This blog is a record my configuration steps as well as a very quick tutorial that beginners of Raspberry Pi can refer to. Since the official document is well-developed, I will just list some selected links that might help.
I recently broke my SD card because I mixed up the positive and negative port when connecting LED1602A, which caused an over-hot issue and broke my SD card since then.
1. Burn SD card
After purchasing Raspberry Pi (Model 3B in my case), you must buy an SD card that served as a storage component, like the hard-drive on your PC. However, Raspberry Pi is somehow picky on the type of SD card. The compatibility is listed on this blog and I am using Kingston 16G class 10 micro SD.
The second step is burning an Operating System (OS) into the SD card. I chose Raspbian as my OS and the instructions in here is very useful. After that, you can insert the SD card into the slot on the back of Raspberry Pi and boot it. I recommend you connect it to a HDMI screen and an external keyboard before you boot your Pi.
2. Setup System
For those who do not know, the default login username is Pi and the password is Raspberry.
The first thing to do is to check whether your keyboard layout is correctly setup. Try to type in the command line, if you find symbols like ~@" are mistyped, you may run the command sudo raspi-config, select 5 Internationalisation Options, I3 Change Keyboard Layout, and setup your layout. Mine is Generic 105-key (Intl) PC with English (US) layout. Finally, sudo reboot to make things applied.
I strongly recommend that you setup a directory on home by
mkdir ~/config/
and link every configuration file you have changed into that folder by
ln -s /path/to/your/configuration ~/config
Because after countless changes, you might forget what file you have modified before and keeping them in the same place renders configuration easier.
3. Setup Wifi
To install software on Raspberry Pi, we must first set up the network module. You can connect your Pi with a cable but it is inconvenient to do that. Detailed instructions can be found in here.
A short version is that you can edit the file in (edit as admin)
/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
and register your network with
network={
ssid="The_wifi_name"
psk="Your_wifi_password"
}
4. Update Softwares
Raspbian is Debian-like. Therefore, sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade will do most jobs.
For now, your Raspberry Pi should be ready for developing. Have fun and be CAREFUL when connecting positive and negative ports. :)