Raspberry Pi (树莓派) Guide

The Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They are widely used for education, prototyping, and home automation.

Official Resources & Schematics

• Raspberry Pi Documentation
• Hardware Schematics
• RPi Verified Peripherals

Hardware Overview

Model	SoC	RAM	Features
RPi 3B	BCM2837 (1.2GHz Quad)	1GB	WiFi/BLE, CSI, DSI, 10/100 Ethernet.
RPi 3B+	BCM2837B0 (1.4GHz)	1GB	Dual-band WiFi, GigE over USB 2.0, PoE support.
RPi Zero	BCM2835 (1GHz Single)	512MB	Mini HDMI, OTG USB.
RPi Zero W	BCM2835	512MB	Adds 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1.
RPi Zero WH	BCM2835	512MB	Pre-soldered GPIO header.

GPU & Graphics

Broadcom VideoCore IV / VI. Supports OpenGL ES and hardware-accelerated video decoding (H.264, H.265 on newer models).

• • raspberrypi/userland
    • C, BSD-3-Clause
    • ARM-side libraries for interacting with the VideoCore GPU (EGL, GLESv2, OpenMAX). Note: Modern builds prefer V4L2/DRM.

GPIO Pinout (RPi 1 Rev 1 Example)

GPIO	Phys	Name	GPIO	Phys	Name
0	3	SDA	1	5	SCL
4	7	GPIO 7	14	8	TxD
15	10	RxD	17	11	GPIO 0

Emulation with QEMU

You can test Raspberry Pi images on a PC using QEMU.

• • dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel
    • Shell, MIT
    • Ready-made kernel images for emulating RPi devices in QEMU.

Basic QEMU Setup

# Download kernel and Raspbian image
curl -L https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel/raw/master/kernel-qemu-4.4.13-jessie -o kernel-qemu

# Run simulation
qemu-system-arm -kernel kernel-qemu -cpu arm1176 -m 256 -M versatilepb \
  -serial stdio -append "root=/dev/sda2" \
  -hda 2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie-lite.img

Operating Systems

Alpine Linux

Extremely lightweight, runs mostly in RAM.

• Alpine Linux for Raspberry Pi Wiki
• WiFi Troubleshooting: Broadcom firmware may need manual installation via aports.

Ubuntu MATE

A full desktop experience tailored for Pi.

• Ubuntu MATE for Raspberry Pi
• Installation (macOS):

  sudo dd bs=1M if=ubuntu-mate-16.04-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img of=/dev/rdiskX

Troubleshooting & FAQ

HDMI Issues

If the monitor is blank or flickering, adjust config.txt:

# Force 800x480 resolution
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 800 480 60 6 0 0 0

# Fix HKC 2K Monitor
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
disable_overscan=1
hdmi_cvt 2560 1440 60 3 0 0 0

Low Power Warning (Lightning Bolt)

The lightning bolt icon indicates your power supply is dropping below 4.63V. Use a high-quality 5V/2.5A or 5.1V/3.0A power supply.

Chinese Character Display

# Install fonts
apt-get install ttf-wqy-zenhei
# Configure locale
raspi-config # Choose en_US.UTF-8 and zh_CN.UTF-8

Advanced Tools

• • raspberrypi/usbboot
    • C, Python, Apache-2.0
    • Tool for booting RPi over USB, useful for provisioning Compute Modules.
• vcgencmd: Utility for querying GPU/CPU info.

  # Measure temperature
  vcgencmd measure_temp