Raspberry Pi is exactly the opposite. From the moment you see its shiny green circuit board, it invites you to prod it, play with it, and create with it. It comes with the tools you need to start creating your own software (or programming), and you can connect your own electronic inventions to it. It’s cheap enough that if you break it, it won’t break the bank, so you can experiment with confidence.
Lots of people are fired up about its potential, and they’re discovering exciting new ways to use it. Dave Akerman (www.daveakerman.com) and friends attached one to a weather balloon and sent it nearly 40 kilometers high to take pictures of the Earth from near space using a webcam. (You can read about Dave’s ballooning project in Chapter 20.)
Professor Simon Cox and his team at the University of Southampton connected 64 Raspberry Pi boards to build an experimental supercomputer, held together by Lego bricks. In the supercomputer (see Figure 1-1), the Raspberry Pis work together to solve a single problem. The project has been able to cut the cost of a supercomputer from millions of dollars to thousands or even hundreds of dollars, making supercomputing much more accessible to schools and students. Others have also experimented with combining the processing power of multiple Pis. There's even an off-the-shelf kit you can use to combine four Raspberry Pi Zeros with a full-size Raspberry Pi (the Cluster HAT from Pimoroni) so that you can experiment with running programs across multiple Pis at the same time.
Courtesy of Simon Cox and Glenn Harris, University of Southampton.
FIGURE 1-1: Two of the Raspberry Pi boards used in the University of Southampton’s supercomputer, with the rest of the supercomputer in the background.
The Pi is also being used to make weather stations, fitness gadgets, gaming devices, audiobook players, electric skateboards, and much more, as you discover in Chapter 20.
Although those projects are grabbing headlines, another story is less visible but more important: the thousands of people of all ages who are taking their first steps in computer science, thanks to the Raspberry Pi.
Both of the authors of this book used computers in the 1980s, when the notion of a home computer first became a reality. Back then, computers were less friendly than they are today. When you switched them on, you were faced with a flashing cursor and had to type something in to get it to do anything. As a result, though, a whole generation grew up knowing at least a little bit about how to give the computer commands, and how to create programs for it. As computers started to use mice and windows, people didn't need those skills any more, and they lost touch with them.
Eben Upton, designer of the Raspberry Pi, noticed the slide in skill levels when he was working at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory in 2006. Students applying to study computer science started to have less experience with programming than students of the past did. Upton and his university colleagues hatched the idea of creating a computer that would come supplied with all the tools needed to program it – and would sell for a target price of $25 (about £20). It had to be able to do other interesting things, too, so that people were drawn to use it, and it had to be robust enough to survive being pushed in and out of school bags hundreds of times.
That idea started a six-year journey that led to the Raspberry Pi you probably have on your desk you as you read this book. It was released in February 2012, and sold half a million units by the end of the quarter. By July 2017, there were more than 14 million Raspberry Pis in homes, schools and workplaces, 10 million of them made in the UK. It is, by a large margin, the best-selling British computer of all time.
Getting Familiar with the Raspberry Pi
When your Raspberry Pi arrives, you’ll see that it’s a circuit board, with components and sockets stuck on it, as shown in Figure 1-2. In an age when most computing devices are sleek and shiny boxes, the spiky Pi, with tiny codes printed in white all over it, seems alien. That’s a big part of its appeal, though: Many of the cases you can buy for the Raspberry Pi are transparent because people love the look of it.
FIGURE 1-2: The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (top left), Model A+ (top right), and Pi Zero W (bottom).
Over the years, the Raspberry Pi has evolved, increasing its memory, improving its performance, and adding features. So which one should you get? Here’s an overview designed to help you decide:
❯❯ Raspberry Pi 3 Model B: The third generation of the Raspberry Pi, it represents the best all-round Raspberry Pi at the time of writing. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, it is 50 to 60 percent faster than the previous model, and ten times faster than the original Raspberry Pi. It includes 1GB of memory, four USB ports, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and an Ethernet port for a wired Internet connection. It has 40 General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins, which you can use to connect to your own electronics projects. Like previous Pi models, it's about the size of a credit card. As with any current Raspberry Pi, it uses a MicroSD card for storage. If you're not sure which model to get and your budget allows, get this one. It represents the fastest performance, and offers the best experience on the desktop. Its price is around $35 (about £30).
It’s called the Model B, incidentally, as a tribute to the BBC Microcomputer that was popular in the U.K. in the 1980s. It’s sobering to think that the BBC Micro cost about ten times the price of a Raspberry Pi, which, thanks to 35 years of progress in computer science, has more than 7,800 times more memory.
❯❯ Raspberry Pi 1 Model A+: A cut-down model, it is ideal for projects that need lower power consumption – typically battery-based projects. It is suitable for robots and projects in remote locations, where a wired electricity supply isn’t viable and batteries must be used instead. It does not have an Ethernet socket, and only has one USB port, although you can connect it to a USB hub to use more devices simultaneously. It does have the full complement of 40 GPIO pins, though, so you should find that your projects and add-ons work with it. Like the Model B, it includes an audio output (headphones-style) socket. This model has 512MB of memory and a price of $20 (or £20). The Model A+ is slightly shorter on the long side than the Raspberry Pi 3, measuring 6.5 centimeters by 5.5 centimeters.
❯❯ Raspberry Pi Zero: The Raspberry Pi Foundation astounded everyone when it gave this computer away with the print edition of its magazine The MagPi. The Raspberry Pi Zero measures 6.5 centimeters by 3 centimeters, is extremely lightweight, and has 512MB of memory and one Micro USB port. If you want to use the GPIO, you'll need to solder or affix your own pins, available separately. (You can read about adding GPIO pins to the Pi Zero in Chapter 16.) You'll also need a converter for the Mini HDMI socket, and for the Micro USB socket, so you should expect to spend a bit more than the price of the Pi (and have a bit more complexity in your setup). Billed as the $5 computer, the Raspberry Pi Zero has at times been difficult to get hold of, which is perhaps not surprising given the phenomenal demand for it.
❯❯ Raspberry Pi Zero W: Released in February 2017, the Raspberry Pi Zero W added Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and compatibility with the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. The Pi Zero W costs around $10 (or about £10). If you're happy to solder your own GPIO pins, or you don't need them, the Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero W represents a great entry point to the Raspberry Pi family. After the Raspberry Pi Model 3, the Pi Zero W is our recommended best buy.
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