JOURNEY OF RASPBERRY PI
Part -1 Introduction
In next couple of days I am going to write a series of articles on Raspberry Pi. It will start with introduction and will walk you through flashing an OS and would end up with coding and deploying an IoT project using Python 3.x and temperature/humidity sensors.
What is Pi ?
Raspberry Pi is a palm-sized computer with various models available from $5 to $35 in market. It features system on a chip (SoC) which includes ARM compatible CPU ranging from 700 MHz to 1.2 GHz, VideoCore IV GPU, SD card slot, USB ports and HDMI port. Latest Raspberry Pi-3 model sports on-board Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1 and 40 pin GPIO. More detail on various models and hardware can be found on Raspberry Wikipedia and it’s official Raspberry Pi site .
Which OS it supports ?
Like any other computer, Raspberry Pi needs an OS to run. Shown below is the list of well known supported Pi operating systems at the time of writing this post -
List of OS items is hyperlinked so you can click and visit respective sites for more detail on supported features in ARM version.
Why should I own a Pi ?
It’s usage are endless and this article is not aimed to cover this aspect of Pi. A simple google search will yield many links which have listed many interesting project ideas and How-To’s. I have Non-smart LG LED tv at home and at times I felt the urge to watch youtube videos, online streaming movies or surf internet on my TV. I could connect my laptop with my tv using HDMI cable and it did the needful, I could access internet on bigger screen now. Later I realized that to access internet on TV I am paying heavy electricity bill since both devices are on. A simple search on internet introduced me to this tiny little monster, Raspberry Pi. This is how I ordered my Pi 2 model B + which was the latest model available at that time from Element 14 website at the cost of around Rs. 2900 (INR) and other accessories such as Micro SD card, mini Wi-Fi dongle, HDMI cable and Pi- case. Overall cost for me was around Rs. 4500 then which is now reduced a lot since new Raspberry models come with built-in Wi-Fi and cost has been reduced.
Gradually I started exploring the capability of this tiny device and found out that a lot more can be done using this powerful tiny computer like creating a robot, a drone , a retro game station, IoT controller, Streaming server, Web server, Cloud infra etc. In my next post I will cover how to flash an OS on Raspberry Pi, stay tuned.
