Raspberry Pi 2 Starter Kit Hookup Guide
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View the updated tutorial: Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit Hookup Guide
MTaylor 
Configuring the Pi
This section goes over configuring the keyboard, ethernet, and wireless (Edimax) modules.
Configuring the keyboard layout
The raspbian distribution comes defaulted to European hardware. For us Yanks, we find the " (quotation mark) symbol is replaced by @ (commercial at) and our number sign # is replaced by the european pound sign £. This can made it aggravating when trying to #define things. Invoke the config tool with "sudo raspi-config" and take the following actions.
Set the default locale for the system
- Select "Internationalisation Options"
- Select "Change Locale"
- Deselect en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
- Select en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8, (Ok)
- Set default to en_US.UTF-8, (Ok)
Change the keyboard layout -- from the Internationalisation Options menu,
- Change Keyboard Layout
- Leave set as: Generic 105-key (Intl) PC (Ok)
- Select Other (Ok)
- Select English (US) (Ok)
- Select English (US) (Ok)
- Select default (Ok)
- Select No compose key (Ok)
- Set Ctrl+Alt+Bksp function (Ok)
Finish with the dialog and get back to the shell
Try the " and # keys at the prompt. It may be necessary to restart the pi at this point.
Configuring the Internet interfaces
A single configuration file, interfaces, configures both wired and wireless devices. Settings that work for the EdiMax 7811Un card were found in a blog post by Jason Theobald. His configuration also enables DHCP listening for the wired connection, which is what we want for most networks.
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
replace "nano" with "leafpad" if you are in x and prefer graphics
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug wlan0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "Your Network SSID"
wpa-psk "Your Password"
Applying the changes ( turning it off and then back on again )
The link should be cycled for the new configuration to take. Rather than shutting down the pi and restarting, use 'ifdown' and 'ifup' to bring the link down and back up.
For wireless connections, use
sudo ifdown wlan0
and
sudo ifup wlan0
For wired connections, use
sudo ifdown eth0
and
sudo ifup eth0