Kind of an odd title. I thought it was more interesting than, “Playing with PI”. Raspberry PI, that is.
For the uninitiated, the Raspberry PI was designed to be a low cost way for students to learn about programming, at a very low cost. What has come out of this ideal is an amazing powerful piece of technology, with amazing possibilities.
The average PI board costs around $35. A full kit that comes with the board, power supply, case, SD card (the hard drive for the device), heat sinks for the processor and GPU and cables runs between $75 and $120, depending on variations in the kit, and the version of PI used. The boards have an HDMI adapter (to make it easily usable on about any modern monitor), a headphone 1/8″ trs jack (which works well with external speakers), an Ethernet adapter, and four USB jacks. Most also have on-board jacks for connecting small LCD screens.
There are also a set of GPIO pins, allowing custom peripherals to be easily added. These can be used for input and output. They can be used for inputs as simple as buttons or proximity sensors, or outputs to relays or LED’s.
Most users use Raspbian as the Operating System on Raspberry PI’s. Raspbian is a stripped down version of Debian, with a modified Kernel to run efficiently on the small platform.
Other Operating System options include Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu Server, Windows 10 IoT Core, OSMC, LibreElec, Mozilla WebThings, PiNet, RISC OS, Weather Station and IchigoJam. As this exists in the Open Source world, new options pop up all the time.
There is much more software available for the Raspbian distribution, though if you’re familiar with Linux, most of the software can be adjusted to these other Operating Systems.
When I started working with Raspberry Pi, the current model was the Pi 2 Model B. The downside to this device was the lack of on-board WiFi. Adding WiFi turned out to be more of a headache than I had hoped for, due to cheap Chinese USB/WiFi dongles, with bad drivers.
With the introduction of the Pi 3 Model B+, WiFi comes built in, and works beautifully. This is currently my favorite board to work with. Earlier this year, the Pi 4 Model B came out, in 3 flavours, dependent on memory size (1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB). It offers a much beefier GPU, that can handle 4K delivery.
For most of my projects, the PI 3 Model B+ hits all the specs I need. It’s the same price as the Pi 4 1GB, but there are some support issues with certain libraries and the Pi 4 (which you should see resolved over time.
Another device I’ve been playing around with is the Pi Zero and Pi Zero W. The Pi Zero is a smaller format (and less powerful) version of the Pi. It’s also even cheaper. The Pi Zero W includes WiFi on-board. The GPIO pins can be soldered in, if you need them. There is also a Pi Zero WH that has them pre-soldered.
The Pi Zero may be less powerful, but it’ll still play video (4K is not an option).
Here’s a list (with links) of the models I like to play with: