Visual/audio status/activity indicators

Question

What, if any, indicators of system status or activity are available on the 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, 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 I would like to know that it's working without having to login etc.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.