Makerspace Manual

Raspberry Pi's run off of the Rasbian operating system which comes in many different "flavors" (versions). N00Bs, the most common flavor can just be unzipped onto the mini-SD but other projects made need to have an operating system "flashed onto it". The Makerspace does this using the software, balenaEtcher.

• Our Rasberry Pi uses a micro-SD card in place of a hard drive. To first install the operating system you'll need to put the micro-SD card into the micro-SD to USB adapter and insert the adapter into a PC.
• Unzip N00BS onto the micro-SD card or "flash" the card using Etcher.
• Make sure to set keyboard to the "US" language when first setting up the Pi. This will avoid mis-mapped keys.
• When starting up a new OS installation for the first time, make sure to run the updates. The procedure for this varies based on what "flavor" of Raspbian OS is being installed

When the Raspberry Pi is returned make sure the borrower has copied any personal files off of it before reformatting the microSD card. By reformatting the microSD card, you're removing all the data from it including the operating system (e.g. N00BS, RetroPie).

1. Remove the microSD card from the Raspberry Pi and insert it into the USB-microSD adapter
2. Plug the adapter into any Windows computer
3. When the microSD card appears as a USB drive on the Windows computer, right-click on the drive and select "format"
4. Uncheck "Quick Format" and make sure the File System dropdown reads FAT32 before clicking "Start". Formatting may take some time.

The RetroPie project turns a Raspberry Pi into a retro-gaming machine that can emulate older video game consoles such as the original Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega, Game Boy, etc. While RetroPie itself is perfectly legal, the games in the form of ROMs are more of a gray area. The library is able to use its RetroPie set up only because of its status as an academic institution and the Fair Use Act. 

Absolutely do not give patrons our ROMs, this would be a violation of copyright law.

NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software) is a basic Raspberry Pi operating system. It contains the essentials such as a text-editor, an internet browser, and a learn-to-code program called Scratch. The installation process is (fairly) simple:

1. Download NOOBS as a ZIP file
2. Place the desired microSD card into the USB-microSD adapter
3. Plug the adapter into the computer with the NOOBS file
4. Unzip the NOOBS file onto the microSD card
5. Put the microSD card into the Raspberry Pi and turn the Pi on
6. Select "Raspbian Full (recommened)
7. Make sure the keyboard language is set to English (US) before clicking on the install icon at the top of the window
8. Do not assign a password
9. Connect to our WiFi and update the operating system (this will take quite some time)

Scratch is an easy-to-use, graphical programming language that introduces users to computer programming. Blocks, not text are used to build simple computer programs and animations. Scratch comes along with the N00BS operating system but is compatible with most Rasbian flavors.