Prerequisites
For this tutorial, I’m going to assume that you’ve got enough hardware to get started. And if you got your Raspberry Pi as part of a kit, then you should be good to go. You should have the following:
- Raspberry Pi board
- Raspberry Pi power supply (micro USB Output 5V DC 2.5A Regulated, Input 100V to 240V AC)
- Raspberry Pi case (not technically required, but I definitely want to protect my pi!)
- Micro SD card (at least a class 10)
- HDMI cable (full size, male to male)
- Monitor or television capable of displaying output from a full HDMI port
- USB-A mouse
- USB-A keyboard
- A computer
- A micro SD card reader
Download your OS
You can run tons of different operating systems on your Raspberry Pi, but for this demo, we’ll go with the OS officially supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation called Raspian (based on Linux Debian). You can download the operating system here. Once you have the operating system downloaded, you’ll want to head over and download the latest version of Etcher.
Etcher is a great, simple, open source software used to create bootable media. Use Etcher to select your downloaded copy of Raspian. Next, select your micro SD card as the volume to burn to. Then click go! It will take several minutes to write the OS to the micro SD and then validate the burn. Once it’s complete, eject your SD card and you’re ready for the next step.
Boot your new Raspberry Pi
With your freshly burned SD card inserted into your Pi, connect the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and plug power into your pi. There isn’t a power button on the pi, so as soon as power starts running through the board, it will automatically start the boot process. You should be greeted with a simple setup wizard to help you configure some settings that will be applied every time you boot your pi in the future.
That’s it! Enjoy your new Pi!