This series of blogs will show how I build theTrick or Trivia Halloween Candy Dispenser project step by step following Charles_Gantt's series of blogs Trick or Trivia Halloween Candy Dispenser #001 - Project Introduction.
First of all, thank element14Dave & element14 for giving me this opportunity. I received my kit a few days ago. Below is what in the box.
I noticed that the kit includes a 4GB SD card instead of microSD card, so I have to find myself a 8GB micro SD card as shown in the right hand side of the picture below.
I recently moved to U.S. and I don't have HD TV in my apartment, so I have to figure out how to use Raspberry Pi without HD TV. After a quick google search, I found a forum post Headless setup: no keyboard, display or frustration which is the exact guide I am looking for. Before I mount my Pi on the back of 7" LCD panel, I'd like to have the OS (Raspbian based on Debian Wheezy) running first, so I followed the post mentioned previously.
After the OS is written to the microSD card, I plugged it into the slot and connected the power to Raspberry Pi 2 board with the wall adapter (shown below) included in the kit (black color), and also connected Ethernet cable to my router. The first thing I noticed is that the LED on the power adapter took about 3~5 seconds to light up after I plugged it into the wall outlet. Secondly, the two LEDs on the Pi were solid on. It's reasonable the power red LED is solid on, but the green LED should flash when it reads SD card. I waited about 10 minutes and still couldn't see Pi on my router's connected device list. I thought the power adapter might be the problem.
Fortunately, I have another 5V power adapter in white color (shown below). I changed power adapter and this time the green LED started flashing. However, after a few seconds, the green LED started doing some weird thing: stay in solid green for about 10 seconds and then off for a second and repeat this cycle forever until I unplugged the power. I suspect that the first power-up with the black adapter might corrupt the SD card, so I rewrite the OS, then powered up with the white power adapter. This time, everything works as expected. I can do SSH to the Pi.
At this point, I am sure the black power adapter is NO good for Pi 2. I checked the label on the black power adapter, it says "O/P 5.25V 1A". No wonder it doesn't work - it cannot provide the max. current Pi 2 requires which is 2A. Update: after a quick google search, I am not sure the previous statement is correct.
I will continue my work and stay tune for the next blog(Step by Step Build Trick or Trivia Halloween Candy Dispenser #2).