First step was easy, grab the install image for the Pi via BitTorrent — it was well seeded, so I had that in no time flat. Next step was writing the image to the SD card, which I am ashamed to say was probably harder than it should have been; considering that I’ve been using one flavor of Linux or another as my daily driver OS for 13 years now, I shouldn’t have had such trouble figuring out how to use dd in the terminal window to write the image to the SD card (GUI makes me weak). My first attempt to fit the Pi into the case that was included in the starter kit made me afraid I was going to break it, but after setting it aside a minute, I did eventually figure out how it fitted into place. From there, everything else went pretty smoothly: put the sd card in, powered it up, and connected via wifi from my laptop. Followed the last few steps of setup via ssh, and now I have a default set up working.

I need to do some customization now: need a way to power it off without ssh for those times I’m using it on the go without a devices that I can access it via the shell to tell it to halt, and need to decide if a physical switch added to the case or a hidden and protected webpage will be a better solution. Want to customize the pages it serves to connected users for chat and file sharing. Want to set up bluetooth to connect to a speaker to play back audio. Need to be able to get it on home wifi network, to allow me to be connected to it for shell access while still having access to the internets for irc and forums to access help and tips. Maybe add a QR code sticker to the case that’ll direct people to the landing page since it doesn’t always auto-redirect on my phone (though it does on my laptop),

Overall, I’m pleased that I was able to do a thing and it works. I may buy a larger USB drive and a higher capacity external battery pack, but for now the 16GB drive I already had, and wasn’t using, is enough space, and I don’t expect to run it mobile very much yet, so I can use the existing battery pack I use to charge my phone on the go (ingress eats all the batteries!). Eventually I may upgrade it to a cooler case, or get a second SD card to set up another project.