Ordered my Raspberry Pi 2 and accessories

Finally, there are stocks for the new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B at RS Components. I ordered one this morning together with one Edimax Wireless Nano USB Adapter and one Raspberry Pi B+ White Case.

The Edimax Wireless Nano USB Adapter and White Case are available for same day despatch, so I got them in the afternoon just now. Pretty fast I must say, however the Raspberry Pi 2 will probably take a couple of days to be delivered. I hope the Pi can be delivered by this Friday so that I can play with this toy during the weekends. I still need to get the MicroSD card as I only have SD cards. I decided to upgrade as the Pi Model B is already 3 years old and is a bit slow to run the programs. The new Pi 2 has 1gb ram and faster 900MHz quad core processor. It has 4 USB slots which are very useful to run many dongles and memory stick. I will need one for wifi, bluetooth, keyboard and USB thumb drive. So, I will be using all the 4 USB slots and I wonder whether the power supply can support this.

I have the bluetooth dongle that I bought from eBay last year. This one is working with Raspbian I think but it is not detected in Openelec XBMC. I remembered there was one version of the older XBMC that detected the adapter but after I had updated to the latest, the adapter was not supported or rather bluetooth support is not well developed for XBMC. In the Kodi version, it is not detected. I will try with the Raspberry Pi 2 setup and update in this blog whether it is supported.

I plan to buy a Pi Camera but it is out of stock till 6 June. I intend to use it as an IP camera but I'm not sure whether it can stream realtime video.

Raspberry Pi 2 White Casing.

The inside of the casing as shown below. There is a slot of the Pi Camera module. It will stick out of the box and you will not be able to cover it. Not really what I have expected if I want to add a camera to it. I will prefer an external holder or cover for the camera which can be positioned in the direction that is required.

Inside of the White Casing

Parts of the Raspberry Pi 2 White Casing

Parts of the Raspberry Pi 2 White Casing

I had this Edimax nano wireless USB adapter in my Raspberry Pi Model B and is still working fine. I chose this because I know that this is one of the working dongles and I'm not willing to fork out some bucks to test other brand. I tested the new Edimax adapter yesterday night and it is working fine. You will need to go to the menu to de-select the wireless connection and reconnect again. When you just removed the existing dongle and replaced the new dongle, it will not detect. So, you have to manually deselect and select the wireless connection again. Just in case, you have similar problem, this will help you solve it.

Edimax Nano Wireless USB Adapter

Still waiting for my Pi 2 to arrive.

The Pi 2 did not arrive yesterday as stated in the RS delivery schedule. It mentioned delivery within 3 days upon ordering. I called up the Customer Service hotline and a lady checked and told me that the stocks did not reach their warehouse as expected. The stocks will only arrive this coming Monday and the earliest delivery date will be Tuesday. I think RS is competing with other authorized dealers and claimed that the order can be fulfilled within 3 days and many people would be ordering from them thinking into account the short delivery time. I hope the stocks will arrive on Monday but I'm not very convinced that I will receive the Pi 2 on Tuesday as there will be couple of hundreds or even thousands of orders and deliveries needed to fulfill. Just hope for the best.

While waiting for the Pi 2 to arrive, I went to buy a MicroSD card with adapter. I was at Westgate and Jem yesterday to catch the Avengers: Age of Ultron. I would normally get my cards from Sim Lim Square as it would be at least $3 cheaper. I do not have the time to go SLS, so I went to the Challenger shop to buy one.  Saw this Kingston 16GB MicroSD card with Adapter @ $18.90. It has a 90MB/s read and a 45MB/s write speed. Not sure how true but settle with this.

Kingston MicroSD card with Adapter

I was expecting the delivery to be on Tuesday. I received an "Enhanced Notification - Despatch" email from RS Components that the order had been despatched on Monday. The courier arrived at around lunch time. The Pi 2 is pretty small as compared to my earlier Model B+. My colleagues were quite fascinated with this device. I told them that the price is about S$47 and they think that there might be copies of this in the TaoBao. I would think that even if there are copied versions, I don't think the software supports are available and extensive as the original. It is already very cheap and I don't think getting two of these. But I think I will reserve the next purchase for the Pi camera or an upgraded version.

Pi 2 delivered to my office

Even though I have played with the Pi before, it is still liked having the Pi for the first time. I placed the Pi 2 into the white casing but it did not fit well. I think something was wrong and quickly figured out that I needed to place the Pi 2 into the baseplate first. This was because there were two latches that the Pi 2 needed to go under. I had placed the Pi 2 onto the cover instead of the baseplate. If you had placed it correctly in the baseplate, you could snap fit the cover over the baseplate. I think after you had snapped the cover/baseplate, the interlock would be tight and you might not remove the cover easily.

After the assembly, I inserted the wifi and keyboard dongles. I plugged in the LAN cable and then the USB keyboard. I inserted the MicroSD card (that I had preloaded with the Openelec XBMC Kodi image). The fitting is just nice and the MicroSD card can be removed easily. My friend had an issue with the MicroSD slot on the same white casing and he had to cut a portion away with a penknife. I plugged in the MicroUSB cable and used my iPad 2 power plug. Switched on the power and Kodi XBMC was up and running in less than 5 minutes. Installed the Add-ons that I needed and I'm now thinking what to do with the old Pi...

Bluetooth dongle (not working with Kodi)

USB ports - taken up by Edimax, Keyboard, Thumb Drive

Power port, HDMI and audio jack

Inside of the casing

MicroSD card slot

Microsoft just released a Windows 10 IoT core insider preview image for Raspberry Pi 2. You can go to https://connect.microsoft.com/ for more information.