Quick recommendation for a startup system - UK

No reason not to buy separately, except that the Pi's tolerance for cards apparently varies widely. The download and transfer to card is a trivial exercise on any sort of Unix machine, and probably easy enough on Windows.

Specifically microUSB.

Quite possibly. My Touchpad charger certainly does the job.

Depends on what you're planning to store on it. If you're mounting it to a TV, presumably you're mostly going to be playing media from elsewhere on your network rather than on the local storage?

I believe the Pi has a standard Type A.

Roger

The other UK source is RS Components. Prices very similar, I'd stick with CPC.

Some people have had problems with the SD socket, as the card sticks out and is vulnerable. There is somewhere a carrier for a micro-SD which doesn't stick out.

Which OS will you be using?

not tried either

Power in is via micro-usb socket. Latest boards can be powered through either of the main USB sockets. However- Maximum power into micro-USB is about 750mA, max through main is about

or the basic transparent case under £5 and make a bracket - the basic case has screw-head slots.

The pi is full-size, and your monitor is probably full-size also.

There are several sellers on eBay, some of them supplying package deals e.g. RPi, case, SDcard with OS image installed, PSU, cables etc.

Mine have been from ModMyPi, who will sell you a complete outfit with keyboard, mouse, good 2A PSU etc.

Why steal another PSU, although it /should/ work. Personally, I downloaded the OS and put it onto SD card myself, but it's quite cheap to get a card ready-loaded. I would get a model B unless you are looking to develop battery powered applications. A fast SD may well help if you compiling on the RPi, but I've not made any measurements here.

My two uses have been for time serving, and aircraft location reception:

neither of which need a keyboard, display or mouse, so I've been operating them headless.

Not the cheapest way to do it, but Maplin do a kit with everything except the display and (Possibly) theWifi dongle for £79.99. I'm not sure about the dongle, but the kit includes a USB Hub. I'm not sure whether it includes the wifi bits, as I got bored waiting for the page to download on 3G here in delightful Chipping Campden.

For an extra few quid, they'll even sell you a colourful box to put the Pi into and protect the PCB.

I'd recommend downloading and installing yourself. It's cheaper and you can be sure you have the latest image.

Yes. I have two model A's and one B. But that is because I have specific uses where the reduced power consumption on the A is useful, and I don't need the network and extra USB socket.

Yes. Micro USB as used on the Kindle and all recent mobile phones in the UK and EU.

I have used a kindle charger and lead with my Pi. It's a good supply.

CPC also have a "starter kit" £66 inc VAT (SC1278819, try it without the last 19 as well, that number comes from one of their offer flyers).

Kit consists of: 512 kB Model B, PSU and lead, 4 GB SD card preloaded with Wheezy, 2 m HDMI lead, 7 port USB hub, UK mini keyboard, optical scroll mouse and WiFi dongle.

Thanks - got HDMI lead, 4 port USB hub, wireless USB keyboard set.

Had a quick look but they seem a couple of quid more expensive than CPC.

Thanks anyway - I haven't checked out everything so they may have some cheaper stuff.

Cheers

Dave R

I haven't decided which OS - I have assumed that I can use a boot loader such as grub to give me a choice of which to load.

One reason to get a bigger SDHC card.

Cheers

Dave R

You might want to check out the NOOBS package from the Raspberry Pi organisation at:

Some idea of card size: I have Debian Wheezy installed on a 4BG card, with a few additions (libtermcap, the microEmacs text editor, some of my own libaries and the CVS source version management package). Its also fully patched as of last Friday. This leaves about 1.9 GB free on the SD card.

Yeah, if you go a straight Debian Wheezy install 4GB may do the trick. If you go for NOOBS, 8GB may be better. However, if you intend to put a multi-GB music and video collection on it, still more will be a good idea.

I and apparently others have had a few compatibility problems when trying to put the OS on the card. Not the Pi's fault; I had some cheap 32GB micro SDHC cards which plugged into one or two different SDHC to SD adaptors which in turn plugged into one or two different USB SD card readers which I plugged into a laptop. Odd problems with writes which didn't succeed, or appeared to succeed but produced a card which wouldn't boot. Eventually I found a combination which worked.

Thanks (and to all other posters).

I have decided to go with a known brand 32GB SDHC 10* card and cope with the sticking out bit.

Kind of silly that the card costs nearly as much as the computer but I use similar cards in my cameras (still and movie) and am happy to pay that cost for them so it seems churlish to go cheap on the one for the Pi.

Cheers

Dave R

CPC offer a 1A or a 2.1A PSU.

Now I've read that the micro USB shouldn't be able to pull more than 0.75A so in theory a 1A PSU should have some headroom.

Is it worth going for the 2.1A PSU just to make sure there is loads of spare and it isn't running anywhere near capacity?

Cheers

Dave R

Could you please try something for me? Could you take a combination that does not work, and try it again, and press slightly the SD card against the slot, while booting? I mean, push slightly on the flat top of the SD card where the contacts are?

I suspect that not compatibility issues are the problem but only mechanical issues about contacts.

Thank you very much, Kurt.

On 07/06/2013 11:15, David.WE.Roberts wrote: []

You could try:

which is a little cheaper. Most of my RPi cards are using 4 GB SD cards

- you have a much higher media storage requirement than me!

Personally, I will not buy SD cards from eBay following the experience I had a couple of years ago when a "32Gb" one turned out to be a fake. Fortunately, the vendor refunded my money, but I'd rather pay slightly more and be sure that I'm getting the real thing. It was a very convincing fake, BTW.

On 07/06/2013 12:09, Huge wrote: []

I would certainly not go to the lowest price on ebay, that's not a good idea. Any cards I buy with h2testw:

My most recent SD cards have been through Amazon, but I would still test! One came from Switzerland when it appeared to be a UK vendor. Cards from SkynetShopping were OK.

Only if you're also planning to bypass the Pi's polyfuse, I'd have thought. It's only going to draw a whole amp if things are going seriously wrong.