Raspberry Pi Tips

Introduction

I started out my Raspberry Pi project as a beginner to all things Pi. There was lots of useful information in the forums, but I still had to learn a lot along the way. Although I don't spell out every detail, this page should help beginners along. All of the "boxes" are text that you will type in, then press the Enter key to submit.

I started with a writeup by PS14 on the forums, then added my own notes and additional sections. Huge thanks to PS14 for his awesome notes!

Install Raspbian Stretch Lite on MicroSD card

Choose the fastest MicroSD card you can for fastest boot times. 32gb is plenty big and reasonably cheap, Class 10 is preferred. I used this one:

• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XYHN68L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On a computer, format the card with FAT32 Download the latest Raspberry Pi Image to the PC

• Stretch Lite - https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Write the image to the SD card using Win32DiskImager

Start Pi and Update OS

• Place the MicroSD card in the Pi, connect a LAN cable to the Pi's Cat5 connection for internet access, and power up.
• You will be asked to login to the device:
  • pispberrypi login: pi
  • Password: raspberry
• Once you have a blinking command line prompt, update to the latest packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

• You will be asked if you would like to continue, press "Y" and press enter
• Once the upgrade is done, clean the upgrade junk

sudo apt-get clean

Tweak the Pi’s config to make it startup and run faster

sudo raspi-config

• Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlighted selection between the options available. Pressing the right arrow key will jump out of the Options menu and take you to the <Select> and <Finish> buttons. Pressing left will take you back to the options. Alternatively, you can use the Tab key to switch between these.
• Highlight #3 Boot Options, hit the right arrow key, and press enter.
• Choose Desktop/CLI as Pi
  • Choose B2 Console Autologin (with this you will no longer need to enter the password every time the Pi boots up) and press enter
• Highlight #4 Localisation Options and hit enter. I live in the Eastern Timezone of the US - customize this to your location.
  • Choose I1 Change Locale
  • Uncheck en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8 by hitting the spacebar
  • Check en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 by hitting the spacebar
  • Hit tab so OK is highlighted and hit enter
  • Choose en_US.UTF-8, hit tab to highlight Ok, and hit enter
  • Choose I2 Change Timezone and hit enter
  • Choose US, hit tab to highlight Ok, and hit enter
  • Choose Eastern, hit tab to highlight Ok, and hit enter
  • Choose I4 Change Wi-Fi Country and hit enter
  • Scroll down to US United States, hit tab to highlight Ok, and hit enter
  • Hit enter
• Highlight #7 Advanced Options
• Choose A3 Memory split and change 64 to 256 and press enter
• Exit out of menu and hit enter with “Yes” selected to reboot
• When the Pi reboots you should now be auto logged in as user "Pi" and have a blinking command line prompt

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

• Inside this file, make the following changes:
  • Append the following to the end of the line:

quiet splash loglevel=0 logo.nologo

• Save the file by pressing Ctrl + X, type Y, and hit enter

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add the following line to the bottom of the file:

disable_splash=1

• Save the file by pressing Ctrl + X, type Y, and hit enter
• If you are not using the Pi’s internet,wifi or bluetooth during racing, you can turn these services off to boot up faster. They are easily turned back on when you need to do updates.

sudo systemctl stop dhcpcd.service
sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd.service
sudo systemctl stop hciuart.service
sudo systemctl disable hciuart.service

When you need to use the internet to update Pi or RaceCapture, simply enable and start the same services.

sudo systemctl enable dhcpcd.service
sudo systemctl start dhcpcd.service