When the Raspberry Pi 4 was announced at the end of June, I didn’t hesitate and ordered two Raspberry Pi 4 starter kits from CanaKit on the same day of the release. The 1GB RAM version was in stock, but the 4GB version would ship on July 19. Since I wanted to try both, I ordered them together.
CanaKit’s Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit and official accessories
This is what I saw after unboxing my Raspberry Pi 4.
Power Supply
The Raspberry Pi 4 is powered by a USB-C connector. While USB-C cables are now very common, your Raspberry Pi 4 may not like your USB-C cable (at least for the first version of the Raspberry Pi 4). Therefore, unless you know exactly what you’re doing, I recommend ordering a starter kit that includes the official Raspberry Pi charger. If you want to try the charging device you have on hand, the input is 100-240V ~ 50/60Hz 0.5A, and the output is 5.1V – 3.0A.
Raspberry Pi USB-C charger
Keyboard and Mouse
The official keyboard and mouse are sold separately from the starter kit for a total of $25, which is not cheap considering your Raspberry Pi computer only costs between $35 and $55. However, the Raspberry Pi logo is printed on this keyboard (instead of the Windows logo), and it looks nice. The keyboard also acts as a USB hub, allowing you to plug in more devices. I plugged in my YubiKey security key, and it worked very well. I would categorize the keyboard and mouse as “nice to have” rather than “must-have.” Your regular keyboard and mouse should also work fine.
Official Raspberry Pi keyboard (with YubiKey plugged in) and mouse.
Raspberry Pi logo on the keyboard
Micro-HDMI Cable
It may surprise some that unlike the Raspberry Pi Zero, which has a Mini-HDMI port, the Raspberry Pi 4 comes with Micro-HDMI. They are not the same! Therefore, even if you have the correct USB-C cable/power adapter, mouse, and keyboard on hand, you will likely need to use a Micro-HDMI to HDMI cable (or adapter) to connect your new Raspberry Pi to a monitor.
Case
The Raspberry Pi case has been around for many years, and it might be one of the first “official” peripherals sold by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Some people like them, while others do not. I think putting a Raspberry Pi in a case makes it easier to carry and avoids static and bent pins.
On the other hand, putting your Raspberry Pi in a case can cause the circuit board to overheat. This CanaKit starter kit also includes a processor heatsink, which may help, as the newer Raspberry Pis are known for running quite hot.
Raspberry Pi 4 case
Raspbian and NOOBS
Another item included in the starter kit is a microSD card, which comes pre-installed with the correct version of the NOOBS operating system for the Raspberry Pi 4. (I got version 3.19, released on June 24, 2019.) If you are new to Raspberry Pi and not sure where to start, this can save you a lot of time. The microSD card in the starter kit has a capacity of 32GB.
After inserting the microSD card and connecting all the cables, just power on the Raspberry Pi, boot into NOOBS, select the Raspbian distribution, and wait for the installation.
Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM
I noticed some improvements when installing the latest Raspbian. (Forgive me if they have been around for a while—I haven’t done a fresh install on a Raspberry Pi since the 3 came out.) One of them is that Raspbian now asks you to set a password for your account on the first boot after installation, and another is that it runs software updates (assuming you have a network connection). These are significant improvements that help keep your Raspberry Pi more secure. I hope to see an option to encrypt the microSD card during installation one day.
Running Raspbian updates at first boot
Raspberry Pi 4 setup
It runs very smoothly!
Conclusion
While CanaKit is not the only authorized Raspberry Pi retailer in the U.S., I find their starter kit to be great value for the price.
So far, I am impressed with the performance improvements of the Raspberry Pi 4. I plan to try using it as my only computer for an entire workday, and I will soon write a follow-up article about how far I explored. Stay tuned!
via: https://opensource.com/article/19/8/unboxing-raspberry-pi-4
Author: Anderson Silva, Edited by: lujun9972, Translated by: wxy, Proofread by: wxy
This article is originally compiled by LCTT and presented honorably by Linux China
