Step 4: First Boot
Now you wait. The Pi does everything automatically.
What's happening
Once power is connected, the Pi goes through these stages on its own:
| Stage | What's happening | How long |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boots up a tiny installer from the SD card | ~10 seconds |
| 2 | Reads your WiFi credentials from settings.txt | Instant |
| 3 | Connects to your WiFi network | 10-30 seconds |
| 4 | Downloads the full Palpable operating system | 1-3 minutes |
| 5 | Installs the OS and reboots | ~30 seconds |
| 6 | Connects to the cloud and registers to your account | ~10 seconds |
Total: about 3-5 minutes the first time. After this, reboots only take about 30 seconds.
Watch the status LED
The Pi has a small LED that tells you what's going on:
| What the LED does | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Stays on (solid) | Booting up | Wait about 30 seconds |
| Blinks slowly (once per second) | Connecting to WiFi or the cloud | Wait -- it's working on it |
| Blinks fast (4 times per second) | Something went wrong | See below |
| Turns off | All good! Setup is complete | Move on to the next step |
If the LED is blinking fast
Something went wrong during setup. The most common causes:
- Wrong WiFi password. Generate a new setup from the Palpable app (Devices > Add Device), double-checking the password.
- 5 GHz network. The Pi only supports 2.4 GHz. Make sure you entered the 2.4 GHz network name.
- Router is out of range. Move the Pi closer to your router.
- Wrong country code. If you changed the country code during download, make sure it matches your actual country.
For more help, see Troubleshooting.
To try again: Power off the Pi (unplug USB-C), fix the issue (re-download setup if needed, re-copy to SD card), then power it back on.
After this step: The LED is off, meaning the Pi is running and connected to the cloud.
Next: Step 5: Open the App →