Article reprinted from: Assembling the Raspberry PI 4B and installing the system

I had heard of raspberry Pie for a long time, but thought it was just a toy and didn’t have much interest in playing with it. These days I want to get a backup and remote access scheme at home, and I came up with the small, low power raspberry PI. The Raspberry PI 4B, which was released in June this year, has four cores and a 4G configuration, which is enough to meet the common needs of all kinds, so taobao immediately started to struggle with the journey.

Because this is the first time to contact the raspberry pie, this article briefly introduces the raspberry pie and its assembly and installation system steps.

What is raspberry pie?

The Raspberry Pi was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the UK with the initial aim of promoting computer programming education in schools with affordable and open source software. Raspberry PI’s official recommended operating system is Raspbian, which is based on Debian. Ubuntu, Fedora, Windows Lot and more can also be installed. The hardware uses ARM chips from Broadcom (the company that’s so badass about to buy Qualcomm), custom versions of the memory, soldered to the motherboard. There have been nine PI models released so far. The latest version is the 4B, with a quad-core CPU and up to 4 gigabytes of memory, usb 3.0 and Bluetooth 5.0. Here is a comparison of the raspberry PI 3B+ and 4B hardware configuration (from taobao seller) :

There is currently no raspberry PI 4A and no Raspberry PI 4B+.

What does a raspberry pie do?

According to the official tutorial, as well as some of the most popular photo shows on the web, raspberry PI’s main playways include:

  • Learn Linux and programming
  • Personal website, code hosting and other network services
  • Home NAS/Private cloud
  • Offline/remote download machine
  • Combined with peripherals of robots, cars, audio, LED, etc
  • Intranet penetration, DNS, and transparent proxy

The raspberry PI uses I currently have in mind are: personal code hosting, private cloud and Intranet penetration.

What alternatives/competitors are there to raspberry PI?

Based on my personal understanding, the following products can (partially) replace raspberry pie:

  1. Orange PI. Domestic open source hardware that mimics the Raspberry PI, is cheaper than the Raspberry PI, and previously had higher hardware specs than the Raspberry PI (4B specs followed). Raspberry PI has a large community, while Orange PI has less influence and fewer people playing. No one may be able to answer your questions.
  2. The Arduino. As an open source software and hardware platform, I think the main differences between raspberry PI and Raspberry PI are as follows: Raspberry PI is a general programming microcomputer, while Arduino is a dedicated/industrial microcontroller.
  3. Routers with Merlin firmware. You read that right. It’s a router. Before choosing the Raspberry PI, I also considered getting an Asus router (the failed pole router was also my taste) and a Merlin system, which could do a lot of the things I wanted.

That’s the brief introduction of raspberry PI. Now let’s start the assembly and system installation of raspberry PI 4B.

Assemble the raspberry PI 4B

Based on the hardware

The raspberry PI 4B official basic edition I bought from Taobao contains the following items:

  1. The main board:

    Front view of motherboard, CPU and memory have been welded on the motherboard:

  2. Official Type C power supply:

  3. Official shell:

    The enclosure bag contains the complimentary heat sink:

  4. 16GB SD card and a USB card reader (the reader is not pictured) :

Raspberry PI 4B supports dual-screen 4K video, but the video port is changed to Micro HDMI. Therefore, I also bought a Micro HDMI to HDMI female adapter from Dogeast (8 yuan) :

This is all the hardware purchased online, of course, they also have to take out the monitor, mouse and keyboard to complete the work.

Next, assemble the raspberry pie.

Assemble the raspberry pie

Because to install heat sink, first understand the layout of raspberry PI 4B motherboard (picture from taobao seller) :

The seller gave me five heat sinks, and I stuck the heat sinks on these hardware: CPU, memory, USB management chip, wired network card and wireless network card. The post effect is as follows:

The white part of the radiator fin is used to stick on the housing for anti-slip (similar to the four black circles in the four corners of the mouse), and is not shown here.

Unfortunately, the seller did not give the screws to fix the motherboard, directly put the motherboard in the case may easily fall out.

Here are the steps to install the operating system for the Raspberry PI 4B.

Raspberry PI 4B installation system

Because the seller sent is a blank SD card, the card inserted into the motherboard, after powering on the monitor nothing. In order for PI to work properly, the operating system must be installed, and NOOBS is recommended for beginners. The operation steps are as follows:

  1. Insert the SD card into the card reader, which is connected to the USB port of the computer;
  2. Download NOOBS from the official website. Due to the domestic network environment, it is strongly recommended to download the offline version of NOOBS, do not use NOOBS Lite online installation!
  3. Download and install the SD card formatting software. Windows and other systems have the function of formatting sd cards, but the performance of that format card is not good, so the official recommendation to use the SD Card association provided software;
  4. Open sd software, select SD card and Quick Format, click “Format”, a few seconds will be good;
  5. Decompress the downloaded NOOBS compressed file to the SD card root directory.
  6. Pop up the card reader, remove the SD card from the card reader, and insert it into the raspberry PI motherboard;
  7. Raspberry PI has power, keyboard, mouse and monitor. Note: The micro HDMI port should be the first one (near the power port), otherwise the display may only appear as the following “rainbow” screen:
  8. Select the system and software to install from the screen that pops up. If you are offline, check the first “Raspbian[RECOMMANDDED]”. If you’re a veteran, raspbian Lite is a lightweight, graphics-free alternative:
  9. NOOBS then writes the system to an SD card, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on how the system is installed and what it does.
  10. After the system is installed, the system prompts you to restart.
  11. If you have a desktop version of Raspbian installed, restart it and it will automatically go to the desktop:
  12. The Settings boot will pop up next. Before this, it is strongly recommended to open the terminal and change the official software source to Tsinghua Source. For detailed operations, please refer to the official guide. After setting the source, set the region, language, password and so on in the boot screen, and then update the system.

So far the system installation is complete!

reference

  1. Wiki: Raspberry Pie
  2. Setting up your Raspberry Pi