Raspberry Pi

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 Raspberry Pi

About the Tutorial

Raspberry Pi, developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom, is a
series of small single-board computers and perhaps the most inspiring computer available
today. From the moment you see the shiny green circuit board of Raspberry Pi, it invites
you to tinker with it, play with it, start programming, and create your own software with
it. Earlier, the Raspberry Pi was used to teach basic computer science in schools but later,
because of its low cost and open design, the model became far more popular than
anticipated.

Audience
This tutorial will be useful for people of all ages especially students who want to take their
first step in computer science. The reader can be a beginner or an advanced learner.

Prerequisites
The readers must have basic knowledge about Linux and Python programming language.
They should also be aware of the basics of electronic circuits.

Copyright & Disclaimer

 Copyright 2021 by Tutorials Point (I) Pvt. Ltd.

All the content and graphics published in this e-book are the property of Tutorials Point (I)
Pvt. Ltd. The user of this e-book is prohibited to reuse, retain, copy, distribute or republish
any contents or a part of contents of this e-book in any manner without written consent
of the publisher.

We strive to update the contents of our website and tutorials as timely and as precisely as
possible, however, the contents may contain inaccuracies or errors. Tutorials Point (I) Pvt.
Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
website or its contents including this tutorial. If you discover any errors on our website or
in this tutorial, please notify us at contact@tutorialspoint.com

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 Raspberry Pi

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial ............................................................................................................................................ i

Audience ........................................................................................................................................................... i

Prerequisites ..................................................................................................................................................... i

Copyright & Disclaimer ..................................................................................................................................... i

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................ ii

1. Raspberry Pi – Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

Generations and Models ................................................................................................................................. 1

History ............................................................................................................................................................. 6

2. Raspberry Pi — Getting Started ................................................................................................................ 7

Uses ................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Retailers and Distributors ................................................................................................................................ 7

Requirements .................................................................................................................................................. 8

Compatible and Incompatible Devices ............................................................................................................ 9

3. Raspberry Pi — Operating System .......................................................................................................... 10

NOOBS Software............................................................................................................................................ 10

Install NOOBS to Memory card ..................................................................................................................... 14

4. Connecting Raspberry Pi ......................................................................................................................... 16

Ports and Sockets .......................................................................................................................................... 16

Insert SD or MicroSD card ............................................................................................................................. 18

Camera Module ............................................................................................................................................. 18

Connect Raspberry Pi to Devices ................................................................................................................... 19

Turn on Raspberry Pi ..................................................................................................................................... 21

5. Raspberry Pi — Configuration ................................................................................................................. 24

Raspbian configuration .................................................................................................................................. 24

Configure Wi-Fi .............................................................................................................................................. 25

Configure Bluetooth Devices ......................................................................................................................... 26

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Data Partition Setup ...................................................................................................................................... 26

6. Raspberry Pi — Working with Linux ........................................................................................................ 27

PIXEL Desktop Environment .......................................................................................................................... 27

Navigate Desktop Environment ..................................................................................................................... 27

The Application Menu ................................................................................................................................... 28

Submenu Programs ....................................................................................................................................... 28

Running programs ......................................................................................................................................... 30

Close and Rearrange Programs ..................................................................................................................... 30

7. Raspberry Pi — PIXEL Desktop Environment ........................................................................................... 32

Task Manager ................................................................................................................................................ 32

File Manager .................................................................................................................................................. 33

Browsing the Web ......................................................................................................................................... 36

Claws Mail ..................................................................................................................................................... 37

Image Viewer ................................................................................................................................................. 38

Text Editor ..................................................................................................................................................... 39

Install New Applications ................................................................................................................................ 41

8. Raspberry Pi — Linux Shell ...................................................................................................................... 43

Open Shell Window ....................................................................................................................................... 43

List Files and Directories ................................................................................................................................ 43

Relative and Absolute Paths .......................................................................................................................... 46

Advanced Listing Commands ......................................................................................................................... 46

Long Listing Format ....................................................................................................................................... 47

Permissions.................................................................................................................................................... 48

Less Command............................................................................................................................................... 49

Speed up the use of Shell .............................................................................................................................. 49

Create File with Redirection .......................................................................................................................... 49

Create and Remove Directories ..................................................................................................................... 50

Delete Files .................................................................................................................................................... 51

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 Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Wildcards .................................................................................................................................. 51

Copy Files ....................................................................................................................................................... 52

Move Files ..................................................................................................................................................... 52

9. Raspberry Pi — Managing Software ........................................................................................................ 54

Find the Software .......................................................................................................................................... 54

Run the Software ........................................................................................................................................... 55

Upgrade Software.......................................................................................................................................... 55

Remove Software .......................................................................................................................................... 56

10. Raspberry Pi — GPIO Connector ............................................................................................................. 57

GPIO Pinout ................................................................................................................................................... 57

Alternative Functions .................................................................................................................................... 58

Connect GPIO to Raspberry Pi ....................................................................................................................... 58

I2C Device ...................................................................................................................................................... 59

Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) ..................................................................................................................... 60

Serial Port ...................................................................................................................................................... 61

11. Raspberry Pi — Add-on Boards ............................................................................................................... 63

Styles of Ready-made Boards ........................................................................................................................ 63

Various Boards............................................................................................................................................... 63

12. Raspberry Pi — Third-party Software Package ........................................................................................ 67

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 1. Raspberry Pi – Introduction Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi, developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom, is a

series of small single-board computers and perhaps the most inspiring computer available
today.

From the moment you see the shiny green circuit board of Raspberry Pi, it invites you to
tinker with it, play with it, start programming, and create your own software with it. Earlier,
the Raspberry Pi was used to teach basic computer science in schools but later, because
of its low cost and open design, the model became far more popular than anticipated.

It is widely used to make gaming devices, fitness gadgets, weather stations, and much
more. But apart from that, it is used by thousands of people of all ages who want to take
their first step in computer science.

It is one of the best-selling British computers and most of the boards are made in the Sony
factory in Pencoed, Wales.

Generations and Models

In 2012, the company launched the Raspberry Pi and the current generations of regular
Raspberry Pi boards are Zero, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Generation 1 Raspberry Pi had the following four options:

 Model A
 Model A +
 Model B
 Model B +

Among these models, the Raspberry Pi B models are the original credit-card sized
format.

On the other hand, the Raspberry Pi A models have a smaller and more compact
footprint and hence, these models have the reduced connectivity options.

Raspberry Pi Zero models, which come with or without GPIO (general-purpose input
output) headers installed, are the most compact of all the Raspberry Pi boards types.

Speed Specifications
The table below gives the speed specifications of various Raspberry Pi models and
generations focusing on the version’s release date, form factor and dimensions:

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Raspberry Pi Version Release Form Dimensions

Date Factor
(in mm)

Raspberry Pi 4 Model 2019-2020 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B

Raspberry Pi 3 Model 2018 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B+

Raspberry Pi 3 Model 2016 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B

Raspberry Pi 3 Model 2018 Compact 65 x 56.5

A+

Raspberry Pi Zero 2017 Mini 65 x 30 x 5

Wireless with Headers

Raspberry Pi Zero 2016 Mini 65 x 30 x 5

Wireless

Raspberry Pi Zero 2015 Mini 65 x 30 x 5

Raspberry Pi 2 Model 2015 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B

Raspberry Pi 1 Model 2014 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B+

Raspberry Pi 1 Model 2012 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

B

Raspberry Pi 1 Model 2014 Compact 65 x 56.5

A+

Raspberry Pi 1 Model 2013 Standard 85.6 x 56.5

A

The table below gives the speed specifications of various Raspberry Pi models and
generations focusing on the version’s weight, General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO),
central processing unit (CPU) speed, Cores and Random-access memory (RAM):

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Raspberry Pi Weight GPIO CPU Cores RAM

Version Speed
(in
grams)
Raspberry Pi 4 46 40 Pin 1.5 GHz Quad 1,2,4, or
Model B 8 GB

Raspberry Pi 3 50 40 Pin 1.4 GHz Quad 1 GB

Model B+

Raspberry Pi 3 40 40 Pin 1.2 GHz Quad 1 GB

Model B

Raspberry Pi 3 28 40 Pin 1.4 GHz Quad 512 MB

Model A+

Raspberry Pi Zero 10 40 Pin 1 GHz Single 512 MB

Wireless with
Headers

Raspberry Pi Zero 10 40 Pin 1 GHz Single 512 MB

Wireless Unpopulated

Raspberry Pi Zero 8 40 Pin 1 GHz Single 512 MB

Unpopulated

Raspberry Pi 2 42 40 Pin 1.2 GHz Quad 1 GB

Model B

Raspberry Pi 1 42 40 Pin 700 MHz Single 512 MB

Model B +

Raspberry Pi 1 38 21 Pin (26 Pin 700 MHz Single 512 MB

Model B Header)

Raspberry Pi 1 23 40 Pin 700 MHz Single 512 MB

Model A+

Raspberry Pi 1 30 21 Pin (26 Pin 700 MHz Single 256 MB

Model A Header)

Connectivity Specifications
The table below gives the connectivity specifications of various Raspberry Pi boards
focusing on the version’s full sized USB ports, other USB and charge methods, power and
High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) ports:

Raspberry Pi Full sized Other USB & Power HDMI Ports

Version USB Ports Charge
Methods

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Raspberry Pi 4 2 USB3.0 1 USB-C 5.1V at 2 micro-HDMI

Model B 3A
2 USB2.0

Raspberry Pi 3 4 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model B+ 2.5A (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi 3 4 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model B 2.5A (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi 3 1 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model A+ 3A (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi Zero __ 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at Mini-HDMI, GPIO

Wireless with 1.2A Composite
Headers

Raspberry Pi Zero __ 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at Mini-HDMI, GPIO

Wireless 1.2A Composite

Raspberry Pi Zero __ 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at Mini-HDMI, GPIO

1.2A Composite

Raspberry Pi 2 4 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model B 1.8A (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi 1 4 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model B + 1.2A (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi 1 2 USB2.0 1 MIcroUSB 5.1V at PAL and NTSC,

Model B 3A HDMI or DSI, RCA

Raspberry Pi 1 1 USB2.0 1 MicroUSB or 5.1V at HDMI, Composite

Model A+ GPIO 700mA (TRRS)

Raspberry Pi 1 1 USB2.0 1 MicroUSB or 5.1V at PAL and NTSC,

Model A GPIO 700mA HDMI or DSI, RCA

The table below gives the connectivity specifications of various Raspberry Pi boards
focusing on the version’s video out quality, video in, Ethernet, bluetooth, Wi-Fi and
external storage:

Raspberry Video Out Video In Ethernet Bluetooth Wi-Fi External

Pi Version Quality Storage

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Raspberry 4kp60 CSI Gigabit Bluetooth Dual MicroSD

Pi 4 Model Camera Ethernet 5.0 Band-2.4
B Connector GHz and
5GHz

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI 10/100 Bluetooth Dual MicroSD

Pi 3 Model Camera Mbit/s 4.2/BLE Band-2.4
B+ Connector GHz and
5GHz

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI 10/100 Bluetooth 2.4 GHz MicroSD

Pi 3 Model Camera Mbit/s 4.1
B Connector

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI ___ Bluetooth Dual MicroSD

Pi 3 Model Camera 4.2/BLE Band-2.4
A+ Connector GHz and
5GHz

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI ___ Bluetooth 2.4 GHz MicroSD

Pi Zero Camera 4.1
Wireless Connector
with
Headers

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI ___ Bluetooth 2.4 GHz MicroSD

Pi Zero Camera 4.1
Wireless Connector

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI ___ ___ ___ MicroSD

Pi Zero Camera
Connector

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI 10/100 ___ ___ MicroSD

Pi 2 Model Camera Mbit/s
B Connector

Raspberry 1080p60 CSI 10/100 ___ ___ MicroSD

Pi 1 Model Camera Mbit/s
B+ Connector

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History
Software developer Eben Upton and Software Engineers Pete Lomas and David Braden
formed the Raspberry Pi foundation in 2006. The main aim of this foundation was to devise
a computer to inspire children. Hence, in order to reduce the cost, the early prototypes of
the Raspberry Pi were based on the 8-bit Atmel ATmega microcontroller.

On February 29 , 2012, the team started taking the orders for Model B and in the same
th

year, they started its production run which consisted of around 10,000 units. These models
were manufactured by the founders in China and Taiwan.

On February 4 , 2013, they started taking the orders for lower cost Model A. Similarly, on
th

November 10 , 2014, the team launched for even more low-cost Model A+. The cheapest
th

Raspberry Pi Zero was launched on November 26 , 2015.

th

The name Raspberry Pi was chosen with “Raspberry” as an ode to tradition of naming early
computer companies after fruit. Here, “Pi” is for Python Programming Language.

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 2. Raspberry Pi — Getting Started Raspberry Pi

In this modern age when computers are sleek, Raspberry Pi seems alien with tiny codes
printed all over its circuit board. That’s a big part of Raspberry Pi’s appeal. Let us have a
look at what we can do with this appealing circuit board.

Uses
Like a desktop computer, you can do almost anything with the Raspberry Pi. You can start
and manage programs with its graphical windows desktop. It also has the shell for
accepting text commands.

We can use the Raspberry Pi computer for the following:

 Playing games
 Browsing the internet
 Word processing
 Spreadsheets
 Editing photos
 Paying bills online
 Managing your accounts.

The best use of Raspberry Pi is to learn how a computer works. You can also learn how to
make electronic projects or programs with it.

It comes with two programming languages, Scratch and Python. Through GPIO (general-
purpose input output) pins, Raspberry Pi can be connected to other circuits, so that you
can control the other devices of your choice.

Retailers and Distributors

Some of the global retailers from whom you can buy your Raspberry Pi computers are as
follows. You can also refer to their respective websites for details about the Raspberry Pi
computers.

 Electronics manufacturing company, Pimoroni (www.Pimoroni.com)

 Electronics store, The Pi Hut (https://thepihut.com)
 U.S. based electronics company, Adafruit (www.adafruit.com)

You can also get it from the following Raspberry Pi’s distributors:

 Electronic components supplier, RS Components (www.rs-components.com)

 Electronic components distributor, Element14 (www.element14.com)

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Requirements
To use your Raspberry Pi board, you need to buy a few other bits and pieces. Following is
the checklist of what else we might need:

Monitor
The Raspberry Pi uses a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) connection for video
feed, and you can connect your monitor directly with this interface connection, if your
monitor has an HDMI socket.

Television
In the similar way, if you have High Definition Television (HD TV), you can also connect it
to your Raspberry Pi using an HDMI socket. It will give you a crisper picture.

USB hub
Depending on the model, Raspberry Pi has 1, 2, or 4 Universal Serial Bus (USB) sockets.
You should consider using powered USB to connect other devices to your Raspberry Pi at
the same time.

Keyboard and Mouse

Raspberry Pi only supports the USB keyboards and mouse. If you are using keyboards and
mouse with PS/2 connectors, you need to replace them with Raspberry Pi.

SD or MicroSD card
As we know that the Raspberry Pi does not have a hard drive, so we need to use SD cards
or MicroSD cards (depending on the model) for storage.

USB Wi-Fi adapter

If you are going to use model A and A+ then, you need to buy a USB Wi-Fi adapter for
connecting to the internet. This should be done because these Raspberry models do not
have an Ethernet socket.

External hard drive

If you want to share your collection of music and movies, you need to use an external
hard drive with your Raspberry Pi model. You can connect the same by using a powered
USB cable.

Raspberry Pi Camera Module

The Raspberry Pi camera module originated at Raspberry Pi foundation. It is an 8MP
(megapixel) fixed focus camera that can be used to shoot high-definition video and take
still photos. For wildlife photography at night, it provides another version without an
infrared filter.

Speakers

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The Raspberry Pi has a standard audio out socket. This socket is compatible with
headphones and speakers that use a 3.5mm audio jack. We can plug headphones directly
to it.

Power supply
For power supply, it uses a Micro USB connector. Hence theoretically, it is compatible with
a mobile phone and tablet charger.

Cables
Following are some of the cables, which you need for the connections to the Raspberry Pi
computer:

 HDMI cable
 HDMI-to-DVI adapter, if you are using a Digital Visual Interface (DVI) monitor.
 RCA cable, if you want to connect to an older television.
 Audio cable
 Ethernet cable

Compatible and Incompatible Devices

To minimise the cost, the Raspberry Pi models are designed to be used with whatever
accessories we have. But, as we know that in practice, not all the devices can be
compatible.

You need to check for compatible and incompatible devices as incompatible USB,
keyboards and mouse can cause problems.

You can find the list of compatible and incompatible devices at

https://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals.

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 3. Raspberry Pi — Operating System Raspberry Pi

Before you get started with your Raspberry Pi board, you need to provide with an OS
(operating system). Linux is the most frequently used OS on the Raspberry Pi.

For using an OS, we need to create a Secure Digital (SD) or MicroSD card with an OS on
it. The prerequisite for setting up the SD or MicroSD is a computer having an internet
connection and the ability to write to SD or MicroSD cards.

NOOBS Software
NOOBS means new-out-of-box software and it is the easiest way to get started with
the Raspberry Pi. It is easy to copy NOOBS to your SD or MicroSD card. Once copied, it
provides us with a simple menu for installing various operating systems.

There is an option to buy a card with NOOBS already installed on it, but it is always useful
to know how to create your own NOOBS cards.

Download NOOBS
Follow the below given steps to download NOOBS:

Step 1: Go to the website www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs

Step 2: Select from the two versions of NOOBS available. Version 1 is the main version
and includes Raspbian. This is the officially supported OS, which you can use even without
any network connection.

Another option is to choose the OS from the menu. You can download and install the OS
from the menu, if you have a network connection. It is always recommended to download
NOOBS for your first OS.

MicroSD card Formatting

Before downloading and installing OS, we first need to format our SD or MicroSD card. We
can use an application program, called SD card Formatter, from SD Association. The latest
version is SD Memory Card Formatter 5.0.1.

For Windows and Mac, it can be downloaded from the link

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/.

Let us see how we can format the SD card by using windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

Using Windows
Step 1: Download and install the SD formatter application. It will be as follows:

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Step 2: Next, we need to select the drive in which we have our SD High Capacity
SDHC/SDXC card. Once selected, click on the format button to format it.

The following screen will appear:

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Step 3: The program will ask for the confirmation. You need to click yes to confirm the
format process.

Step 4: Once the format process is completed, your SD card will be formatted completely.

Using Mac OS
The process of formatting is similar as we did in windows. You just need to download and
install the Mac version of SD card formatter.

Using Linux
We will be using the GParted application program, which is an open source partition
manager for Linux.

Use the steps given below to format a SD card in Ubuntu software:

Step 1: Download and install the GParted application by using the terminal as follows:

sudo apt-get install gparted

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Step 2: Once installation is completed, you need to insert the SD card. Next, by using
Unity dash, launch the GParted application.

Step 3: You will get the screen as below, which shows the partitions of the removable
disk. But before starting the formatting, we need to unmount the disk by right-clicking on
the partition as shown below:

Step 4: After unmounting, we need to right click on it, which will show us the Format to
option. Now from the list, you can choose whatever type of file system you want on the
disk.

After selecting the drive to format, you need to click on the Tick sign as shown below:

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Step 5: It will show you a couple of warnings and the format procedure will be started.

Install NOOBS to Memory card

Now, you have a formatted card and the .zip file that was downloaded from the Raspberry
website. Hence, you can install NOOBS on your card.

On windows PC, you can simply double click the .zip file. It will open the file. Once opened,
you can select all the files and copy them to your formatted card.

Similarly, on a Mac OS, you can see the folder that contains all the files by double clicking
on the NOOBS .zip file. Now, click on the Edit menu and select all. Drag all the files onto
your SD card.

In the same way, on Linux we can use the desktop environment to copy the NOOBS .zip
files to our SD card.

Flashing a MicroSD card

Some operating systems (OS) may not be available through NOOBS. One of them is the
Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) OS.

For creating a card for such an OS, we need to first download the OS as an image file.
Once an image file is downloaded, we need to use the process called flashing your card.
Later on, the single file can be converted into all the files which we need on our card (SD
or MicroSD).

To download the OS images, we can find the links at the website

https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/.

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Now to flash the card or you can say burning an image to the card, we can use an OS
image flasher Etcher. It is available for windows, Mac OS and Linux at
https://www.balena.io/etcher/.

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 4. Connecting Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi

It is quite easy to connect Raspberry Pi. Let us understand about the same in detail in this
chapter.

Ports and Sockets

You should make sure that you have to face your Raspberry Pi in the right way. Most
components and sockets, with the help of which you connect it, are sticking out at the top
side whereas the back side is relatively flat. The spiky GPIO (general-purpose input output)
pins should be at the top left.

Let us have a look at the diagrams below representing the location of connectors and main
integrated circuits (ICs) on the Raspberry Pi boards.

The source of the diagrams is https://core-electronics.com.au

Diagram 1
Following is the diagram for Raspberry Pi Model B:

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Diagram 2
Following is the diagram for Raspberry Pi Model A:

Diagram 3

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Following is the diagram for Raspberry Pi Zero:

Insert SD or MicroSD card

As we have discussed, you need an SD or MicroSD card with OS to get started with
Raspberry Pi. We have also discussed how you can create one, in the previous chapter.
Now, it is time to insert that card and get started.

If you are using model 2, 3, A+, or B+ then, you need to turn your Raspberry Pi circuit
board, so that the underside is at your side and you can see that.

You can see, there would be a metal MicroSD card slot on the left side of the board. Slide
your card into this slot.

On the other hand, if you are using Model A or Model B, you need an SD card and you
need to flip your Raspberry Pi over. Now, slide the SD card while facing the label side
above. After that you need to gently press the card home.

And we know that the models Pi Zero and Zero W have the MicroSD card slot mounted
on the top surface of the board. To insert the card, you need to put the label side facing
you.

Camera Module
Camera module, an official module from the Raspberry Pi board, is a small circuit board
with a strip of ribbon cable. It plugs directly into the board.

You can see the diagram below:

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From the above diagram, you can see that for protection, the lens has a plastic film over
it. You need to pull the green plastic tab to remove the film.

On Raspberry Pi Zero
The Raspberry Pi model camera socket uses a different width of cable and you can buy
that cable separately. You can also get that cable with the official Raspberry Pi Zero case.
You can check the board and the camera have similar sockets for the cable.

To open the connector, you just need to gently press the connector between your finger
and thumb. The camera connector is on the right of the Raspberry Pi board.

To connect the cable with the camera, insert the cable with the shiny contacts facing the
camera front. And on the Pi Zero board, insert the cable with the shiny contacts facing the
flat side of the board i.e., the bottom side.

On other Raspberry Pi Models

To connect the camera on other boards, you need to hold the ends in between your finger
and thumb. Then, gently lift the board and it will move apart to make a gap. This is the
place, where you will insert the cable of the camera.

At the end of the camera’s cable, you can see there are silver connectors on one side. Now
hold the cable in such a way that this side faces to the left.

Once done, insert the cable into the connector on your Raspberry Pi board. Press it gently
and then press the socket back together again and your board is ready with the camera.

Connect Raspberry Pi to Devices

The respective processes to connect your Raspberry Pi board to different devices is
explained below in detail. Let us begin by understanding how to connect a display device
to your Pi board.

Display device
Depending on the screen type, you have two ways to connect the display device to your
Pi board. In these two ways, we are assuming that you are going to use either monitor or

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television. Apart from these two ways, there is an official Pi touchscreen that connects
using the display socket. Let us check how we can connect an HDMI display and television,
as explained below.

HDMI or DVI display

The HDMI connector is on the top surface of your Raspberry Pi board. But for the Raspberry
Pi Zero model, you need to use an adapter that converts Mini HDMI to an HDMI socket.
For connecting, insert one end of the HDMI cable in the board or Pi ZERO connector and
the other end into your monitor.

On the other hand, if you are using a DVI display, an adapter should be used.

Television

If the TV you are using is having a HDMI socket, you can use that for optimal results. But
if in case, your TV does not have an HDMI socket, you need to use the composite video
socket.

On the Raspberry Pi Model-A and Model-B, the composite video socket is placed on the
top edge of the board. It is a round, yellow-and-silver sockets.

On other models, Raspberry Pi 3, Pi 2, and Model B+, the same socket as the audio output
can be used as a composite video socket. It is placed on the bottom of the board.

One thing you should note is that you will need to use a special RCA cable for this socket.
Connect one end of the RCA cable to the audio output socket and the other end to Video
in socket of the TV.

If you are using Pi Zero or Zero W boards then, you need to solder your own connector to
the board, where it is labelled TV. This should be done because, both these boards do not
have composite video socket.

Keyboard and Mouse

On Raspberry Pi Model B+, Model Pi 2, and Model Pi 3 the keyboard and mouse can be
directly connected. They should work fine. But for earlier models of Raspberry Pi, you
should use an external USB hub to connect keyboard and mouse.

Because with this, the devices will not draw too much power from the Pi board, and we
can reduce the risk of heat and other problems caused by devices.

On the other hand, for Raspberry Pi Zero, Model A, and Model A+, we must use a USB
hub, since these boards have only one USB socket.

Audio devices
Raspberry Pi’s audio socket is a small black or blue box. On Model A and Model B, it is
stuck along the top edge of the board. Whereas, on Model B+, Pi 2 and Pi 3, it is stuck
along the bottom edge of the board.

If you have connected an HDMI TV, then you do not need to connect a separate audio
cable, as the sound is routed through your HDMI cable.

On the other hand, if you have earphones or headphones with a 3.5mm jack, you can
directly plug them into the audio socket.

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Alternatively, it is recommended to use a suitable cable, as shown in the below figure. The
cable has Pi’s 3.5mm jack on the left and stereo input/output plugs that feed into many
stereos shown on the right.

Internet router
All the Raspberry Pi models other than Model A, A+, and Zero have an Ethernet socket.
You can find the socket on the right edge of the Raspberry board. To connect to the
internet, you can use a standard Ethernet cable in this socket.

In case if you are using a router with DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) support,
your Raspberry Pi will automatically connect to the internet.

On the other hand, if you have a Wi-Fi adapter then, you can plug into a USB socket of
Raspberry Pi and it will be ready to use whenever you turn on your board.

Power
Once you are done with connecting all the necessary and required devices, it is time to
connect your Raspberry Pi to power and turn it on. For this, you need to use the Micro USB
power socket.

To safeguard your board from damage, you need to provide a steady 5v of power. Keep
in mind that Raspberry Pi board has no on/off switch. It means, whenever you connect it
with power, it will start working.

If you want to turn it off, you just need to disconnect it. So, if you want to save your data,
you should proceed with caution and should shut down the Raspberry Pi first.

Turn on Raspberry Pi
Connect with the power and turn on your Raspberry Pi board. There will be a rainbow of
colors on screen. Afterwards, it will start to run the NOOBS software on the Memory card.
You will get a choice of OS to install.

Below are the OS choices in NOOBS:

Raspbian

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 Raspberry Pi

Raspbian, a version of a Linux distribution called Debian, is the distribution that is

recommended by the Raspberry Pi foundation. It has been optimized for the Raspberry Pi
board.

Most of the Raspberry Pi users start with Raspbian and it includes:

 Graphical Desktop software.

 Web browser.
 Development and programming tools like Scratch, Python etc.

It has two versions, one with the PIXEL desktop and other is termed as Raspbian Lite, with
a more minimal installation.

LibreELEC and OSMC

Both are the versions of Kodi media center. They are mainly used for playing music and
video.

RISC OS
It is an alternative to Linux OS, which most of the people use on the Raspberry Pi. It has
a GUI (Graphical User Interface). In 1987, it was created by Acorn Computers and now-
a-days, it is maintained and managed by RISC OS open Limited.

Data Partition
If you use the Data Partition option, it will give you an option to sort the data. The sorted
data can be accessed by various Linux distributions.

Lakka
It is a retro gaming system that includes emulators for a range of vintage home computers
such as Commodore 64 and Amiga, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and various Atari
machines.

It also includes emulators for a range of game consoles such as Nintendo machines and
Sony PlayStation. Although the Bomberman clones and 2048 games are included but, if
you want to use Lakka, you need to get the games separately.

Plug your USB with games files and you will be ready to get games into Lakka.

Recalbox
It is another game system. It also includes emulators for Super Nintendo Entertainment
System (SNES), Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Game Boy Advance, PC Engine,
and Sega Master System. The shareware version of a famous game called Doom is also
included in the Recalbox game system.

Screenly OSE
As the name implies, it is a digital signage system. It enables the users to use a Raspberry
Pi with a connected HD screen as a digital sign. Here, OSE refers to Open Source Edition.

It enables the following to be displayed on the screen:

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 Raspberry Pi

 Videos
 Images
 Web pages

Screenly OSE is also suitable for displaying the advertisements and information in public
areas like shops, schools, offices, shopping malls, railway stations, etc.

Windows 10 IoT Core

As the name implies, it is the version of Windows which is designed to support the IoT
(Internet of things) devices. It is actually different from the windows desktop experience
we are familiar with.

Once installed, it will give us the following two versions:

 RTM version: It is the release to manufacturing (RTM) version. It is recommended

to use because it is a stable version as compared to the Pre-release version.
 Pre-release version: Another is pre-release version, which is less stable as
compared to RTM version.

TLXOS
This is ThinLinX’s thin client software. It is a trial version and enables the Raspberry Pi to
work as a virtual desktop. By using ThinLinX, we can also manage one or more Raspberries
centrally.

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 5. Raspberry Pi — Configuration Raspberry Pi

In this chapter, we will learn about configuring the Raspberry Pi. Let us begin by
understanding how to configure Raspberry Pi board in Raspbian.

Raspbian configuration
For configuring Raspberry Pi in Raspbian, we are using Raspbian with PIXEL desktop. It is
one of the best ways to get Raspbian started with the Raspberry Pi. Once we finish booting,
we will be in the PIXEL desktop environment.

Now to open the menu, you need to click the button that has the Raspberry Pi logo on it.
This button will be in the top left. After clicking the button, choose Raspberry Pi
configuration from the preferences.

Configuration tool
Following is the configuration tool in PIXEL desktop:

By default, the configuration tool opens to its system tab which has the following options:

 Change Password: The default password is raspberry. You can change it by

clicking the change password button.

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 Raspberry Pi

 Change the hostname: The default name is raspberry pi. You can also change
it to the name, which you want to use on the network.
 Boot: You can choose from the two options and control whether Raspberry Pi boots
into the desktop or CLI i.e., command line interface.
 Auto Login: With the help of this option, you can set whether the user should
automatically log in or not.
 Network at Boot: By choosing this option, you can set whether the pi user is
automatically logged in or not.
 Splash screen: You can enable or disable it. On enabling, it will display the
graphical splash screen that shows when Raspberry Pi is booting.
 Resolution: With the help of this option, you can configure the resolution of your
screen.
 Underscan: There are two options, enable or disable. It is used to change the size
of the displayed screen image to optimally fill the screen. If you see a black border
around the screen, you should disable the underscan. Whereas, you should enable
the underscan, if your desktop does not fit your screen.

There are three other tabs namely Interfaces, Performance, and Localization. The job of
interface tab is to enable or disable various connection options on your Raspberry Pi.

You can enable the Pi camera from the interface tab. You can also set up a secure
connection between computers by using SSH (short for Secure Shell) option.

If you want to remote access your Pi with a graphical interface then, you can enable
RealVNC software from this tab. SPI, I2C, Serial, 1-wire, and Remote GPIO are some other
interfaces you can use.

There is another tab called Performance, which will give you access to the options for
overclocking and changing the GPU memory.

The localization tab, as the name implies, enable us to set:

 The character set used in our language.

 Our time zone.
 The keyboard setup as per our choice.
 Our Wi-Fi country.

Configure Wi-Fi
You can check at the top right, there would be icons for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The fan-
shaped icon is on the Wi-Fi. To configure your Wi-Fi, you need to click on that icon. Once
clicked, it will open a menu showing the available networks. It also shows the option to
turn off your Wi-Fi.

Among those available networks, you need to select a network. After selecting, it will
prompt for entering the Wi-Fi password i.e., the Pre Shared Key.

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 Raspberry Pi

If you see a red cross on the icon, it means your connection has been failed or dropped.
To test whether your Wi-Fi is working correctly, open a web browser and visit a web page.

Configure Bluetooth Devices

We can use wireless Bluetooth devices such as keyboard and/or mouse with Pi 3 and Pi
zero W because these models are Bluetooth-enabled. In PIXEL desktop, you can set up
your Bluetooth devices easily.

Following are the steps to configure the Bluetooth devices:

 First, make your device discoverable for pairing.

 Now, you need to click on the Bluetooth menu at the top right of the screen. It is
aligned to the Wi-Fi button.
 Now, choose the Add Device option.
 The Raspberry will start searching for the devices and when it finds your device,
click it and click the pair button.

Data Partition Setup

As we know that data partition is that area on your memory card (SD or MicroSD) which
can be shared by various distributions. One of the best examples of use of a data partition
is transferring the files between distributions.

The data partition has the label data.

You can use this labeled data to make a directory point to it as follows:

Step 1: First, you need to boot the Raspberry Pi into Raspbian.

Step 2: Now, click the Terminal icon to get to the command line.

Step 3: Next, type the command mkdir shared. It will create a directory named shared.

Step 4: Write the command sudo mount -L data shared. This command will point the
directory to the shared partition.

Step 5: Write the command sudo chown $USER: shared. It will set the permission for
writing in this shared folder.

Step 6: Now, to go to this shared folder, you need to type the command cd shared.

Once all the files are created in this shared folder, they will be available to all the
distributions that have the permission to access the data partition.

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6. Raspberry Pi — Working with Linux Raspberry Pi

This chapter enlightens about the functioning of Raspberry Pi with Linux.

PIXEL Desktop Environment

PIXEL (Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight) is a visual desktop environment
which is a part of the recommended Raspbian Linux distribution. It is the quickest way to
get started with Raspberry Pi and by default, it appears when our Raspberry Pi computer
finishes starting up.

Some of the characteristics of PIXEL are as follows:

 It is based on LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) open-source desktop.

 Raspberry Pi foundation has redesigned LXDE and converted it into a PIXEL desktop
environment.
 The PIXEL desktop environment works in a similar way to Mac OS and Windows
OS.
 We can manage and find files by using mouse and icons.
 Using this desktop environment, it’s really intuitive to navigate.

Navigate Desktop Environment

The image below is of the PIXEL desktop environment. You can see a taskbar (a strip along
the top of the screen), which is usually visible in every program we will be using.

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 Raspberry Pi

The Application Menu

For most of the programs, which we would like to run under PIXEL desktop or any other
desktop environment, we need to use the application menu. You can get it by clicking the
Raspberry Pi icon at the top left side of the desktop screen.

You will see the image as follows:

Submenu Programs
You will get the submenu program on the right, after moving the cursor over the categories
of the programs. It will show the programs in that particular category.

You need to click on that category to start with that. If you want to add that category icon
to the desktop, just right-click that program on the menu.

Following are the wealth of programs under submenu program:

Claws Mail
It is in the internet part of the Application with the help of which you can send or receive
messages on your Raspberry Pi computer.

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 Raspberry Pi

Debian Reference
As we have discussed earlier, the Raspbian version of Linux is the Pi-specific version of
the Debian distribution. This icon will guide us how to use Linux on your Raspberry Pi
computer.

This is a reference document, which is stored on your SD card and to find this, you need
to go through the help section of the Application menu.

To get started with this, first, you need to click the icon and then, click the multi-files link
(it is an HTML link) which is at the top of the screen.

LibreOffice
This is the most popular suite of productivity applications. It mainly includes word
processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can get it from the office section of the
Application menu.

Mathematica
Mathematica, under the programming section of the Application menu, is based on the
Wolfram programming language. It is used for scientific and technical computing.

Minecraft Pi
We know about the world-building game called Minecraft. Similarly, Minecraft Pi is the
Raspberry version of that. You can find it under the Game section of the Application
program, and you can also program it by using the Python programming language.

Python 2 and Python 3

Raspberry Pi provides us the Python programming language, which can be found under
Programming in the Application menu. We can also use the Thonny IDE (integrated
development environment) which provides the Pi users, an alternative way of creating
Python programs.

Python games
Raspberry Pi has games such as Reversi, Four in a Row, a sliding puzzle game as well as
a snake game. These all are built in Python programming language and can be found in
the Game section of the Application menu.

Scratch
Raspberry Pi foundation provides us a simple programming language called Scratch, which
is approachable for the peoples of all ages. You can use it to create games and animations.
It can also be used to manage electronic projects. You can find it under the Programming
section of the Application menu.

Sense HAT emulator

As the name implies, it has some built-in sensors that can be used for creating experiments
and other projects. It is an add-on for the Raspberry Pi users, which can be found under
the Programming section of the Application menu.

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 Raspberry Pi

Shutdown
Shutdown, a top-level option in the Application menu, can be used for switching off your
Raspberry Pi, before you remove the power. With this, we will also get the options to log
out as well as restart your Pi computer.

Sonic Pi
It is another programming language provided by Raspberry Pi foundation which is mainly
used for creating music. You can also find it under the Programming section of the
Application menu.

Terminal
Terminal is a window that let us issue the instructions from a command line without leaving
your PIXEL desktop environment. There are two ways through which you can reach the
terminal window. One is to get it in the Accessories part of the Programs menu and other
is to use the button on the taskbar.

Wolfram
Wolfram is a programming language provided by Raspberry Pi foundation. It aims to
incorporate knowledge, so that the programmers can get results quickly. You can get more
information about this at www.wolfram.com/language. It is under the Programming
section of the Application menu.

Running programs
Even after installing, some of the programs won’t appear on the Application menu. You
can use the Run option to run those programs.

Follow the below given steps:

Step 1: First, we need to open the Application menu. For this, click the icon at top left of
the desktop.

Step 2: Now, we need to select the Run option from this menu.

Step 3: Run option will give you a dialog box. You can type the name of the program,
which you want to open, and then press Enter.

Close and Rearrange Programs

The controls for closing and rearranging the programs on the PIXEL desktop environment
is like the ones in MS Windows. These controls enable us to close as well as resize
(minimize and maximize) the programs.

You can find these controls in the top right. They are explained below:

 X button: It is used for closing the programs/applications.

 Maximize button: As the name implies, this button will enlarge a particular
application. Once used, the application will fill the screen.

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 Raspberry Pi

 Minimize button: As the name implies, this button will reduce a particular
application. It will hide the program from view but does not stop it from
executing/running. We can return to the program by clicking the name of the
program on the taskbar.

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7. Raspberry Pi — PIXEL Desktop Environment Raspberry Pi

Let us learn about the PIXEL desktop environment in Raspberry Pi. First, we will
understand what a task manager is.

Task Manager
Sometimes, it may happen that your Raspberry Pi computer does not seem to be
responding. But, there is nothing to worry about. This happens when the computer might
be quite busy.

The diagram below shows the task manager.

In the top right side, you can see the CPU usage monitor, which will tell you how heavily
your Pi’s processor is being used. Moreover, in the top left side of this taskbar, we have
three buttons, which are collectively called as the closing and resizing window.

There are two options to open the task manager, which are as follows:

 Go to the Accessories folder on the Application menu.

 Use the shortcut key, which is by holding down Ctrl and ALT keys and then
pressing the Delete key.

If any of the program is responding and you want to terminate it, just right-click in the
task list. The menu will appear, and you can choose the Term from it. This option will give
a chance to shut down the program safely.

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 Raspberry Pi

On the other hand, we can also use Kill, but, this option will terminate the program
immediately with loss of data.

File Manager
It is easy to manage your files in a PIXEL desktop environment rather than using the
command line. Refer the screen given below for the file manager:

With the help of file management, we can browse, copy, rename or delete the files on our
Raspberry Pi or other connected storage devices.

You have two options to start the file manager, which are as follows:

 Click the button on the left of the desktop.

 Go to system tools under the Application menu.

Navigate File Manager

There is an icon bar, having useful shortcuts, under the file manager’s menu bar.

Let us navigate the file manager and understand the icons that come under it.

Add Tab

Suppose, if you want to work in two folders at the same time. For example, copy files from
one folder to another. Then, you need to quickly switch between those two folders. Tabs
become handy for this purpose.

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 Raspberry Pi

It enables us to have two different folders open at the same time, so that we can simply
click them to switch between them. You can close the tab by clicking the cross (X) icon on
the tab.

Previous folder

Previous folder button, as the name implies, takes you back to the last folder, which we
have accessed on that tab. It works a bit like a web browser’s back button.

Next folder

Next folder button, as the name implies, takes us to a folder, where we have visited after
the folder on which we have been working. We will end up where we started, if we will
first click the Previous folder button and then the Next folder button.

Folder History

The Folder history button, as the name implies, will open a menu having the folders we
have visited.

Up a level

There can be parent and child folders in your Raspberry Pi desktop. For example, the
Desktop folder is inside the Pi folder. Hence, the Pi folder will be the parent folder and
Desktop folder will be the child folder. The up a level button will take you to the parent
folder.

Home

The home button, as the name implies, takes us back to the Pi folder.

Path

Path, as you have seen in the web browser’s URL bar, is the text description if it is the
location of the folder, we are working with. It also includes the list of the folders, which
are above it.

Cut, copy, move files and folders

The file manager in the PIXEL desktop environment makes it easy to move your files and
folders from one place to another. It also makes it easy to cut, copy, and paste your files
and folders.

You just need to right-click a file or folder of your choice and a menu will appear. This
menu has the following options:

 Renaming the file.

 Moving the file to the wastebasket.
 Cut or copy the files.

Now, if you want to cut the file or folder, right-click on that and choose option cut. After
that, right-click an empty space, where you want to paste that folder. From the menu that
appears, select paste and your file or folder will be pasted at that empty space.

Likewise, if you want to copy the file or folder, you need to choose option copy from the
right-click menu and then, paste wherever you want. It will create a duplicate file or folder.

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Multiple files and folders

If you want to select more than one file at a time, there are following methods to do it:

First method

You need to hold the CTRL key and then, click on every file you want to select.

Second method

For selecting a group of consecutive icons, you first need to click the first icon, press the
SHIFT key, and then click the last icon.

Third method

In this method, you need to click the mouse on the background of the file manager. Now
while holding the button, you need to loop all the files which you want to select.

Moving the files

Now for moving these files, you have the following methods:

 Once you have selected the files, you can drag these files into a different folder.
 Otherwise, you can choose the option of cut or copy the whole group of files by
right-clicking one of the selected files.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Like MS windows, you can also use some shortcuts in PIXEL as follows:

 Ctrl+A: To select all the files and folders.

 Ctrl+C: To copy the files and folders.
 Ctrl+V: To paste the files and folders.
 Ctrl+X: To cut the files and folders.

Organize files in folders

To easily manage your files, you can organize them in a folder. It is easy to create a new
folder.

Follow the below given steps:

 First, select and go to the location, typically your pi folder, where you want to
create a new folder.
 Now, right-click a blank space in the File Manager and click on the option Create
New from menu.
 Now another menu will appear, and you need to click Folder from that menu. You
will now be prompted to enter a name. Enter the name you want to give to the new
folder and click OK to confirm.

The other method to create a New Folder is to click the File menu at the top left of the File
Manager and find Create New. With these methods, you can also create empty files.

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Delete files and folders

If you want to delete a single file or folder, you can right-click that in the File Manager.
For the menu, you need to choose the option Move to Wastebasket.

On the other hand, if you want to delete more than one file or folder, you can select all of
them as we did before, and choose the option Move to Wastebasket right-click menu.

You can also use the keyboard Delete button to send the selected files to the
wastebasket.

Sorting the files

You can sort your files in Raspberry Pi by name, size, file type, modification time, etc. For
this, you again need to right-click the empty space in the right pane of the file manager.
A menu will appear and you need to select the option to change how the files are sorted.

You can also change how your files are displayed in the file manager. For this, you need
to use the View menu on the Menu bar at the top of the File Manager.

The View menu will give us the following four ways to display our files and folders:

Icon view

It is the default option used by the File manager. It strikes a good balance between the
size of each icon and number of files, we can see at one time.

Thumbnail view

Another view option is thumbnail view, which is mostly used in a folder of images. It
enlarges the preview.

Compact view

As the name implies, the compact view lists the files and folders in columns and this is
done with a small icon and filename. It helps us to view as many files as possible at a
time.

Detailed view

As the name implies, this view reveals detailed information like short description, size, last
modification date, etc., about the file.

Now, let us continue learning about the other important aspects with regards to the PIXEL
desktop environment in Raspberry Pi.

Browsing the Web

Raspberry Pi gives us the choice of four browsers for browsing the web, namely,
Chromium, Dillo, Netsurf and Epiphany. You can type the name of the browsers into the
run option on the Application menu and it will appear.

Chromium Browser
It is the recommended browser. Apart from the Run option, you can also access it by
clicking the Web browser button (the Globe icon) in the top left of the screen.

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 Raspberry Pi

The layout of Chromium browser is quite similar to other browsers. It has a thin toolbar
and provides a maximum screen to the page which you are accessing. It provides the user
with the facility for ad-blocker to strip advertising. You can also change the settings for
the same.

Dillo Browser
This browser is fast. Hence, it is a good choice for those users who have a slow internet
connection and have problems related to accessing mainly the text information. It does
not support Javascript and cannot handle the sophisticated layout instruction.

This is the reason that the web pages look different than the ones intended on it. This
browser provides the users with an option to switch off the images from the Tool menu to
speed up the downloads of complex pages.

Netsurf
This web browser is capable of handling more sophisticated layouts than Dillo web browser.
But like Dillo, netsurf also lacks support for Javascript. Hence, the websites (including
Facebook) that require Javascript won’t work on Netsurf.

Epiphany
It supports Javascript and was the recommended browser before Chromium. Epiphany
browser is optimized for the Raspberry Pi but, might be noticeably slower than what we
are used to.

Claws Mail
Raspberry Pi provides us an open-source email program called Claws Mail. It is preinstalled
and you can find it in the internet category of the Application menu.

Following are some prerequisites, if you want to use email on Raspberry Pi:

 For sending emails, you need to know the details of the server. You can find this
information on the website of your email provider.
 Your email user ID and password. This should be the same as you use when logging
on with webmail.

Sending and Receiving Emails

Follow the below given steps to use Claws mail for sending and receiving emails:

 First, you need to add an account from the configuration wizard of Claws mail.
Apart from adding a new account, you can also edit the account settings, delete an
account by using the configuration menu.
 Once you are done with configuration, go to top left and click the Get mail button.
It will show your mail folder in the left and messages on the right at the top.

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 To read the messages, you can use two methods. One is to use the message
preview pane at the bottom right and other is to double-click on a message to open
in its own window.
 For composing a new message, replying, and forwarding a message, there is a
menu bar across the top of Claws mail.

Image Viewer
If you want to look at your Digital images and work with them in Raspberry Pi, PIXEL
provides us with the Image Viewer. You can find it in among the accessories on the
Application Menu.

Toolbar buttons
You will see a toolbar underneath the picture opened in the Image Viewer.

Following are the buttons on that toolbar:

Previous

As the name implies, with this button, you will go to the previous photo in that folder. Any
unsaved changes would be lost.

Next

As the name implies, with this button, you will go to the next photo in that folder. Any
unsaved changes would be lost.

Start Slide show

This button will begin a slide show of all the photos in that folder. Predefined interval
between two photos is 5 seconds. Image Viewer gives us an option to change it in
preferences. Keyboard shortcut for starting slide show is key W.

Zoom Out

This button will reduce the magnification of the image. Keyboard shortcut for Zoom Out is
the Minus (-) key.

Zoom In

This button will increase the magnification of the image. Keyboard shortcut for Zoom In is
the Plus sign (+) key.

Fit Image to Window

It will shrink a large image to make it fit in the Image Viewer window. Its keyboard shortcut
is key F.

Go to Original Size

This button will reset all the zooming by showing an image at its original size. Its keyboard
shortcut is key G.

Full Screen

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 Raspberry Pi

As the name implies, this button will expand an image to fill the monitor. With the use of
this button, you will lose the Image Viewer controls.

Rotate Left

It will rotate the image 90 degrees counterclockwise. Keyboard shortcut for Rotate Left is
key L.

Rotate Right

It will rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise. Keyboard shortcut for Rotate Right is key R.

Flip Horizontally

This button will mirror the image horizontally. Keyboard shortcut for Flip Horizontally is
key H.

Flip Vertically

This button will mirror the image vertically i.e., turns an image upside down. Keyboard
shortcut for Flip Vertically is key V.

Open File

It will open a new image file. You can also open an image from a folder in File Manager by
using the Drag-and-Drop option on Image Viewer.

Save File

It will save an image with changes which you have done. It will replace the original file.
The keyboard shortcut key is S.

Save File as

It will save an image, with the changes which you have done, with a new filename. It will
not replace the original file.

Delete

It will delete an image from the storage device. If you use this button, an image will be
deleted permanently and won’t be recovered.

Preferences

This button holds the settings, which you can change for the Image Viewer. It permits you
to customize the settings as per your needs.

Exit Image Viewer

As the name implies, it will close the Image Viewer application. We can also use the close
button (X) which is in the top right.

Text Editor
PIXEL has a simple text editor called Leafpad. You can find it by clicking the Text Editor in
the Accessories part of the Application Menu. Leafpad text editor is good for writing and
word processing but not ideal for creating the print-ready documents.

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 Raspberry Pi

Leafpad
The menu on Leafpad consists of the following buttons:

File Menu

You can use this menu to start the new documents as well as to open, save, and print the
files. It has a quit option, which we can use to close the text editor.

Edit Menu

The Edit menu gives you the tools to do the following tasks:

 Undoing your work.

 Redoing your work.
 Cutting the work.
 Copying your work.
 Pasting the work.
 Deleting the work.
 Selecting all the text.

It uses the same shortcuts as MS Windows, as mentioned below:

 Ctrl+C: To copy the work.

 Ctrl+V: To paste the work.
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 Raspberry Pi

 Ctrl+X: To cut the work.

 Ctrl+A: To select all the text.

Search Menu

This menu gives us the following options:

 To find a particular word or phrase.

 Jump to a particular line in a document.
 Replace a chosen word or phrase with an alternative.

Option Menu

This menu gives us the following options:

 To change the font.

 Switch on word wrap.
 Switch on line numbers.

Customize your Desktop

You can change the look and feel of your desktop and make it easier to use by doing some
changes. The options to customize your desktop are under the Preferences section of the
Application menu.

With these options we can do the following:

 Change the picture used as a backdrop i.e., wallpaper.

 Change desktop color, if not using wallpaper.
 Change the color of icon descriptions i.e., the text color.

Install New Applications

Although, we can use the command line to discover and install new software, but, there is
also a friendly menu in the PIXEL desktop environment. For that menu, we need to go to
the Preferences option and click on ADD/REMOVE software.

This menu has the following parts that helps us to find and install new applications:

Search box
The search box is at the top left. Here, you can enter the name of a program you are
looking for and it will show you the options.

Main pane
It shows us the packages. The already installed packages will be checked and would be in
bold. Tick the box titled decide it, if you want to install that package.

After choosing your software, you need to click the Ok button to install and remove the
applications. It will prompt for entering the password.

Back up the data

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 Raspberry Pi

To back up your data, you can use File manager to copy them to a USB key or MicroSD
card. Raspberry Pi provides us an application called the SD Card Copier application for
copying data.

You can also use the shell commands, which we will discuss further.

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 8. Raspberry Pi — Linux Shell Raspberry Pi

The Shell, called Bash in Raspberry Pi, is the text-based way of issuing instructions to your
Pi board. In this chapter, let us learn about the Linux shell in Raspberry Pi. First, we will
understand how to open a shell window.

Open Shell Window

You can open a shell window by using one of the two following ways:

 There is a Terminal icon, having a >_ prompt, on the top of the screen. Click on it
and you will get a shell window.
 Another way is to use the Accessories section of the Application menu. You can find
the Terminal there.

Both of the above approaches will open a shell window on the desktop.

Understanding the Prompt

The prompt looks like as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $

It contains lots of information. Let us see the various bits:

pi

It represents the name of that user who logged in.

raspberrypi

It represents the hostname of the machine i.e.; the name other computers use to identify
when connecting to it.

The tilde symbol (~)

The tilde symbol tells the user which directory they are looking at. The presence of this
horizontal wiggly line is known as home directory and the presence of this symbol shows
that we are working in that directory.

The dollar sign ($)

It represents the presence of the ordinary user and not all-powerful superuser. A # symbol
means a superuser.

List Files and Directories

When you start the shell window, you start in your home directory.

To see the folders and files in your home directory, you need to issue a command which
is as follows:
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 Raspberry Pi

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ls

Output

The output is as follows:

Desktop Downloads Pictures python_games Videos

Documents Music Public Templates

You can see the files and folders after issuing the ls command.

As we know that Linux is case sensitive hence the commands LS, Ls, ls and lS are all
different.

Change the directory

You can see the above output, it’s all blue which means these are all directories. We can
go to these directories and check which files they contain. The command to change the
directory is cd. You need to use the cd command along with the name of the directory
which you want to see.

The example for changing the directory in Raspberry Pi is given below:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd Pictures

Find information about files

The command to find the information about a particular file is file. You need to put the
name of the file after the command to check the information about that file.

Check the below example for finding information about the files in Raspberry Pi:

pi@raspberrypi ~ /Pictures $ file leekha.png aarav.png

leekha.png: PNG image data, 50 x 85, 8-bit/color RGBA, noninterlaced
aarav.png: PNG image data, 100 x 150, 8-bit/color RGBA, noninterlaced

We can also use the file command on directories. It will give us some information about
the directories as well:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ file Pictures Desktop

Pictures: directory
Desktop: directory

Parent Directory
Earlier, we have used the cd command to change into a directory that is inside the current
working directory. But sometimes, we need to go to the parent directory i.e. into the
directory which is above the current working directory.

The command for this is cd..(cd with two dots), as given below:

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 Raspberry Pi

pi@raspberrypi ~ /Pictures $ cd..

pi@raspberrypi ~ $

The tilde symbol represents your home directory.

Directory Tree
The following diagram shows the part of the directory tree on your Raspberry Pi computer:

bin boot Debian- dev etc hom lib mnt medi

binary e a

pi

Desktop Pictures

The directories and their uses are as follows:

bin

Bin, short for binaries, contains some small programs that behave like commands in the
shell. For example, ls and mkdir.

boot

This directory contains the heart of the OS i.e. the Linux kernel. It also contains the
configuration files containing the technical settings for Raspberry Pi computer.

dev

This directory contains a list of devices. For example, the devices like disks and network
connections.

etc

This directory is used for various configuration files. These configuration files apply to all
the users on the computer.

home

This is the directory where a user can store or write files by default.

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 Raspberry Pi

lib

The directory contains various libraries that are used by different OS programs.

lost+found

This directory is used, if the file system gets corrupted and recovers partially.

media

You connect a removable storage device such as a USB key and it is automatically
recognized. All the details will be stored in the media directory.

mnt

mnt stands for mount and will store all the details of the removable storage devices that
we mount ourselves.

root

It is reserved for the use of the root users and we don’t have the permission to change
into this directory as an ordinary user.

Relative and Absolute Paths

The shell enables the Raspberry Pi users to go straight to the location by specifying a path.

We have the following two types of paths:

Relative path
It is a bit like giving the directions to the directory from where the user is now.

Absolute path
On the other hand, an absolute path is like a street address. This path is exactly the same
wherever the user is. These paths are measured from the root. Hence, they start with a
slash (/).

For example, we know the absolute path to the pi directory is /home/pi.

Now, go straight forward to this directory by using the following command:

cd /home/pi

If you want to go to the root, you can use the following command:

cd /

Advanced Listing Commands

We can use the listing command (ls) to look inside any directory outside the current
working directory as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ls /boot

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 Raspberry Pi

There are several advanced options, which we can use with the ls command.

These options are given in the following table:

Option Description

-1 This option is 1 not l and it outputs the results in a single column instead
of a row.

-a The ls command with this option will display all the files. All the files will
also include hidden files.

-F This option will add a symbol besides a filename. It will do this to indicate
the file type. If you use this option, you will notice a / after directories
names and a * after executable files.

-h This option is short for human-readable. It expresses file sizes by using

kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes.

-l This option will display the result in the long format. It shows the
information about the permissions of files, their last modification date,
their size.

-m This option will list the result as a list separated by commas.

-R This option is the recursive option. It will also list files and directories in
the current working directories, open the subdirectories(if any) and list
their results too.

-r It is the reverse option and will display the result in reverse order.

-S This option will sort the result by their size.

-t This option will sort the result as per the date and time they were last
modified.

-X This option will sort your result as per the file extension.

Furthermore, we will learn about the other important aspects related to Linux Shell in
Raspberry Pi.

Long Listing Format

Long format is one of the most useful formats of the ls command, because it provides us
the additional information on the file.

You can use the ls command with the long listing option as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ls -l
total 65
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 256 Feb 18 22:45 Leekha.txt
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:45 Desktop

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 Raspberry Pi

drwxr-xr-x 5 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:50 Documents

drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:52 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:53 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:45 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:45 Public
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:54 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 25 17:54 Videos

From the above output, it is very easy to understand that each line relates to one file or
directory having its name on the right and the date and time, when it was last modified
next to that.

The number 256, 4096 represents the size of the file. You can see some files and
directories are having the same size.

The remaining part of this output shows the permissions i.e. who is allowed to use the file
and what the user is allowed to do with that file or directory.

Permissions
The permissions on a file are divided in the following three categories:

Owner

It is the person who created the file. This permission consists of the things the file owner
can do.

Group

These are the people who belong to a group that has the permission to use the file. This
permission consists of the things which the group owners can do.

World

These are known as the world permissions i.e. the things that everyone can do with that
file or directory.

In Raspberry Pi, we have two main types of files. One is regular files which have a hyphen
(-) and others are directories having a d.

Types of Permissions
Now let us understand the different types of permissions the owner, group and world have
respectively:

 Read permission: This permission gives the user ability to open and look at the
contents of a file or to list a directory.
 Write permission: This permission gives the user the ability to change the content
of a file. It allows the user to create or delete the files in a directory.

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 Raspberry Pi

 Execute permission: This permission gives the user an ability to treat a file as a
program and run it. It also gives permission to enter a directory using the cd
command.

Less Command
The ls command deluges with the information that you cannot even notice sometimes,
because it flies past our eyes faster than we understand or see it. To avoid this or solve
this problem, we can use a command called less.

This command will take our listing and enable us to page through it and that is one screen
at a time. To use this command, we need to use a | (pipe character) after the listing (ls)
command.

The example of less command in Raspberry Pi is given below:

ls -RXF | less

The less command can also be used to view the content of a text file.

For this, we need to provide the filename as an argument, as given below:

less /boot/config.txt

Speed up the use of Shell

Here we will be learning few tricks to speed up the use of the shell:

 If you want to retype a command, then you can save retyping it because, shell
keeps the record of history i.e. the commands you entered previously.
 In case if you want to reuse your last command, you just need to use two
exclamation marks and press enter.
 You can also bring back the previous commands in order by tapping the up arrow.
 Similarly, you can also move through your history of commands in another direction
by tapping the down arrow.
 The shell also guesses what the user wants to type and it also automatically
completes it for us.

Create File with Redirection

Redirecting files means, you can send the results from a command to a file instead of
sending the results to the screen. For this, we need to use a > (greater-than) sign along
with the file name, which we would like to send the output to.

The example of creating file by using redirection in Raspberry Pi is given below:

ls > ~/gaurav.txt

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 Raspberry Pi

There are other commands too and with their help, we can display the content online.
These commands are explained below:

echo command
The echo command, as the name implies, will display on screen whatever we write after
it. The best use of this command is to solve mathematical problems. You need to put the
expression between two pairs of brackets and put a dollar sign in front.

The example of echo command is given below:

echo $((5*5))

date command
The date command, as the name implies, will display on screen the current date and time.

cal command
The cal command (cal stands for calculator) will display the current month’s calendar with
today highlighted. With the help of option -y, you can see the whole year calendar.

Create and Remove Directories

Here, we will understand how to create and remove directories in Raspberry Pi. Let us
begin by learning about creating directories.

Create Directories
The command to create a directory under your home directory is mkdir.

In the below example, we will be creating a directory named AI_Python:

mkdir AI_Python

You can also use one command to create several directories as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ mkdir AI_Python Machine_Learning Tutorialspoint

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ls
Downloads AI_Python Machine_Learning Tutorialspoint Desktop Pictures Documents
Public

Remove directories
If you want to remove an empty directory, you can use the command rmdir as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rmdir AI_Python

On the other hand, if you want to remove non-empty directories, you need to use the
command rm -R as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rm -R Machine_Learning
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 Raspberry Pi

Delete Files
We can use the rm command to delete a file.

The syntax for deleting a file would be as follows:

rm options filename

In an example given below, we will be deleting a text file named leekha.txt:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rm leekha.txt

Like mkdir, the rm command will not tell us what it is doing.

To know its function, we need to use the verbose(-v) option as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rm -v leekha.txt
removed 'leekha.txt'

We can also delete more than one file at a time as follows:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rm -v leekha.txt gaurav.txt aarav.txt

removed 'leekha.txt'
removed 'gaurav.txt'
removed 'aarav.txt'

Raspberry Pi Wildcards
A directory contains a lot of files with the similar filenames and if you want to delete a
group of such files, you don’t need to repeat the command by typing out each filename.
In shell, wildcards will do this job for us.

Following table provides us a quick reference to the wildcards, which we can use in
Raspberry Pi:

Wildcard Meaning Example Description

? It means any single pic?.jpg The example means that the files start
character. with a pic and have exactly one
character after it before extension
starts.

* It means any *pic* The example means that any files that
number of have the word pic in their filename.
characters.

[…] This wildcard will [gla]* The example means that all the files
match any one of that start with the letter g, l or a.
the characters in
brackets.

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 Raspberry Pi

[^…] This wildcard will [^gla]* The example means that any files that
match any single do not start with the letter g, l or a.
character that is not
between the
brackets.

[a-z] This wildcard will [x-z]*.png The example means that any files that
match any single start with a letter x, y or z and end with
character in the the .png extension.
range specified.

[0-9] This wildcard will Pic[1- The example means that it will match
match any single 5]*.png pic1.png, pic2.png, pic3.png, pic4.png,
character in the and pic5.png.
range specified.

The below given example will remove all the files starting with letters lee,

rm –vi lee*

Copy Files
Copying files is one of the fundamentals things we would like to do.

The command for this is cp, which can be used as follows:

cp [options] copy_from copy_to

Here, we need to replace copy_from with the file you want to copy and copy_to for
where you want to copy it.

Example
Let us see an example of using the command to copy the respective file.

Suppose, if you want to copy the file leekha.txt from the /desktop directory to the home
directory, you can use the cp command as follows:

cp /Desktop/leekha.txt ~

We can also specify a path to an existing folder to send the file to as follows:

cp /Desktop/leekha.txt ~/doc/

Move Files
Rather than making a copy of the file, if you want to move it from one place to another
then, you can use the mv command as follows:

mv ~/Desktop/leekha.txt ~/Documents

The above command will move the file named leekha.txt from Desktop directory to the
Documents directory. Both of these directories are in the home directory.
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 Raspberry Pi

Reboot Raspberry Pi
With the help of following command, we can reboot our Raspberry Pi without disconnecting
and reconnecting the power:

sudo reboot

Shutdown Raspberry Pi
With the help of following command, we can safely turn off our Raspberry Pi:

sudo halt

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9. Raspberry Pi — Managing Software Raspberry Pi

We have discussed the simple menu based ADD/REMOVE software tab under Preferences
for installing software. It is one of the easiest ways to manage and install software on your
Raspberry Pi.

But here, we will be discussing how we can use the command line to install software in
Raspberry Pi.

To install software, we require the authority of the root user or superuser but, sometimes
that leaves our Raspberry Pi computer files vulnerable, including to any malicious software
that might get in.

We can use sudo instead of a root account. Putting sudo before a command will indicate
that one wants to carry it with the authority of the root user.

Update Cache Memory

If you want to install software on your Raspberry Pi, you first need to update the cache
memory. It is the list of the packages, which the package manager knows about.

Use the following command to update the cache memory:

sudo apt-get update

Find the Software

To find the package name or software, we need to use the package manager cache. In
Linux terminology it is the apt, cache.

It contains an index of all the packages available for install. It collects information of the
software package and, also used to search for the available packages which are ready for
installation on Raspberry Pi.

With the help of following command, we can search the required software:

sudo apt-cache search pkgname

Suppose if you want to search the games packages, you can use the command as follows:

sudo apt-cache search game | less

The list might be long. Hence, we have used less.

And suppose, if you want to find the package name for a particular game say chess, you
can give the title in the command as follows:

sudo apt-cache search chess

This command will search for all the packages with name chess.

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 Raspberry Pi

Install Software
Once you finish the searching, you can now install the software. For searching, you used
apt-cache. However, for installing, you need to use apt-get command.

The command will download the specific package from the internet and install it. It will
also install other dependencies.

For example, if we want to install the chess game say 3dchess, then the command will
be as follows:

sudo apt-get install 3dchess

Run the Software

Following are the two ways to run a particular program in Raspberry Pi:

From command line

You can run some programs directly from the command line. You need to type the name
of the program as follows:

3dchess

It will directly run the program.

From Application menu

Another way is to use the Application menu. After installing, you can find the application
in the Application menu.

In Raspberry Pi, most of the end-user applications require the X-server. It means they
need the Desktop environment to run them.

Upgrade Software
You can use the package manager to keep your software.

Following is the command with the help of which we can update all our software:

sudo apt-get upgrade

On the other hand, if you want to update just one application, you can do it by issuing its
install command again.

For example, we have installed the chess game above, now enter the same again:

sudo apt-get install 3dchess

The above command will prompt the apt to check for any updates of the package and
install them. If it finds no updates, it will tell us that we are running the latest version of
the software.

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 Raspberry Pi

Remove Software
You can also use the package manager to remove software from your Raspberry Pi
computer.

You can use the following command to remove the software:

sudo apt-get remove 3dchess

The above command will remove the 3dchess package, but it will leave some traces of the
application. These traces might include user files and any files containing settings.

You can also completely remove the application by using the following command:

sudo apt-get purge 3dchess

What software is installed?

You can use the following command to find out what software is installed on your
Raspberry Pi computer:

dpkg --list

With the help of following command, you can search for a specific package:

dpkg –-status packagename

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 10. Raspberry Pi — GPIO Connector Raspberry Pi

Here, we will learn about the GPIO (general-purpose input output) connector in Raspberry
Pi.

GPIO Pinout
One of the powerful features of the Raspberry Pi is the row of GPIO (general-purpose input
output) pins and the GPIO Pinout is an interactive reference to these GPIO pins.

Following diagram shows a 40-pin GPIO header, which is found on all the current
Raspberry Pi boards:

The source of the diagram is www.raspberrypi.org

Voltages
From the above diagram, we can see that there are two 5V pins and two 3V3 pins on the
board. It also has several ground pins (0V). All these pins are unconfigurable.

Outputs
A GPIO pin can be designated as an output pin. The pin set as output pin can be set to
3V3(high) or 0V(low).

Inputs

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 Raspberry Pi

A GPIO pin can be designated as an input pin. The pin set as input pin can be read as
3V3(high) or 0V(low). You can use internal pull-up or pull-down resistors.

You can see in the above diagram, GPIO2 and GPIO3 pins have fixed pull-up resistors but
for the other pins, you can configure it in software.

Alternative Functions
GPIO pins can be used with a variety of alternative functions. Among them, some are
available on all pins and others on specific pins.

PWM: Pulse-width modulation

Software PWM are available on all the pins whereas Hardware PWM are available on
GPIO12, GPIO13, GPIO18, and GPIO19.

SPI: Serial Peripheral Interface

The SPI are available on the following:

SPI0: MOSI (GPIO10); MISO (GPIO9); SCLK (GPIO11); CE0 (GPIO8), CE1 (GPIO7)

SPI1: MOSI (GPIO20); MISO (GPIO19); SCLK (GPIO21); CE0 (GPIO18); CE1 (GPIO17);
CE2 (GPIO16)

I2C: Inter-integrated Circuit

The I2C are available on the following:

Data: (GPIO2); Clock (GPIO3)

EEPROM Data: (GPIO0); EEPROM Clock (GPIO1)

Serial

The serial function is available at the following:

TX(GPIO14)

RX(GPIO15)

Connect GPIO to Raspberry Pi

Following are some simple rules to reduce the risk of damaging your Raspberry Pi board,
while using the GPIO connector:

 Do not try to put more than 3.3V on any GPIO pin.

 Do not try to draw more than 3mA per output. Although, you can draw more but
to increase the life of your Pi Board, you should restrict upto 3mA.
 You should not poke the GPIO connector with a screwdriver when the Raspberry Pi
board is powered up.
 5V power is enough for your Raspberry Pi. Don’t try to provide more power than
that.
 You should not try to draw more than a total of 50mA from the 3.3V supply pins.

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 Raspberry Pi

Output of GPIO pins

To set up the output of GPIO pins and to read the input values by using Python, you need
to install RPi.GPIO python library.

Install RPi.GPIO python library

To install RPi.GPIO python library, type the following commands on terminal window of
your Raspberry Pi:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio

Almost all the latest versions of distributions have RPi.GPIO already installed. In that case,
the above commands will update it to the latest version.

I2C Device
Let us check how we can make I2C work with Raspberry Pi.

Case 1: Using Adafruit Occidentalis 0.2 or later

In case, if you are using Adafruit Occidentalis, you don’t need to do anything. Because,
this distribution is preconfigured with I2C support.

Case 2: Using Raspbian

In case if you are using Raspbian, you need to do the following configuration changes:

First, edit the file /etc/modules by using the following command:

sudo nano /etc/modules

Now, we need to add the following lines to the end of this file:

i2c-bcm2708
i2c-dev

Next, we need to edit the file named /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf and

comment out the following line by adding a #:

blacklist i2c-bcm2708
#blacklist i2c-bcm2708

Once done, install the Python I2C library by using the following command:

sudo apt-get install python-smbus

Now, reboot your Raspberry Pi and it will be ready for I2C.

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 Raspberry Pi

Find I2C Address

There is an I2C device attached to Raspberry Pi computer and you want to know its
address.

For this, we need to install i2c-tools as follows:

sudo apt-get install i2c-tools

Once done, attach your I2C device to your Raspberry Pi board and run the following
command:

sudo i2cdetect -y 1

Here, we need to take care about the following two things:

 First, if you have newer distributions then, it is quite possible that it has i2c-tools
already installed.
 Second, if you have an older version 1 board in use, change 1 to 0 in the above
code line.

Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)

Let us check how we can use SPI (serial peripheral interface) bus with Raspberry Pi.

Case 1: Using Adafruit Occidentalis 0.2 or later

In case if you are using Adafruit Occidentalis, you don’t need to do anything because this
distribution is preconfigured with SPI support.

Case 2: Using Raspbian

In case if you are using Raspbian, you need to do the following configuration changes:

First, edit the file /etc/modules by using the following command:

sudo nano /etc/modules

Now, we need to add the following lines to the end of this file:

spidev

Next, we need to edit the file named /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf and

comment out the following line by adding a #:

blacklist spi-bcm2708
#blacklist spi-bcm2708

Once done, install the Python library to carry out communication from a Python program
by using the following command:

cd ~

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 Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get install python-dev

git clone git://github.com/doceme/py-spidev
cd py-spidev/
sudo python setup.py install

Now, reboot your Raspberry Pi and it will be ready for SPI.

Serial Port
Suppose if you want to use the serial port i.e. Rx and Tx pins on your Raspberry Pi board
but, it is used by Linux OS as a console connection. To disable this, we need to comment
out a line in a file named /etc/inittab.

Open this file by using the following code line:

sudo nano /etc/inittab

Now, find the following line by scrolling down at the end of this file:

T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100

Now, we need to use a # to comment out this line:

#T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100

Now, save this file and reboot your Raspberry Pi.

Access serial port from Python

We can also use the serial port i.e. Rx and Tx pins on Raspberry Pi board by using Python.
For this, we need to install PySerial library as follows:

sudo apt-get install python-serial

It is recommended to disable (as we did above) the Raspberry Pi’s serial console before
using PySerial.

Test the serial port

Once you start using the serial ports, you may want to send and receive the serial
commands from a Terminal session. For this, we need to install Minicom as follows:

sudo apt-get install minicom

It is recommended to disable (as we did above) the Raspberry Pi’s serial console before
using Minicom.

As now Minicom is installed, we can start a serial communication session with a serial
device connected to the RXD and TXD pins of the GPIO connector by using the following
command:

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 Raspberry Pi

minicom -b 9600 -o -D /dev/ttyAMA0

Here, in the above command, after -b is the baud rate and after -D is the serial port. We
should use the same baud rate as set on the service we are communicating with.

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 11. Raspberry Pi — Add-on Boards Raspberry Pi

There are ready-made boards with all sorts of components built on. Many companies have
produced such boards. Such boards come with sample code to show us how to use them.

Types of ready-made boards

We have two types of ready-made boards, Raspberry Pi, which are as follows:

 The boards which are designed for making it easy to get access to the GPIO pins.
 The boards with components that have already soldered up.

Styles of Ready-made Boards

The ready-made boards come in following three styles:

Separate boards
These kinds of ready-made boards connect to the GPIO pins via a ribbon cable or your
own wires.

Shield or plates
These kinds of ready-made boards plug into all the GPIO pins and cover most of the area
of the Raspberry Pi board.

HATs (Hardware Attached on Top)

These kinds of ready-made boards are like the shields or plates but contain an additional
identification. Sometimes, it may contain a software so that the Raspberry Pi can read
what they are on start-up and install some software and prepare GPIO pins automatically.

Various Boards
Since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi computer, new boards are constantly being
developed and produced.

Some of the boards are as follows:

The Sense HAT

The Sense HAT, specifically designed for the Astro-Pi mission, allows Raspberry Pi to sense
the world around it. Two ruggedized versions of Sense HAT were flown on the International
Space Station from December 2015. The codes for both the versions were written by
school children.

Following are some of the characteristics of the Sense HAT board:

 It has a 8X8 RGB LED matrix.

 It has a 5-button joystick.
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 It also has sensors to measure acceleration, temperature, pressure, humidity, and

magnetism.
 It also has sensors to measure the gyroscope.
 It has an extensive Python library associated with it. This Python library allows for
easy access to this board.

The comprehensive coverage of using the Sense HAT can be found at

https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-the-sense-hat/.

The Skywriter HAT

The Skywriter HAT is an electric near-field 3D proximity interface, which senses things
floating in the air over it.

Some of the characteristics of the skywriter HAT are as follows:

 You can make gestures with your hands because it can detect the motion of your
hand with X, Y and Z positions.
 It can detect gestures such as flicks right, left, up, and down.
 It can easily detect the circular motion of the finger.
 It can also detect the taps directly to its surface.
 The range of the skywriter HAT has a range of about 5 cms.
 It can also be mounted behind any non-conducting surface.

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The source of the above image is www.magpi.raspberrypi.org

The Xtrinsic Sense Board

The Xtrinsic Sense Board, made in partnership with the component distributors and
Raspberry Pi co-manufacturer Farnell, is a low-cost sensor board. It is somewhat like the
Sensor HAT, but without LEDs.

Some of the characteristics of the Xtrinsic Sense Board are as follows:

 It contains a high-precision pressure sensor. The range of this sensor is 50 to 110

kPa.
 It also contains a 3-axis digital accelerometer and a 3-D magnetometer.

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The source of the above image is www.farnell.com

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12. Raspberry Pi — Third-party Software Package Raspberry Pi

Previously, we have discussed how we can download and install the software on our
Raspberry Pi. It is one of the best things about Raspberry Pi.

Here, we will be discussing some of the software packages in Raspberry Pi.

Penguins Puzzle
This is a 3D puzzle game in which you need to safely escort a penguin to exit without
letting it fall. It has a total of 50 levels. To move around, you can use the cursor keys.
Shortcut key for zoom-out is Z and for reset is R.

Penguin Puzzle is preinstalled with Raspbian but in case, if you want to install or update
it, you can find it on ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install penguinspuzzle

Once installed, you can start playing this game by typing penguinspuzzle on shell.

FocusWriter
FocusWriter, as the name implies, is a word processing software designed for distraction-
free work. While working in FocusWriter, you will only see your writing on screen. To get
the menus for changing the setting and saving your file, you need to move the mouse to
the top of the screen.

One of the best things about this word processor is that you can set your daily goals for
the number of words written per day or time spent for writing. To check your progress or
counting number of words, you need to move the mouse to the bottom of the screen.

To install or update it, you can search it on the ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install focuswriter

Once installed, to get started with FocusEriter, you need to program’s entry in the office
category of the Application menu.

Mathematica
Mathematica, pre-installed on Raspbian, is a symbolic package or Computer Algebra
System (CAS). In Mathematica, you can do anything with numbers, complex
multidimensional graphics, and music.

As it is preinstalled, to get started with it, you need to click the Mathematica icon under
the Programming category of Application menu.

You can expand equations as well as plot graphs with Mathematica.

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RealVNC
RealVNC, a remote access server and viewer software was included in Raspbian on 28th
September 2016. With the help of RealVNC’s new capture technology, you can directly
render content. It can also be used to view non-X11 applications and to control them
remotely.

Steam Link
Steam Link which can be implemented as both hardware and software solutions, supports
the streaming of the Steam content from a PC to a mobile device or other monitor.

In 2015, it was originally released as a hardware device but on 13 December 2018, its
developer Valve released the official Steam Link game streaming client for Raspberry Pi
microcomputer (Raspberry Pi3 and Pi 3 B+).

XInvaders 3D
XInvaders 3D is a game like classic Arcade Cabinates. Similar to another classic game
Asteroids, this game uses the line graphics to put a fresh spin on Space Invaders.

The three-dimensional rendering makes the aliens move progressively closer to you. To
line up your shots, you need to move in four directions. The cursor keys are used to move
in four directions, and you can use a spacebar to fire the shots.

To install or update it, you can search it on the ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install xinv3d

Once installed, to get started with XInvaders 3D, you need to click the icon on the taskbar
to go into the Terminal and then enter xinv3d.

Tux Paint
Tux Paint is a simple drawing program for kids. The tools in Tux Paint help children to
quickly create art on Raspberry Pi computer. It also enables freehand drawing and the
placement of shapes.

The magic tool of Tux Paint can be used to create effects such as brick walls, flowers,
rainbows, waves, and various other creative image distortions. It also has a stamp tool,
which is used to stamp clip art onto the screen. The stamp tool includes animals, penguins,
hats, food as well as musical instruments.

The name of Tux Paint is a tribute to the penguin Tux, the official mascot of the Linux
kernel.

To install or update it, you can search it on the ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install tuxpaint

Once installed, to get started with Tux Paint, you need to click the icon on the Education
category of your application menu.

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Sense HAT Emulator

In the previous chapter, we have discussed the Sense HAT board. Raspbian OS provides
us with an emulator to use Sense HAT. You can get it in the Programming section of the
Application menu.

As the name suggests, the Sense HAT emulator enables us to simulate the I/O of the
Sense HAT, so that we can test how our programs work. It also provides us several sample
programs to get started with.

Check the diagram of Sense HAT emulator below:

The source of the above image is www.raspberrypi.org

Brain Party
Brain Party, a series of fun minigames, is designed to tune up your brain between
programming sessions. To get your “brain weight” score, you need to complete five
randomly selected tests. The puzzles in Brain Party game will challenge your memory,
logical skills, as well as observational skills.

To install or update it, you can search it on the ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install brainparty

Once installed, to get started with Brain Party, you can find it under Games of the
Application menu. You can also get it by typing brainparty in the command line.

Grisbi
Grispi is a free application with the help of which you can keep track of your regular and
one-off payments. It is mainly used to manage your home accounts on your Raspberry Pi
computer. The format in which most of the banks enable us to download bank statements,
can be easily used in Grisbi.

To install it or update it, you can search it on the ADD/REMOVE software menu.

You can also use the following shell command to install/update it:

sudo apt-get install grisbi

Once installed, to get started with Brain Party, you can find it in the Office Category of the
Application menu.

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