Point Element

Previously enabling raspbian, meant you have to boot to the card. Then enable and configure ssh service.  But with since 2016, there's a simple method. That is on the boot partition of your SD Card, create an empty file with name 'ssh' - without quotes - and when you boot from this SD Card, SSH services are auto-enabled. To create the file you can use following commands:  touch /media/user/boot/ssh sync Touch creates the file and sync ensures that it's written to the SD Card, flushing any pending write buffers for the SD Card. 

I used Ubuntu for preparing the SD Card and it's really simple. You connect the SD Card using a card reader. If it's auto mounted, then un-mount it using sudo umount /dev/sdb1 assuming /dev/sdb is the SD Card with one partition. Next extract the Raspbian image from the ZIP file. Note, the zip file is about 1GB but the image is 4.4GB since it's compressed image.  Next use dd to put this image on the SD Card.  sudo dd bs=4M if=[image file path] of=/dev/sdb   This writes the image to the SD Card. Next pop the SD Card in the pi and power up! 

So finally last night I spent some time plumbing the software stuff together and got Raspbian working on the Raspberry Pi 3 board. It needed some acrobatics but it did work. Below screenshot on my Ubuntu Laptop is the proof! J The setup:  Raspberry Pi 3 powered using Portronics 5v 2.3A power adapter connected to ethernet on  a Tenda N301 router. I don't have a HDMI display yet so I'm sort of using vnc for this. I'm using Raspbian on a 8GB SanDisk SD Card.  The things I had to do: 1. Prep SD Card with Raspbian - straight forward using standard instructions on Linux. - All OK. 2. Power up the Pi 3 and use ethernet to connect it to the Tenda. - All OK.   3. SSH to the Pi: Had to fumble a bit here but finally got around to it using a solution on Stackoverflow.com. - A bit iffy but Okayish. 4. VNC: Straight forward using inbuilt vncserver. Needed to install RealVNC client on Laptop. But then worked fine. - All OK with one download. And voilla I co...

Update: Received Portronics 5V 2.3A power adapter and the case too on 9/1/2017. Got Raspberry Pi, Samsung Class 10 16GB sd card and a HDMI cable. Still waiting for the power adapter and pi case. Excited times ahead!!!

Well, I have a laptop for home use. But it's got kind of cramped feeling when using it for media consumption - because mainly that's what we use it for. Basically I have an external HDD to which I dump whatever media I get my hands on. This is then used on the laptop. So I'm looking at a setup which is cost effective and at the same time let us do the TV thing with external HDD and also lets us do bit of browsing for news etc.  Recently I purchased a Logitech MK215 wireless Keyboard Mouse combo and it's made this setup much better. So now I'm thinking of shifting to bigger display - at least a 18.5 - 24" monitor. The problem is connecting laptop to this will just make the laptop work as desktop and it's not good for battery. Also it gives us a tangle of cables plus the space used. Then there's the screen switching between external and internal display. So it's not just the ideal setup. What I want is a low power one box solution that will let me pla...