Raspberry Pi configuration - lorenzo-campana/bpm GitHub Wiki

Raspberry pi setup

The first thing to do is download the operating system for the pi. The raspberry pi uses a modified version of Debian called Raspbian. For our application we're going to download the previos version of the OS called Raspbian stretch.

You can download the OS image here (Download the 2019-04-08-raspbian-stretch.zip file and extract the image file)

After downloading the OS image we need to burn it on a micro SD card (suggested size 16 GB). In order to do so download and install Balena Etcher. The program is self explanatory: just run the program, select the 2019-04-08-raspbian-stretch.iso image, select the micro SD card (WARNING: the SD card will be formatted) and press flash.

Once the SD card is ready, we can start configuring the pi. First thing we need to do is insert the micro SD card in the its slot. After that we can plug in the pi a mouse and keybord, as well as the monitor through the HDMI port.

The raspberry pi doesn't have a power button; to turn it on, just plug the micro USB cable using a proper power brick.

Once the pi is booted up, follow the instruction to complete the configuration. Once that finished the pi will restart, and you will be good to go!

OPTIONAL: set up a new user

If you want to install EPICS on a different user than the default one, you can create a new user custom_user with the following command:

sudo adduser custom_user

We then need to promote custom_user to superuser by editing the visudo file:

sudo visudo

After the line

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

add the following line:

custom_user    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

after this your visudo file will look like this:

Exit pressing Ctrl + X and save the file pressing Y and then Enter.

Shut down the device

In order to shut down the device remotely, the pi must be connected to the network through an ethernet cable. If the device's IP is registered on the network you will be able to ssh into it from another computer. Open a terminal on the other device and type

ssh pi@bpmswitch1

Enter the password for the "pi" user, and shutdown the machine using

sudo shutdown 0

Wait for the green led to shut off before unplugging the power cable.