Day 2

Keyboard

In the previous article, entitled Day 1, we talked about the SD card as item #2.

The next item on our list was a keyboard. This one is relatively easy, but as always it is a good idea to look at the official list before buying one. The main thing to look at is the power consumption. You will want one that draws 100 mA or less from the USB bus.

Most USB keyboards work without a problem, most Dell, HP, Logitech etc, including this classic Sun type 6 USB:

But wait... USB? that is right. PS/2 keyboards won't work, as the Raspberry Pi doesn't have a ps/2 port. A USB keyboard has a cable like this:

And that end is simply connected to the Raspberry Pi's USB port (one or the other, it doesn't matter). Shown here, the grey cable at the bottom (red is network, black is audio and yellow is video):

But it is also possible to use a wireless keyboard, such as this one:

These have a USB dongle, sometimes with a button. Another advantage is that they also come bundled with a mouse. They use a proprietary protocol, but as far as the computer goes, it sees a regular USB keyboard.

There is one more keyboard type available that can be used with the Pi, and that is the Bluetooth keyboard (shown with a Bluetooth dongle):

 This is both more expensive and harder to use so we will cover that in the future when we talk about Bluetooth.

Next up, the TV.