Raspberry Pi 3 Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the red LED on my Raspberry Pi blink?
The power supply's voltage is insufficient. Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and B+ requires at least 5.1V at the MicroUSB pin at all times. When the current increases, Impedance also increases causing further voltage drop. You will also see a rainbow colored square or lightning icon on the top right of your display.
If you are using the Raspberry Pi 7" Display, make sure to connect power directly to the Raspberry Pi board and then power the display using the 5V pins on the 40 pin header. If you connect power to the screen and power the Raspberry Pi board from the screen, you will experience low power issues.
Why does NOOBS not work on my 32GB/64GB/128GB/256GB MicroSD card?
By default, SDXC MicroSD cards use the exFAT filesystem in order to support partitions over 32GB. This filesystem is patented by Microsoft and is not supported by the Raspberry Pi. You need to reduce the size of the partition to below 32GB and format the partition as FAT32. An alternative to using NOOBS is to flash the Raspbian images directly. This saves time and hassles of setup.
Why does my MicroSD card work on my old Raspberry Pi and not my new Raspberry Pi?
This is operating system specific but usually because the kernel and device tree on your images do not support the newer model. It may not display anything or show up as a full screen rainbow colored square if this is the case. If you are using Raspbian, you can update it via sudo apt-get dist-upgrade in your old device before powering off and inserting it into your new device.
Why does cpuinfo show ARMv7 (32-bit) instead of ARMv8 (64 bit) in Raspbian?
Raspbian is a 32-bit operating system created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. In order to maintain backwards compatibility and share the same executable files for older Raspberry Pi boards, the code is compiled for ARMv7 instead of ARMv8. This means that the kernel and userspace software will show everything as 32-bit instead of 64-bit. In order to run in ARMv8 mode, we recommend using an ARMv8 operating system like Ubuntu or Debian.
Why doesn't the headphone port work?
It is not a headphone jack! The 3.5mm jack is a TRRS jack for CVBS (Composite Video Baseband Signal). Think yellow, white, red RCA connectors. Do not try to use it with headphones!