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Raspberry Power

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After sitting on the sidelines of the Raspberry Pi revolution for a few months, I recently picked up a model B from Newark. (There were a 100 units in stock a few days ago but as of this time, they are showing 0 in stock.) I wanted to complete the accessory setup with minimal wires and maximum portability. Newark offers a host of suggestions for each accessory but I decided to get parts separately.

Here's the setup I chose:

  1. SD Card: An old Patriot 4GB SDHC card but Fry's has a Samsung 8GB micro SDHC card (with the SD adapter) for $4.99.
  2. OS: Raspbian “wheezy” available from the Raspberry Pi downloads page.
  3. Keyboard/Mouse: The cheapest wireless keyboard/mouse combination at Fry's which happened to be an iConcepts 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse for $14.99. The dongle that connects to USB is tiny!
  4. Wi-Fi: I decided to skip the wired interface and instead got the Patriot Mini Wireless-N USB Wi-Fi adapter for $14.99 at Fry's. The adapter is quite small (see picture of the full setup below).
  5. HDMI cable: Again, the cheapest at Fry's - a 6ft HDMI cable for $6.99.
  6. Power supply: This is one place where I didn't want anything that had to be connected to the mains. I want to use the Pi eventually for portable applications and the best alternative seemed to be the portable chargers for mobile phones. After some hunting, I settled on the Concept Green CG2000-B portable charger. This one came with the micro USB connector (in addition to mini USB and iPod/iPhone) making it ideal for the Pi. The CG2000 charges via USB (mini USB to USB port on a computer) and discharges via USB to micro USB. This one was $19.99 at Fry's but is also available online for a little cheaper.

All-in-all, that added $62 to the base $35 price of the Pi. Here's the end result:

I'm quite happy with the setup and now it's time to build something fun with it :-)

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