On 04/02/2013 20:13, Dr A. J. Trickett wrote:
>
> 1) Where is the best place to get one? Maplin or Farnell or RS?
>
I've got mine from Farnell (2 off) and RS - Farnell were faster, but the
RS one was ordered in the initial rush for them, so took forever - they
are quicker now.
>
> 2) What else does it need?
>
> An SD card for the OS and local storage
>
As others have said, a 2GB+ one. Some cards work well, and others
badly. I've had some (Sandisk mostly) which either didn't work at all,
or failed after a couple of unexpected reboots. "Integral" ones seem
pretty good (all of mine currently have 2GB Integral ones). If you use
one larger that 2GB, you can usually expand the main partition to use up
the whole of the card, the first time you boot. That's certainly the
case with Raspbian.
>
> A case
>
Farnell sell coloured plastic ones for a fiver - I went for clear, so
you can still see the insides. The problem with most cases is that they
hide the GPIO pins, one of the USPs of this wonderful machine. I've also
just bought a Piface (I/O card with buffere I/O pins, 8 LEDs and a
couple of relays) which stacks onto the Pi like an Arduino shield, and
that wouldn't fit in most cases either. For those occasions, Lego is
probably your best bet, or just leave it bare and be careful handling it.
>
> A USB power supply
>
Yes, almost any micro-USB phone charger (1 Amp is plenty, 700mA usually
enough), though I also run mine from USB ports on laptops, or even
better from the back of my router (so the Pi is powered on whenever the
router is).
>
> A USB keyboard and mouse if you want to drive it directly
>
Yes, but if you pre-edit the config files (i.e. mount the partitions
just after you have used "dd" to write the OS image to the SD card),
including forcing SSH server on, you can run it without ever attaching
keyboard or screen to it. I've bought one of those tiny wireless
keyboard/touchpad things (about the same size as the TV remote control
[1]) - you plug the dongle in to a USB port on the Pi and it "just
works". For a portable solution, the Motorola Atrix LapDock [2] (screen
and keyboard) looks a bit like a laptop - it was designed to take a
Motorola mobile phone, but with some connector magic (connecting male
micro USB and male micro HDMI connectors on the LapDock to their female
full-size equivalents on the Pi), it works pretty well.
Simon
[1]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004FSFYG8
[2]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Laptop-Station-Cradle-Lapdock/dp/B00B0VHW90
(though I got mine from Ebay)
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