First Steps

A place to let users know of the hints and tips you have discovered whilst playing with your CrowPi
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g7jjf
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:19 pm

First Steps

Post by g7jjf »

Hi,

I thought I would start by detailing my first steps and experiences when using my new CrowPi.

After booting up the CrowPi, the first thing I did was to run the apt-get update/upgrade cycle. Unfortunately, this bricked my CrowPi as the process ran out of disc space during the install stage and made my Pi un-bootable. So, I had to un-screw the Pi to remove the SD card so I could re-flash the image. I downloaded the latest image file from the bottom of the page at https://www.elecrow.com/crowpi-compact- ... l-kit.html and used the Pi imager software available from https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbe ... g-utility/ to write it to the SD card. Once this was done, the Pi booted again with no problems and had the added benefit of having the latest buster distribution installed.

So, I checked the SD card and noticed that even though the card was 32GB, the image was only using 8GB. I installed gparted and extended the rootfs partition to use the entire card. After doing this, I now had 19GB free space which should last me for a while.

The next thing I did was to install VNC Viewer on my desktop so I could remote into the Pi. On the Pi menu, I had to go into Preferences -> Pi Config -> Interfaces and enable VNC. I could then connect to my Pi from my desktop but only got a small screen. A Google search came up with the following command :

Code: Select all

vncserver :1 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24
which allowed VNC Server to connect to 192.168.1.xxx:1 and run the Pi desktop in full screen mode. Much better :D

Finally, I tweaked the system font on Preferences -> Appearances Settings -> System -> Font to PibotoLt 10 to make things a bit smaller on the CrowPi but show more information.

After that, I think things were ready to go and I started to check out the lessons and make stuff work on the development board.

Please share your initial dabblings with the CrowPi and let everyone learn from our own experiences.
2600Sam
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:04 am

Re: First Steps

Post by 2600Sam »

you didn't need to install GParted
from the terminal, you could have used

Code: Select all

sudo raspi-config
used 7 Advanced Options
then A1 Expand Filesystem
<Back>
<Finish>
and reboot
g7jjf
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:19 pm

Re: First Steps

Post by g7jjf »

Didn't realise that.

That's the whole point of this forum, to share knowledge :)
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