Coding Range

Rough notes from day one with a Raspberry Pi. All my experience only, may not be true for everyone, forever.

• The Pi has LEDs that turn on when the device is on. If the device doesn’t seem to do anything after plugging in USB power, make sure the cable is plugged in properly at both ends. :)
• Raspbian wants a class-4 (4MB/s) micro-SD card. Windows 10 IoT Core wants a class-10 (10MB/s) micro-SD card. I bought two class-4 cards. Whoops!
• Windows 10 IoT Core still boots to the demo app with a class-4 card. I haven’t gotten any further yet.
• Following the official instructions¹ for Linux installs an installer on your SD card, not the OS itself. Boot from the SD card to install Raspbian (or if you have ethernet, one of the other variants available to set up over the web).
• The NOOBS torrent downloads than the direct download.
• If you have an HDMI display higher than 1080p, you may have to customize the output settings in /boot/config.txt. I had flickering red stripes before adjusting the configuration.².
• The D-Link DWA-131 Rev. A is supposed to work out of the box. The Rev. B may or may not, I’m not sure. The Rev. E1 (which I purchased) does not, and I can’t find a way to build and install drivers for it. :(
• Windows 10 IoT Core also doesn’t recognise the D-Link DWA-131 Rev. E.
• Installing Raspbian from SD Card installs kernel version 3.18.something. Running rpi-update updates to 4.0 at this point in time.
• Using GPIO.BOARD setup in the GPIO Python module counts pins, not GPIO ports. GPIO 7 in that configuration is physical pin 7, which is actually GPIO pin 4, but invoked in code as pin 7.
• Raspbian comes with vi and nano preinstalled, but not vim. vim must be apt-gotten.
• A breadboard is just a lump of plastic with electrical connections between the holes. The breadboard I got - and it looks like most if not all follow this convention - is divided into two. The pins on the left side are connected horizontally to eachother, and the pins on the right side are connected horizontally to eachother.
• Be careful when wiring something up to the pins on the device. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I might have shorted it somehow and triggered a reboot - when I looked up, the GUI was gone and it was at the post-boot login screen. It seems to still be fine.
• If IoTCoreImageHelper.exe doesn’t show up in the Windows 10 search, it can be found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft IoT\.
• The Realtek 8168 NIC in my P8Z68-V LX motherboard has automatic crossover functionality, so you don’t need a crossover cable for Internet Connection Sharing.
• Various tutorials call for different resistors for the simple circuit of RPi GPIO -> LED -> RPi Ground. The 100 ohm LED I had worked without a resistor, and didn’t blow anything up. :)
• The Pi fits into the official case without requiring to be screwed down. If it moves within the official case, re-seat it carefully.