Raspberry Pi Accessories and Power Questions

Congrats on your impending RPi ownership!!

Your charger will probably do the job, if it doesnt- nothing happens (which includes nothing bad happening- not enough juice and it just sits there looking Pi Like) Likewise your TV may supply enough juice, it all depends on what you're planning on using it with- keyboard and mouse (wired or wireless) should be easy.... WiFi too..... possibly....... hard disk will need the juice of its own power supply though.

Wireless mouse and keyboard- head over to the wiki, and see what has been shown to work (I had a set around already and it worked just fine with them)

USB hub- you will want one that is mains powered (comes with a seperate plug, as if you try to get all that juice from the RPi then bad things will happen!

WiFi- not played with it yet.....

Best o luck!

Most charger power packs state the current capacity either on a silver label near the power point plugs or by the DC power lead. Sometimes it is just imprinted in the plastic case itself so hard to see, but if it is there, it will normally have a symbol showing th epolarity of the CD connector and for example 5v @ 1A.

Colin

Thanks for the replies many of my concerns have been put to rest. You guys are mainly in the UK (I'm in the US) but I'm assuming the power ratings are all the same. Only thing I have a question about now is I have an HTC charger that works for all Droid phones and it gives the power rating on the back..

Input: 100-240V ~ 200 mA 50-60Hz

Output: 5V--1A

Does the input have to be 700 mA or just the output has to be 5V -- 1A? Hopefully the one I have works. If not theres another one lying around somewhere that I gotta go find to check if that will work.

I'm definitely going to get a powered USB hub though so I can plug in the stuff I want without coming across any power issues. Will post the parts I decide to go with when I make the orders.

Edit: Found three more (family has a bunch of battery chargers with USB ports), two are rated at 5V- 800MA and the third is just a non battery charging Verizon Wireless one with these specs

Input: 100V-240V ~ 0.2A 50/60Hz

Output: 5.0V - 1000mA

Going over the 700 mA isn't a bad thing right? The Pi will only take what it needs I'm assuming.

Its the output that needs to be above 700mA at 5v so that is fine.

I use the HTC adapter rated at 1000mA 5V and its giving me no problems.

Sounds good thank you for the quick replies.

Ordered these things...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823219009

http://www.ebay.com/itm/802-11n-802-11g-802-11b-USB-Mini-Wireless-Adapter-WiFi-Network-WLAN-card-150Mbps-/400297035447?pt=US_USB_Wi_Fi_Adapters_Dongles&hash=item5d339006b7#ht_2153wt_1325

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208293

Thinking about this but do I really need a powered one if I'm only going to be plugging in one nano USB adapater wireless keyboard/mouse, 8 gb flash drive, and the nano wifi adapter to connect to my network?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111976

Seems like I'm just wasting money if I buy that when I can just get a USB powered one for cheap. My current external hard drive has the power adapter so I'm not really worried about overloading it that way unless I get a new portable drive later.

These are the accessories I am using and any issues I am having with them:

Keyboard/Mouse - occasionally I have to uplug the dongle and re-insert it for the mouse to work properly

HDMI Cable - Had to add the line 'config_hdmi_boost=5' to 'config.txt' to give clear picture as its a longish lead

HDMI - DVI Adapter - No Issues

Wifi Adapter - Have got the drivers installed but cannot make it connect to router yet, simply hangs waiting to connect.

Havent tried it with external USB hard drive as yet but dont think there would be any issues there.

I would ALWAYS go for a powered USB hub on the Raspberry Pi as the devices you are likely to plug into it will more than

likely overload the PSU you are using, so using a powered hub would remove this issue.

Message was edited by: Mr P from his Ras-Pi

Got it set up..sorta. I'm having an issue trying to login, I'm using the recommended Debian Squeeze with username: pi and password: raspberry but it won't accept any input for the password. I can put in the username "pi" but it won't let me type anything in the password section. I tried looking around the forums for the problem but I can't seem to find this answer unless it's adding a line to the command, which idk how to do anyway so if that's the case can anyone help me out here? Thanks.

Edit : Nvm password is invisible...

Got it running and all was browsing the internet for a while...kinda slow in my opinion. Even though it was connected with ethernet rather than USB dongle. I think I'd attribute the slowness to the SD card I was using which is an old old card, most likely with slow transfer rates compared to the SD cards nowadays. Waiting til I get the rest of my parts including new SD card but not bad for playing with it for only a couple hours.

Mr P have you gotten the wireless adapter working yet? What steps did you take to get the drivers installed? I figure we have very similar wireless adapters so the methods should be the same.

Hi Andrew,

i followed the instructions in this post, i have the RTL8188 chipset on my wireless thingy but unfortunately i cannot make it work yet..........

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6256

hope you have more success than me

Thanks Mr P.

Looks like they are the exact same I should have thought about connecting it to my laptop in order to get the device name. RTL8188CU which is what those instructions are for.

Gonna look at it a bit later when I have more time. Will let you know how it works out and if I get it to work I'll let you know exactly how I did it and maybe you can get yours working as well.