Phil’s Adventures with his Raspberry Pi: Part One

Many months ago I pre-ordered my Raspberry Pi – a small, one-PCB computer capable of doing some amazing things for a very low price tag. And then, after many e-mails regarding many delays including unexpected demand and the need to slap a CE label on it to make sure it was safe, my Pi turned up in a rather unassuming white box.

The purpose of these articles will be chart my progress of working with the Raspberry Pi, in an attempt to replace a hulking old computer connected to my parent’s hi-fi that, though fit for playing music, takes ages to load up, with a smaller, more stream-lined version using the Pi as the basis.

Along the way I’ll be talking about problems, solutions and compromises. Having never built a PC or worked with Linux I expect it to be a challenge so we’ll see how it goes!

Now the first challenge would be to buy the cables and kit necessary to get it working. Out of the box you literally just get the circuit board and nothing else to get it to work so, when it arrived a week ago I began ordering everything I needed.

Firstly, power. As I’d recently purchased a new mobile phone in the shape of a HTC One S I tried its power cable and found it fitted so ordered a new one from Amazon in the shape of “Micro USB Mains Charger For HTC ONE X, HTC ONE S, HTC ONE V, HTC Sensation XL” costing me £3.94. Plugging this in found the red light symbolising power came on onboard the circuit board so a success there.

Next was sound, which was straight forward, as that was just a standard headphone jack out to dual phono, coming in at a bargain 75 pence.

Then there would be the SD card onto which the files are loaded and the device boots off from. It has to be at least 4GB, class 4, preferably a brand name. I’ve ordered one and it’s yet to turn up so I’m going to pop into town in a couple of days to get another one to make sure I have time to test it. Until I can get this card the Pi shall remain unused.

Onto visuals and this is where it gets murky. The Pi has two outputs: HDMI and yellow composite out, both of which are fine if you are plugging into a television. Sadly, however, in my case I’m going to be plugging into a monitor via VGA which is not supported, and I’m paraphrasing here from the official website, because VGA is an old technology.

Now to me 100% of the computers I use connect the main PC to the monitor by VGA though chatting to my friends they keep mentioning DVI, but in my experience it’s VGA all the way. It seems from mooching around on the internet that this is a grey area of information and a hot bed by buying cables that doesn’t work. The upshot is that I have to connect it to a monitor so need some way of converting so for £6.07 have bought a “1.5M HDMI HDTV Male to VGA Male 3RCA Converter Cable” and I wait nervously to buy the SD card to see if this has been a worthwhile purchase or a useful piece of tech.

The Pi is not a problem if you are connecting to a flat screen television as they tend to have HD inputs and composite in, but not if like me you are using a traditional VGA monitor.

Total cost spent so far:
Raspberry Pi £29.46
Power Cable £03.94
3.5 Jack > dual phone £00.75
VGA Converter £06.07 TOTAL £40.22

Next up on my list is to get the SD card so in the next part I’ll be taking you through the process of installing the software and getting it working, and seeing if I can get the visuals to my monitor, plus dipping my foot into the world of getting a case. Then after that it’s attaching the keyboard and mouse and hard drive via USB and exploring the world of installing software like a browser, music player, Spotify and audio editing software.

It’s going to be an interesting time I think!