Week 2 · Monday, August 31, 2026 · Room D-221
From a bare board to a working Linux computer.
Today you identify every part of a Raspberry Pi, write Raspberry Pi OS to your boot drive (a microSD card or a USB SSD), boot it, give it a name on the network, and prove it works from the command line. These six pages are the whole path.
What happens today
Theory · first hour
Know the board
What a single-board computer is, what each connector on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi 5 does, where the operating system lives, why the GPIO header is 3.3 V only, and why the Raspberry Pi cannot read your photocell on its own.
Lab · two hours
Write, boot, configure, prove
Install Raspberry Pi OS on your boot drive (microSD card or USB SSD) with Raspberry Pi Imager, wire the station, boot, set your hostname and account, connect to the network, then use the terminal to prove the system booted from your drive and to shut it down cleanly.
In the course outline
This is Week 2 of 420-302-VA. Assignment 1 (Git and GitHub, 10 %) is released today and is demonstrated in class in Week 3, Monday September 14. There is no class on Monday September 7 (Labour Day). Week 3 continues on this same installation: package installation, SSH keys, the UFW firewall and VNC. Keep your SSD in good shape; you will use it all semester.
What is on the bench
Each station has a lab PC with its own screen, keyboard and mouse, plus a second screen, keyboard and mouse reserved for the Raspberry Pi. The removable SSD is lent by the teacher at the start of class and returned at the end. Check your kit before touching anything.
Breadboard, photocell, resistors and LEDs stay in your bag today. They come out in Week 4, when Python meets the GPIO header.
Five rules that protect your hardware and your data
Stop and check
- Read the drive label before accepting the erase warning. Imager overwrites the whole selected drive. There is no undo.
- Use the power supply that matches the model. A Pi 5 on a 15 W supply limits USB current to 600 mA and may fail to boot from a USB SSD.
- Never put 5 V into a GPIO pin. The header is 3.3 V logic and not 5 V tolerant.
- Power off before changing any wiring. Rebuild the circuit, inspect it, then power up.
- Shut down from the OS before pulling power or the boot drive. Linux writes to the disk until the last second; cutting power corrupts files.
What you will be able to do by the end of the week
- Name every connector on your Raspberry Pi and say what plugs into it, including which slot or port takes the boot drive and why.
- Explain, in one sentence each, the roles of the SoC, RAM, the bootloader, the boot drive and the GPIO header.
- Explain why the ESP32 reads the photocell and the Raspberry Pi does not.
- Write Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) to a microSD card or USB SSD with Raspberry Pi Imager, with a unique hostname, your own account, the right locale and keyboard, Wi-Fi and SSH.
- Boot from your drive, prove it with
findmntandlsblk, and reach the Raspberry Pi from the lab PC withssh. - Move around the Linux file system, edit a file, install a package with
apt, and shut down cleanly.
These map to the outline's key learning outcome "Securely configure the software environment on a Linux-based device" and to competency 04AC (distributed control systems).
Words you will hear all day
| Term | Plain meaning | Common mix-up to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| SBC | Single-board computer: a whole computer on one circuit board. | It is not a "big Arduino". It runs a full operating system. |
| SoC | System-on-chip: CPU, GPU and controllers in one chip (BCM2711 on Pi 4/400, BCM2712 on Pi 5). | The SoC is one chip, not the whole board. |
| RAM | Fast working memory used while programs run. | Emptied at power-off. It is not where the OS is stored. |
| Boot drive | Persistent flash storage holding the OS: a microSD card in the Pi's slot, or an SSD connected by USB. | Writing an image erases and repartitions the whole drive. |
| OS image | A byte-for-byte copy of a disk: partitions, boot files, Linux, file system. | Imager writes it sector by sector; it is not a file you "copy over". |
| Bootloader | Firmware in the Pi's EEPROM that finds a bootable device and starts Linux. | It runs before Linux and decides whether the SSD is even tried. |
| GPIO | General-purpose input/output: 40 pins for digital signals and buses (I²C, SPI, UART). | Not analog inputs, not 5 V tolerant. |
| Hostname | The Pi's name on the network. Use lastname-pi, with your own family name. | Must be unique in the room, or nobody can find their own Pi. |
| SSH | Secure Shell: a terminal on the Pi, opened from another computer over the network. | It is how you will normally work on the Pi, not an optional extra. |
Where this fits in the course
Week 1 · Aug 24
Git and GitHub
You created a repository and learned the commit workflow. Assignment 1 uses those skills and is released today.
Week 2 · Aug 31 · this hub
Raspberry Pi hardware, Imager, first boot, Linux basics
A configured Raspberry Pi you can reach by SSH is the platform for everything that follows.
Week 3 · Sep 14
Secure configuration
Updates, SSH keys, the UFW firewall, VNC and new packages on this same installation. Assignment 1 demo. Week 3 hub →
Working at home
You can repeat every step at home with a computer that can run Raspberry Pi Imager, a microSD card (or USB SSD) of your own, and either a spare screen, keyboard and mouse or an SSH/VNC connection from your laptop (see Reach the Pi from another computer). The Resources page lists the official documents and the guides this hub draws on.