WTF is the Raspberry Pi?

So I’ll be raving a lot about this little PC, so I think it’s worth referencing directly in all related posts. What exactly is the Raspberry Pi?

Directly from the Official Raspberry Pi website: The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a capable little device that enables people of all ages to explore computing and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games.

“What’s more, the Raspberry Pi has the ability to interact with the outside world and has been used in a wide array of digital maker projects, from music machines and parent detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infra-red cameras. We want to see the Raspberry Pi being used by kids all over the world to learn to program and understand how computers work.”

A powerful feature of the Raspberry Pi is the row of GPIO (general-purpose input/output) pins along the top edge of the board. A 40-pin GPIO header is found on all current Raspberry Pi boards.

Any of the GPIO pins can be designated (in software) as an input or output pin and used for a wide range of purposes.

For me, the Raspberry Pi is a cheap little computer to be used in some of my projects to make life a little easier, cheaper and most of all, more interesting. You can set up fully working Raspberry Pi from scratch for under a grand!

If you search the internet, there are literally hundreds of DIY projects done by ordinary people like you and me.

As the developers intended, I also recently started using the Raspberry Pi and its basic operating system for learning programming.

About the author

Renier busies himself with improving his English writing, creative web design and his websites, photoshopping, micro-electronics, multiple genres of music, superhero movies and badass series.