After having read this article you will know everything about the computer in the size of a credit card. The aim of this article ist to give you all the necessary information to decide whether a Raspberry Pi 2B is the best choice for your project.
Hardware Specification
- An ARM Cortex-A7 is used as a CPU. It comes with 4 cores and each of them works at a frequency of 900 MHz.
- The GPU is a Broadcom VideoCore IV. It is good enough to play videos in full HD which is quite awesome for such a little device.
- The Raspberry Pi 2B comes with 1024 Mb of RAM type DDR2
- The storage is expandable via a Micro SD Card
- It has 4 USB-Ports
- The operating voltage is 5V via Micro USB
- HDMI: Yes
- LAN: Yes
- WLAN: No but you can add a USB wireless Adapter
- Bluetooth: No
- AUX: Yes
- CSI: Yes (For installing a camera)
- DSI: Yes (For installing a display)
- Pins: 40
- Length: 85mm
- Width: 56mm
- Height: 17mm
Operating Systems
- Raspbian Jessie Desktop: It is a Debian based operating System with a Desktop Interface. It is an alternative to Windows or OS X desktop Systems.
- Raspbian Jessie Lite: It is also a Debian based Operating System but it comes without a graphical interface. It can be used to build a server because there is no need for a Desktop. For instance, you can run Nextcloud on Raspbian as I did. It just works fine but more on that later on.
- NOOBS: If you want to install more Operating Systems.
- OSMC: To build a Multi-Media-Centre. For more information on that, you can check out this blog post.
- Kali Linux
- Many Many more, maybe I will write a separate post on that topic because there are so many different operating systems.
Useful additional stuff
For some projects, you will need other Features like WLAN or a Camer Module. You can buy these for example on Amazon. I will link some example Products.
USB Wireless Adapter
There is no doubt that Wlan is very useful. Everything gets easier when you don’t have to wire your Raspberry Pi to the Internet Modem. In My case, I use a Raspberry Pi 2 as a Nextcloud and another one as a Multi-Media-Centre. Both of them have a USB Adapter and for me, there is no need to get a faster Internet Connection.
Moreover, these Adapters are quite cheap, to be honest. I have used this one and there were no problems at all.
Camera Module
In another project, I build an outdoor weather station. To collect data I added some sensors but I also wanted a WebCam. So There are many different cameras you can buy, but for me, the official camera module was good enough and practical. Of course, if you want a better video quality than you can also buy a more expensive model.
Some form of protection for your Raspberry Pi
It is not a good idea to run your Raspberry without a case and a form of cooling. In nearly every project I have used this case because it comes with a 5V Power Supply, Passive cooling for the little microchips and a little fan as a form of active cooling.
Of course, If you want to build some form of an outdoor project then this case is not the best choice, for my weather station I have used this case instead. also this is not waterproofed but it is a bit better and the raspberry is not in direct contact with any form of water, because I build a second case around it.
Display
If you want to use your Raspberry Pi as a little Computer and you don’t have the money or space for a bigger monitor, than a touch display may fit your problem. I have used this one, tbh its quite small but for some projects, it doesn’t have to be bigger.
Breadboard and GPIO Pin Adapter
If you want to play with the Pins of your Raspberry than a Breadboard and an Adapter for the Gpio Pins is quite helpful. Especially when you use sensors it is very annoying when you have to solder every cable and you don’t even know if it will work and if not you have to desolder it again.
A few sensors
With a Raspberry Pi and the correct sensor you can measure nearly everything. Because there are so many out there I probably will make another post on that topic. Of course, you can buy a single sensor for example to measure the temperature or the humidity but in most cases, it is cheaper to buy a set with many different sensors. I have bought this one, and most of the sensors were useful.
A few ideas for your first projects
Probably the hardest part of making your project with a Raspberry Pi is finding one. No, not because there are so few. Quite the contrary is the case. There are so many and you probably just have a single Raspberry Pi. I will give you some examples of what you can do with your Raspberry.
Some kind of Network Storage
Probably you know Dropbox or OneDrive, but why don’t you build your cloud? I for myself want to be independent of other services. And storing your data somewhere else isn’t the best idea, at least not for me. So I decided to install Nextcloud on my Raspberry Pi. If you don’t know Nextcloud you definitely should read a bit about it. But in a nutshell, it is a form of cloud which can be installed on a server. The good thing is that you can transform your raspberry pi into a small server. After the installation, I also added two hard drives to get more storage. Both of them are connected via a logical storage system.
To be honest, the performance of this little microcomputer definitely surprised me. Of course, it isn’t as fast as a “real” server, but for me its more than just sufficient. So why don’t you try it yourself?
Build your own weather station
Maybe you want to know some facts about the weather outside without going outside, or in a distant place, which isn’t easily reachable. Then you can build a little weather station with your raspberry. You can collect data about wind, pressure, humidity, temperature and many other things. These data can be shown in your Dashboard, which is reachable from every place which has an internet connection.
Upgrade your old TV to a Smart TV
Have you got an older TV, however, you want to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube without buying a new one? Sounds great, right? And it isn’t hard at all. In my blog post about “Streaming YouTube on your Raspberry Pi”, I explain how to install OSMC on your Raspberry Pi. OSMC is an Operating System that works like a Multi-Media-Centre. You can store Pictures and Videos there, listen to the radio and the great thing is, that there are many different Plugins. Most of them are from TV channels, so you can stream them on your Pi. But there are also Plugins for YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime.
After having installed these Plugins you can watch your favorite series also on your TV. It is also possible to send YouTube Playlists to your Raspberry Pi. So instead of paying for YouTube Premium for being able to watch YouTube in the background while using your mobile, you can also download a Remote for free for your OSMC Device.
Create Continuous Integration with Jenkins
Of course, not many people will need it, but if so, it is a great way to get your feet into Continuous Integration. For all who have never heard of CI in their life before: Continuous Integration can be integrated into a programming project and will check regularly if the code does what it should do. Especially when many different programmers work on the same project this is very helpful.
In my case, I have installed a Jenkins Server — Jenkins is a Software, which works as a Continuous Integration — on my Raspberry Pi. I integrated it into my GitHub Repository and every time somebody commits his changes, Jenkins will start a new build and will check if there are some errors in the code.
It also has an Interface in which you see all the different jobs which were created and if their builds were successful or not. The Interface looks like that:
A few words at the end
Many people ask me, how they should start with the coding on a Raspberry Pi and creating their own projects. I always tell them they just should start with something. Even if you don’t really need a project just do it and learn while doing so. It’s much more fun to check it out yourself instead of reading tutorials how others did it. Don’t get me wrong, I love tutorials and aI read every day many of them but sometimes it looks much more complicated than it is. Therefore I can recommend do start with little things, controlling LEDs with a Python Script or getting Data from sensors and storing them in a database. As time flys by, you will find so many projects which you can do on your own.
I started a few years ago with buying a Raspberry Pi 2B, and also today you can get them quite cheap. If not you have to pay a little bit more for a newer model, but don’t forget you also get better performance. But I will cover that topic in another post. In the first weeks, I just tried what I can to with this little thing. After that, I bought my first book about the Raspberry Pi and the programming language Python. To be honest, it wasn’t that useful at all, but I got many new ideas about other projects that are out there.
So if you consider getting your hands-on projects with a Raspberry Pi then please go ahead, it is not complicated at all and everyone can do some projects.
Thank you for reading and I hope you now know everything you wanted to know about these little computers.
Have a great day,
JL
