Adding an On/Off switch to your Raspberry Pi
As most of you know by now, the Raspberry Pi is a fantastic little Linux box with many wonderful features. Over the last year and a bit that the Raspberry Pi has been out in the wild, users have discovered that this little computer can do almost anything – and without crippling your wallet!
However, Raspberry Pi's very small price tag and form factor mean that the Rasp Pi has had to do without some of the home comforts normally found on a laptop or desktop computer – one of these comforts is a power-on and -off switch. The only safe way to shut down the Raspberry Pi is to do it manually using the graphical desktop interface – either with the LXDE power management window or by opening a terminal window and typing in a shutdown or reset command.
Although an orderly shutdown is not a huge amount of work, it often gets overlooked or forgotten, and some users just pull out the microUSB power plug while the system is running. Doing this repeatedly could very easily lead to a corrupted SD card, a completely broken SD card, or even damage to the Raspberry Pi itself.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
Pages: 8
(incl. VAT)
Buy Raspberry Pi Geek
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Related content
-
Android Pi
Your Android device can be a versatile companion for Raspberry Pi. We describe some useful apps to help you make this happen.
-
Uninterruptible power supply for the Raspberry Pi
A sudden loss of power can create critical problems for many applications. To avoid such outages, the Raspberry Pi has a proper uninterruptible power supply.
-
Testing a Pi UPS module
When the Raspberry Pi is connected to a car ignition or the USB port on a TV, you run the risk of data loss with a hard shutdown. The Pi UPS bridges short lapses in the power supply and shuts down your Rasp Pi safely when the power remains off.
-
Starting up the HummingBoard Raspberry Pi clone
The HummingBoard with its quad-core power, larger storage space, and faster interfaces is a strong competitor for the Raspberry Pi.
-
Making your projects more reliable
A watchdog timer is a great way of improving reliability for little cost in small, inexpensive computers such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino.
