. Right now the big focus is to be able to cross compile the operating system to where I want it to be. The steps are as follows:

1. install an Ubuntu VM running on Fusion under my Mac Mini
2. install the cross compiler and associated tools onto the Ubuntu VM
3. get the linux source for the operating system from the Raspberry Pi git repository
4. compile the thing
5. move the compiled load onto the Mac Mini
6. transfer the compiled load onto a new 16GB SD card

That is what I plan on doing over the next couple of days. Wish me luck.

-- LW

RPi - Working and Now Onto Cross Compiling

Ok, looks like I now have the Raspberry Pi up and running.  I currently have had the RPi running for over two days now and everything seems to be running smoothly.  As you can see in the following picture, I have it running, with the USB connections going through a powered hub.  In addition, I have the ethernet plugged in and a second USB to ethernet connector plugged into the same powered usb hub.  The display shows a couple of xterminal windows and the backdrop of the RPi logo.  I haven't really explored all of the ins and outs yet.

I have added a VNC server so that I can pull up the screen from anywhere, including outside the house through a vpn connection.  Technology is great, you get to experiment and do things when you want to do them.

I have the current SD load on a 16GB card.  I felt that I needed to have something a bit bigger in case that I get really inventive and want to load a whole bunch of crap on the card.  Right now the big focus is to be able to cross compile the operating system to where I want it to be.  The steps are as follows:

1. install an Ubuntu VM running on Fusion under my Mac Mini
2. install the cross compiler and associated tools onto the Ubuntu VM
3. get the linux source for the operating system from the Raspberry Pi git repository
4. compile the thing
5. move the compiled load onto the Mac Mini
6. transfer the compiled load onto a new 16GB SD card

That is what I plan on doing over the next couple of days.  Wish me luck.

-- LW

RPi - First Things First

I was able to get the Raspberry Pi (RPi) to boot after installing a load of Wheazy-Raspbian onto an SD card. This is a partial tale of "what the heck happened?"

Step 1 - get a copy of the RPi load off of http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.
I decided to get the one marked 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img.zip. When I downloaded the file, Mountain Lion was quick to automatically unpack it for me.

Step 2 - put the RPi load onto an SD Card.
For a Mac this is not really an involved step but if you are not used to working on the command line it might be daunting. You first launch the terminal then put in your SD card reader followed by placing the SD card into the reader. Assuming that the SD card is formatted correctly, a "df -h" will show a list of the drives on the system. My SD card was labeled "/dev/disk3s1". That means that for purposes of this procedure I use "/dev/rdisk3" to refer to the entire SD card. The procedure can be found at http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup. So to install the image, I ran the following:
sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1
sudo dd bs=1m if=2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/rdisk3
diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1

Step 3 - put the SD card into the RPi, connect all cables, and apply power
I removed the SD card from the SD reader and put it into the RPi, I then connected the ethernet cable, and applied power to the system. Note that at first I did not have a monitor or keyboard/mouse connected. I first wanted to access it via a headless means since I do most of my work remotely

Worked just fine.

-- LW

RPi - First Things First

I was able to get the Raspberry Pi (RPi) to boot after installing a load of Wheazy-Raspbian onto an SD card.  This is a partial tale of "what the heck happened?"

Step 1 - get a copy of the RPi load off of http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.
I decided to get the one marked 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img.zip.  When I downloaded the file, Mountain Lion was quick to automatically unpack it for me.

Step 2 - put the RPi load onto an SD Card.
For a Mac this is not really an involved step but if you are not used to working on the command line it might be daunting.  You first launch the terminal then put in your SD card reader followed by placing the SD card into the reader.  Assuming that the SD card is formatted correctly, a "df -h" will show a list of the drives on the system.  My SD card was labeled "/dev/disk3s1".  That means that for purposes of this procedure I use "/dev/rdisk3" to refer to the entire SD card.  The procedure can be found at http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup.  So to install the image, I ran the following:
sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1
sudo dd bs=1m if=2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/rdisk3
diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1

Step 3 - put the SD card into the RPi, connect all cables, and apply power
I removed the SD card from the SD reader and put it into the RPi, I then connected the ethernet cable, and applied power to the system.  Note that at first I did not have a monitor or keyboard/mouse connected.  I first wanted to access it via a headless means since I do most of my work remotely

Worked just fine.

-- LW

Raspberry Pi Came In

I ordered a Raspberry Pi on July 27th of this year and it came in the mail on Dec 10th (4 months and 14 days; or 137 days). That is a long lead time to wait for an item. However, looking at all the postings from locations around the world I can see why it is so popular.

What am I planning on doing with it? Experimenting of course! People have used this thing for all kinds of projects from streaming video to making a wireless access port to controlling motors on a robot. I like networking and media streaming so I will probably be using it there.

-- LW

Raspberry Pi Came In

I ordered a Raspberry Pi on July 27th of this year and it came in the mail on Dec 10th (4 months and 14 days; or 137 days).  That is a long lead time to wait for an item.  However, looking at all the postings from locations around the world I can see why it is so popular.

What am I planning on doing with it?  Experimenting of course!  People have used this thing for all kinds of projects from streaming video to making a wireless access port to controlling motors on a robot.  I like networking and media streaming so I will probably be using it there.

-- LW

Startup Notes

Well, I have three Raspberry Pis right now.  I have decided that I need to have a separate place to post information about what I am doing with them.  More information soon.