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What, if any, indicators of system status or activity are available on the R-Pi?

Audio - I'm talking about a beep when it's turned off, or a series of beeps indicating POST information etc

Video - Does it have a power on LED, what about a disk activity LED etc like you get on the front panel of a lot of PCs etc.

If none, are there any peripheral options available to connect via USB in order to present such information?

I am considering a headless project for use in-car (continuous loop recording of audio, parking sensors etc) and would like to know that it's working without having to login etc.

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2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

The Pi does not have any onboard speaker, so there are no power on/off sounds. The main indicators are the lights on the front corner of the board. These are:

  • OK (green): The board is active (blinks off when accessing the SD card)
  • PWR (red): The board is successfully powered from USB
  • FDX (green): Network is full-duplex
  • LNK (green): The network cable is connected (blinks off when transferring data to/from the network)
  • 10M (yellow): Lit when the board is using a 100Mbps link, not lit when using a 10Mbps
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The 10M is incorrectly marked on the board - it's should be 100M and should be lit on a 100Mbps connection. – Nick McCloud Jun 12 '12 at 21:29
You're right... I knew that and got it the wrong way round, thanks :) – MattJ Jun 12 '12 at 21:30
up vote 3 down vote

There is no audio beep.

There is a red power LED. There is a green SD Card activity LED. There are LEDs for the network interface. None of them are best placed to take out to the surface of a case.

However, it is relatively easy to connect some LED's to the GPIO and write a script to turn them on & off on at various stages of booting and/or running.

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