Setting up a Raspberry Pi: Why was this so difficult this time?

I’ve set up my fair share of Raspberry Pis in my time. I think all but one were RetroPis but the process is generally the same.

This Mother’s day my family purchased me a Pi 3B+ and a touchscreen monitor so I could put together a family calendar/info/command center. I figured I’d just throw NOOBS on there and get started. The Pi had other ideas.

I literally went through 6 MicroSD cards. One of which I think is legit corrupted but the others seemed to work fine on my laptop but the Pi would not boot. I tried NOOBs, I tried Raspbian images, I did a little dance as an offering to the Pi gods. Nada.

So here’s my tips on getting a Pi working when things are just not happening. This is all stuff had I done a little more research I would have maybe found from the beginning. But like I said, I had already set up several Pis and didn’t run into these issues. So, whatevs I guess!

1. Download NOOBS or Raspbian from the official Raspberry Pi site.
2. If you are on a Mac use the Unarchiver to unpack any of the zip files (NOOBs or Raspbian, etc).
3. Use Etcher to write your image to your SD card (you don’t have to mess with formatting or anything like that — and this is where I think a lot of my issues lied? lay? laid?)
4. Plug everything in, and if you’re lucky, Bob’s your uncle!

Stay tuned for my family command center! I’m exited!