The Raspberry Pi is one of the most popular SBC (Single-Board-Computer). If you are interested in this topic, I believe that you’ve finally got a Pi device. I also advise getting all the additional Raspberry Pi accessories to get started with your device.
You’re ready to turn it on and start to tinker around with it. It has its own similarities and differences compared to traditional computers like desktops and laptops.
Today, let’s go ahead and learn how to turn on and shutdown a Raspberry Pi, as it doesn’t really feature a ‘power button’ of sorts.
For this article, I’m using a Raspberry Pi 3B+, but it’s the same for all the Raspberry Pi variants.
How to turn on Raspberry Pi
If you have never used Raspberry Pi like devices, you would probably search for the power button to turn on the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here.
The micro USB port powers the Raspberry Pi and the way you turn it on is by plugging in the power cable into the micro USB port.
But, before you do that you should make sure that you have done the following things.
- Preparing the micro SD card with Raspbian according to the official guide and inserting into the micro SD card slot.
- Plugging in the HDMI cable, USB keyboard and a Mouse.
- Plugging in the Ethernet Cable(Optional).
Once you have done the above, plug in the power cable. This turns on the Raspberry Pi and the display will light up and load the Operating System. You should see a green light blinking periodically.
How to shut down the Raspberry Pi
Shutting down the Pi is pretty straightforward, click the menu button and choose shutdown.
Alternatively, you can use the shutdown command in the terminal:
sudo shutdown nowOnce the shutdown process has started, wait till it completely finishes and then you can cut the power to it.
Again, once the Pi shuts down, there is no real way to turn the Pi back on without turning off and turning on the power. You could the GPIO’s to turn on the Pi from the shutdown state but it’ll require additional modding.
Well, that’s about all you should know about turning on and shutting down the Pi, what do you plan to use it for? Let me know in the comments.
