Raspberry Pi is my Digital Cake
Understanding how to serve pi.
What’s in Raspberry Pi?
At its core, Raspberry Pi is an educational tool. In 2006, computer scientist and educator Eben Upton noticed that his students at Cambridge University were being trained to focus on how to use a computer rather than understanding the hidden technical processes. Upton and his colleagues developed the Raspberry Pi as an inexpensive and accessible tool with the intent of returning to the concepts of programming and functionality. With it, his students, and now everyone, can explore and create.
Our mission is to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world. We do this so that more people are able to harness the power of computing and digital technologies for work, to solve problems that matter to them, and to express themselves creatively. www.raspberrypi.org
Can the Raspberry Pi be my digital cake?
The Raspberry Pi is a single-board micro-computers. But fools beware. Though it fits the palm of your hand, its unadorned presentation is not a feature of inability. The “Pi” can perform surprisingly complex functions. It can act as a desktop, a server, or a gaming centre. It can be used to produce time-lapse images or build a robot. And all the while prompting the user to understand the functionality before all else.
The kitchen prep:
This week in Critical Making class, the task was to dive into the world of single-board micro-computers by making something with the Raspberry Pi. Trying to imagine why one would downgrade from a beautiful Graphic User Interface (a.k.a my metallic pink MacBook)to a small and unusual box of plugs, I had to think out of the box. For example, in another class, I am working on the general theme of spaces/ places. Our group is toying with the idea of staging an outdoor public event. For this, I could use a Pi instead of my MacBook. With its portability and an affordable price tag of $30, the Pi is a superb alternative to my MacBook.
So I began to set-up the wee cousin to my laptop. I’d need to connect a mouse, a display and a keyboard.
Although, this looks like child’s play, and I had the dedicated help of a self-less colleague, the hook-up took 90 minutes. Probably so, because we went through the terminal using these instructions. That’s computer-speak for baking a cake from scratch.
The ingredients:
As homely as it appears above, here are the actual ingredients to my digital cake:
- Raspberry Pi (3, 4, or Zero W)
- microSD card (adapter and dongle required)
- The Raspberry Pi Operating System (Raspbian Buster)
- Micro-USB Power Supply
- HDMI Monitor
- Keyboard & Mouse
- Node.js, NPM, Git
- WiFi Connection
The cake rises:
Success! The hook-up has worked. The software and hardware are synched and I’m connected to the internet.
I start at raspberrypi.org. It’s a fun place to gain an understanding of how the set-up works. Although I’m reading instructions on my MacBook, my computer is not involved in the commands. All communications are between the pi, the mouse, the keyboard and finally the monitor. Amazing little piece of equipment!
I use HTML and CSS to write my instructor a birthday card. The instructions peg this as an “easy” project. And I must be improving, because it is! I use trinket.io which lets you “run and write code in any browser, on any device. Trinkets work instantly, with no need to log in, download plugins, or install software”(www.trinket.io). Perfect!
Let’s eat!
I try something a little more involved. I find an animation project on Scratch, an educational tool out of MIT, seeking to bring an understanding of code to everyone. Scratch allows me to import images to the screen and manipulate their speed, trajectory, size and color.
In sum…
I pull back to remind myself how this is different from my metallic pink laptop. The Pi, on its own, enables wifi connection, hardware input (mouse keyboard, monitor), data input (code) and instant processing to produce an output- my animation. Wowza!
Perhaps the genius of the Pi is in its simplicity. No fancy interfaces, no sleek casing- just the hardware and some basic software to keep the user focused on functionality.
Let’s see where this goes…
