I’ve been using the Raspberry Pi Generation 2 Model B for over a year and half now. Trust me when I say the journey so far has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride, filled with a lot of learning, fun, enjoyment , frustration (yeah when shit doesn’t work) and the innate satisfaction that follows when you’ve cracked that nagging problem.
All this while, though, I worked on the Pi2 B without a monitor / TV (didn’t have one) and so had to start with the headless installation. Now this was particularly challenging because :
- No Monitor – which means you need to SSH / Telnet into the Pi from your PC using Putty. (Thank God for Simon Tatham).
- The Pi2 B does not have WiFi – however, this can be overcome by building a bridged connection from your PC
- I have the New Dell XPS 15 and it did not have an Ethernet port (and I wasn’t feeling too rich to spend on a Dell Thunderbolt hub).
Instead I got a Netgear PR200 N300 Trek and used it as WiFi Extender / Hotspot and connected the Pi2 B via Ethernet cable and it worked like a charm! (I could of-course connect the Pi 2 B to the home router – however due to my shared accommodation situation and a bit of a nagging Room-mate – I decided the above approach was much less stressful).
The Pi is really a gift to this generation! the computing capabilities, it offers are immense and great tool for anyone with a hunger to learn and tinker around.
Not to mention, if you cannot afford to buy a Wireless network drive, but really wanted one, you could just build yourself a Low Powered Network Storage Drive using the Pi – all you need is the Pi, an Internet connection and any spare flash drive or USB hardrives you already have.
Some might say that the Pi has its limitations – with ARM architecture, you cannot install a few big applications /software (Oracle Database being one) , but you need to understand is that the Pi wasn’t built to please the power hungry , capacity hogging, heavy configuration giants. It was built to please those who wanted to do a lot but with very little !
So, come on, get your feet wet, your hands dirty with some programming and fun and you have a world to explore.
Visit: https://www.raspberrypi.org/ for more information !
Techno-stu!!!
technologybaba 