Raspberry Pi 2: Getting Started

For years I have heard about the different iterations of the Raspberry Pi. Eventually I broke down and ordered one to see what it’s all about. I started with the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Basic Starter Kit From Vilros. At $49.99, it comes with the motherboard, a clear case and power supply. I ordered a few more items to make it happen:

  • Edimax EW-7811Un WiFi dongle ($9.99)
  • Logitech MK270 Wireless Keyboard/Mouse ($16.47)
  • HDMI to DVI cable to enable use of an old monitor ($7.42)
  • SanDisk Ultra 32GB SD card ($10.95)

With tax it all totalled $98.76. That’s not to bad for a very capable computer. You can set everything up even cheaper if you have a spare keyboard and mouse to use, or an HDMI cable to hook up to an HDTV to use as a monitor.

Raspberry Pi 2
Raspberry Pi 2

The first thing I did to get the ball rolling was to format the SD card using SD Formatter for Mac. Once that was done, I downloaded, extracted and copied the NOOBS operating system installer onto the SD card. From there I just plugged everything in to get the Raspberry Pi 2 to boot up. The initial screen gave an option to install the Raspian operating system, and I followed through with that installation. Here we go.

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