Sci Fi Your Pi: PiDesk - Guide: Setting Up the Raspberry Pi 2

29 Apr 2015

Introduction
Video
Unboxing
First Boot
Wifi
Update
Camera
Conclusion

Introduction

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is the latest member to join the Raspberry Pi family. Even though it has the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi B+, the Raspberry Pi 2 has a quad core ARM v7 processor running at 900Mhz. The RAM has also received an upgrade and has been increased from 512MB to 1GB. Besides these changes, the Raspberry Pi 2 remains similar to the previous B+ model, with:

40-pin GPIO header
4 USB ports
10/100 Ethernet port
HDMI port
microUSB input for power
CSI port for camera board
DSI port for display/touch screen
combined 4-pole stereo and composite video output

Video

I've made a video of the entire configuration process. If you prefer, you can follow the written instructions instead, starting below the video.

Unboxing

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B - NOOBS Edition from element14 comes with the following:

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
preloaded 8GB microSD card with SD adapter
Raspberry Pi quick start guide (in 16 languages!)

The included microSD card is a 8GB SanDisk MicroSDHC Ultra Class 10.

First Boot

After having connected the necessary peripherals such as keyboard, mouse and monitor and having inserted the preloaded microSD card in the designated slot, the Pi is powered on using a 5V/2A microUSB power supply. It seems that no distribution installation selection menu is offered upon the first boot, instead, it appears like Raspbian is already installed. This is different from what I have experienced with a model B+ NOOBS Edition. During the boot process, four raspberries are displayed in the top left corner, indicating four CPU cores have been detected. Once the boot process completes, the Raspberry Pi configuration tool is automatically launched. The configuration tool can be used to configure basic things such as the hostname or wether to boot to the console or directly to the desktop, but also more advanced things such as I2C, SPI, camera support, etc...

Wifi

Instructions on how to configure Wifi from the graphical environment are provided with the element14 WiPi dongle, but work just as well for any other wifi dongle. First, connect the wifi dongle while the Pi is powered off, when done, power on the Pi. Using the menu in the top left corner, go to "Preferences" > "WiFi Configuration". Press the scan button at the bottom of the wpa_gui application and double-click the SSID of the wireless network you would like to connect to.

Enter the password of the selected wireless network and click "Add". If all went well, the Pi should be connected to the wireless network and an IP address should be displayed.

Update

With network connectivity taken care of, the next step was to update the software. In a terminal, use following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

The process could take more time depending on how old the preloaded version is, and in my case, it took about 15 minutes in total to upgrade the software. Once the software is upgraded, a reboot is necessary to apply the changes:

sudo reboot

Camera

Connecting the camera module to the Raspberry Pi 2 is identical as with previous models. Ensure the camera's flex cable is inserted in the CSI port near the ethernet port, with the exposed contacts facing away from the ethernet port. Once connected, the Pi can be booted. Before the camera can be used, support for it needs to be enabled. This can be done by running following command in a terminal:

sudo raspi-config

This launches the Raspberry Pi configuration tool, which was also presented during the first boot. Menu option 5 allows to enable camera support, and requires a reboot to apply.

After having enabled support and having rebooted the Pi, the camera can be used. In a terminal, use following command to make a picture:

sudo raspistill -o test.jpg

This will create a file called "test.jpg" after a five second preview on screen. In case the image's orientation is not correct, it can be changed by adding the horizontal and/or vertical flip options to the command: