I have finally got a Raspberry Pi.  There are many reasons for the delay, not least because we’re not exactly short of computing resource in this house 😉

In fact, since it turned up on Saturday, I’ve been playing with it in my office.  I am reasonably lucky this weekend: my house mates (son and husband) are focused on some game that’s coming out tomorrow and my husband is clearing the gaming decks for it and the kid also has revision.  I am left to my own devices.

Starting out with a Pi

I ordered a Type B Pi (with 512MB RAM and a second USB port) and a 16GB SD card for the OS, in fact it came with the OS images pre-installed.  The Raspberry Pi was created to allow an easy route in to programming, much like the programmers of my generation had when we started, that ’80s vibe.  Hence, the Pi is a cheap computer that doesn’t need a dedicated monitor, it will plug in to the HDMI slot on TV’s or use the composite input from old CRT TV’s (much like a DVD player).

It is powered from a microUsb port, like almost all smart phones these days.  It doesn’t come with the power supply or a keyboard or mouse, but these can be bought from supermarkets these days, so that’s not too difficult.  It has an Ethernet port for network connectivity.  Again, no cable, but in the UK, your internet provider has probably supplied a few cables with the hub for your broadband.

So by 1040, I was up and running.  Well, when I say running…

I was not expecting to have to install the operating system on the specially bought SD card. yet here I was with a choice of 7 operating systems.  For my purposes (I am using the Pi to help some 11-14 year old students learning how to programme) I chose Raspbian, a Pi port of Debian which is a type of linux.  They are using Raspbian on some Pi’s they were given by Google.

This took 35 minutes to build and install and two reboots: in the meantime, I went and bought the Pi a case.  Maplin sell a couple of a £6 and I could pick it up from the local store 30 minutes after paying for it by payPal.  If I’d been prepared to wait, you can pick up a case from Amazon for £4.

I got home, dressed the Pi and booted it for the first time to the Raspbian X windows screen.

The reason for the Pi is to teach, so there are a few sites out there with interesting and accessible projects.

I now have scripts enabling the background library and programme installs to make those projects fly.

Thoughts

I have used Fedora linux for a number of years which has denied me some of the cooler programmes accessible to Debian users and the Pi opens that all up to  me.  From that point of view, I have already had a lot of fun.

And for straight programming it comes with a suite of languages, including Java and Python.

Some of the cooler projects require preparation.  I have now scripted these, including one to build a lamp environment (linux, apache, mysql and php) so I can teach web design and programming.  I have scripted this as otherwise each student would need to enter in 10 lines to install the right programmes and install them.  Given the 30 minute slot once a week, with 8 Pi’s to prep: that would be time consuming and is it what I want to be doing with the high school students.  My thoughts are, for a computer scientist, that is a great introduction, for a high school students it may be difficult and potentially put them off.

But everything seems to run and just work.  For a £40 outlay for the case, the motherboard and the OS, that’s pretty impressive.  You can buy a USB for £7 and a mouse for the same.  That’s cheap and capable computing and if you have problems, there are enough forums to get you over any difficulties: eventually.  Which was really hard to do in the 1980s.

On the subject of the ’80s, of course you can buy a combined case and keyboard making the Pi look a bit like Commodore C64…