Preparations

Well my Pi has made it to Kansas, so time to start thinking about what else I am going to need.  I have already assembled the below collection:

Which is a mini mouse which I picked up for $5 somewhere (not the best mouse to use, but it's Red!); a USB pen drive I got for free from a work conference and a USB cable which came from a old Nokia phone I used to own.  I need to check my USB power converters to make sure I have one which will delivery enough current.

My plan for the Pi is to use the USB pen drive to store all my work and files on then have a number of SD cards which I can try different O/Ss on.  That way all my actual "work" will be safe on the pen drive and I can reflash the SD cards as often as I want.

Additionally I think I need the following:

• A keyboard.  I have a wireless one on my mac, but figured I'd pick a basic wired one to avoid any driver issues and to save having to keep switching the dongle over.
• A SD card. One will be enough to get me going then I can buy more once I am sure they work.  I can't quite find what the minimum size needed is but I think a 2 Gig one will do me.
• A USB hub.  With my above USB drive plan I am going to need one more USB port than the standard two that are on the B model.

Time to make use of my Amazon Prime two day shipping!

I ordered the below:

AmazonBasics Keyboard $10.77	AmazonBasics Class 10 4 GB SD Card $5.49	Belkin USB Hub $6.94

(Please not that the above prices are what I paid and not necessarily what they cost now.  If you click the above links and buy anything then I will get a commission which will promptly be used to buy more Raspberry Pi accessories.  If you don't like that then please don't click the links!)

So another $22.75 on top of the $35 I paid for the Pi.  Still looking like a cheap computer to me!

A couple of things to mention:

• It seemed much more economical to get a 4 Gig SD card than a 2 Gig one.  So I upgraded.
• After I ordered this lot I saw some comments on the RasPi forum which suggested buying a powered USB hub as the Pi can only supply so much power.  I think I will be OK with my initial setup, but maybe I'll need to upgrade at a later date if I want to start adding extra USB devices.

This lot should be with me tomorrow, look out for a full compatibility report when my Pi reaches me on Monday.