The Raspberry Pi is a small single board computer, that 4 years ago started a whole new IOT revolution. Costing between Rs 2-4 thousand, depending on the model you pick, it became the defacto choice for most DIY’rs, who wanted a small form factor computer with enough processing muscle.
I purchased a Complete kit off Amazon which includes,
A 16 GB micro SD card – preloaded with NOOBS for easy installation of Raspbian
The Raspberry pi 3 model b
Raspberry pi Black case
HDMI Cable
Aluminium Heatsinks
Ethernet cable
Micro usb power cable
Picked this Kit as it included everything i needed to get the Raspberry PI up and running.
Hardware:
The model before me is the Raspberry pi 3 model b , It’s the latest iteration, and has a 64 bit cpu, inbuilt wifi and bluetooth, which was not the case with earlier models.
At the center of the board in black is the Broadcom SOC( System on a Chip), below it are a micro USB and a full size HDMI port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. To the right are 4 USB ports and the Ethernet port. A SD card slot can be found below the board.
On the Top edge are the GPIO (General purpose Input output ) pins that allow for upgradability, by using other accessory boards.
This version of the Raspberry pi is powered by a 5V micro USB port.
The Pi 3 runs on a 64 Bit quad core Cortex A53 ARMv8 CPU. The basic architecture of the Pi3 is the same as its predecessors, so most tutorials, and projects will continue to be supported by this board.
The major changes in the availability of both Wifi and Bluetooth built in.
Software:
The Pi3 runs on varius flavors of Linux, but the most common is the Debian Jessie Raspbian (2017). You do have a choice to run windows 10 IOT, and also media centres like KODI, XBMC etc.
Continuing on , we have the black plastic case , which is used basically to keep the Pi3 protected, and look a little neater. So let’s insert the components into the case.
I first installed the SDCARD to the bottom of the pi3, in case i couldn’t access it once inside, but i noticed that there’s a hole in the precise location, to allow for easy ejection of the card. The cover was already open, this was because the seller had already installed the NOOBS OS installer. NOOBS is an acronym for (New out of the box software)
Once in the case, i proceeded to connect the Pi3 to a monitor using the provided HDMI cable and power it up with the USB power adapter provided. I connected a wireless keyboard and mouse to the available USB ports, and they were detected without a hitch. The only problem i seemed to have was that the mouse pointer moved very slowly.
The Pi3 loaded into NOOBS, and the option to install Raspbian
Once installed, I went ahead and built the Google Assistant Prototype, which is demoed in the video.
If you want to get into DIY electronic projects, the Raspberry Pi 3 is one of the easiest options available.
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