All You Need To Know Raspberry Pi

All You Need To Know Raspberry Pi  

Let’s talk about raspberry pies cornerstone of the tinkering community and despite their deliciously deceiving name raspberry pies aren't for a tasty treat they're for computing and programming my friends that's the tasty treat but please don't even hear some programmers they could get stuck in your teeth.

Raspberry pies are teeny tiny super cheap computers with the largest being about the size of a deck of cards and the smallest being slightly larger than a stick of gum.

Well that's incredible will you say but that don't look like any computer I've ever seen

You say again all right let's be real this thing looks like if Quasimodo and Tyrion Lannister's somehow had a baby how can this thing be a full computer.but despite what it looks like it has everything a normal-looking computer has.

Look it's got everything you need to connect a monitor keyboard mouse the Internet heavens to Betsy folks we got ourselves a full-fledged computer.

One setback here though is the most popular computers on the market run Windows or Mac operating systems but the Raspberry Pi runs something called Linux as their desktop operating system.

to be specific it's a version of Linux called a raspbian designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi.but not all pies are created equal there's several different versions and to find out which one is right for you let's give the family a rundown.

Roll call introducing the PI zero this is the run to the bunch it's super tiny it requires a few extra adapters to get everything connected to it but once you do it's great for projects that have very little extra space and while it's the cheapest of the bunch $10 with y5 $5 without it also doesn't have as much computing power as compared to its bigger siblings.

All right it has a faster processor than the PI zero but the same amount of memory a full-sized USB port audio port and a full-sized HDMI port the newest versions even have built-in wireless and Bluetooth and this one is gonna set you back about twenty-five dollars and here we have the model B's series the older wiser PI with all the bells and whistles yes this PI can knit a Hogwarts sweater while saving a cat from a tree it can recite the Canterbury Tales while rebuilding an engine it has four USB ports a full-sized Ethernet jack and up to four gigabytes of memory quad-core processor and the newest versions even support dual monitors that's more power than a lot of laptops have on the market.

Now don't expect to be playing for at night on this thing but starting at $35 it's one of the cheapest decently powered computers on the market alright so having a cheap full fledged computer is cool but let's address the real reason this PI has become so popular.

This little pincushion right here these things are called general purpose input output pins or GPIO pins for those of you guys that don't like long words these pins can sit and receive electrical signals and you can control those electrical signals from the operating system.

Okay before we start wandering too far to nerd topia here what's that mean for the uninitiated

Okay being able to control electrical signals means that you can control a lot of things that use electricity to run so starting out small for example that'd be things like LED lights motors buttons switches radio signals audio signals and even LCD displays.

Just to name a few you could make a display that shows your YouTube subscribers you could even add joysticks and buttons to make your own mini arcade system it's actually pretty limitless what you can do with these GPIO and it takes the Raspberry Pi from the computing world to the physical world.

That's as refreshing as having a campsite with a bidet if you've ever been curious about electronics or programming then the Raspberry Pi is an excellent tool to have in your arsenal and at five to thirty five dollars there's not much of an excuse not to have one so if you didn't know about raspberry PI's before and now you know and you're one step closer to being the master tinkerer that you're destined to be if you made it this far congratulations here's your reward did you know that one of the first computer science PhDs was earned by a nun.