If I use the term Raspberry Pi, many of you will think I’m making a spelling error, or possibly an attempt at being clever with the famous mathematical constant.
In this case it is neither. Raspberry Pi is the brand name of a class of ultra small computers, initially aimed at hobbyists but which have gained so much traction over the past decade that they are now being produced at around a million units a month.
Raspberry Pi units vary in size from credit card dimensions up to about the size of a small paperback book. They are also relatively inexpensive, from a few tens of dollars up to about a hundred dollars.
First introduced in February 2012 by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the U.K., the small single-board computers were intended to introduce students to computer science. Their use quickly branched beyond education into fields such as robotics, weather monitoring, and earthquake detection. Within three years the Raspberry Pi was outselling the original U.K. domestic market record holder, the ZX Spectrum.
Just a dozen years after that initial launch, some 60 million Raspberry Pi units had been sold. Some of the heaviest demand came during the pandemic years, not just from work-at-home types having more time for hobbies, but also for industrial uses such as ventilators in hospitals.
In their initial decade the little computers became ubiquitous. Industrial demands, coupled with supply chain issues and chip production problems meant fewer of the small computers were available for hobbyist users. The net result is that reseller prices skyrocketed. Official sellers maintained their price points but had no stock for a couple of years.
Reseller operations such as Facebook Marketplace showed sellers setting Pi unit prices at double or in some cases at quadruple the nominal official prices. However, by May 2023 came the first word that the Pi Foundation expected to ramp up production by summer. Indeed, by July last year new Pi units were appearing at local outlets. Those who didn’t get their outlandish asking prices by then had to begin slashing, and by September the market was basically back to normal, although not necessarily with all models in the Pi lineup.
I’ve been a user of Raspberry Pi hardware for a number of years. Presently there are half a dozen Pi units (mostly model 3B+ and 4) running various radio-related applications at my house: two for weather satellite signals decoding and processing, one for aircraft tracking, one for marine vessel tracking, and two for a big-screen application displaying current space weather and radio signal propagation conditions.
Recently I decided to test the educational waters with a Raspberry Pi and a six-year-old grandson. Specifically I chose a Raspberry Pi 400 model for this. This particular Pi is unique in that it is built into a keyboard. Add a mouse and a display and the Pi is ready to be put to use.
Unlike typical home computers and laptops, the Pi doesn’t make use of disk storage. In most cases a Pi makes use of a MicroSD card (16 GB to 128 GB is the typical range) to deploy the operating system, known as Pi OS, and a suite of applications. Pop in a suitably formatted card, attach a display, mouse, keyboard, and turn on the machine. Within 30 seconds or so it is ready to go.
After watching Facebook Marketplace for a number of weeks I found a terrific deal. A Pi 400, the matching power supply and mouse, two gamepad controllers (a nice bonus), an excellent beginner’s guidebook, and two MicroSD cards: one with the native operating system and startup utilities, the other with a specialized gaming platform known as RetroPie, an emulator environment that mimics platforms such as Sony PlayStation and Super Nintendo. All for $100.
All that was still needed was to see how my grandson would take to the Raspberry Pi. On a recent Sunday afternoon we ran the initial test. I decided to “hide” the video gaming capabilities for the first few hours. My other son and I showed my grandson how to set up the Pi environment and how to switch the MicroSD cards.
Our crucial decision was to lead off with the Scratch programming environment which is natively included in the Pi operating system installation. Scratch, available in more than 70 languages, was developed by the MIT Media Lab with a view to having young people learn programming (coding, if you prefer) in a graphical environment which employs blocks to represent concepts and tasks.
Programming in Scratch feels like playing a game. Young coders choose backgrounds, characters, and objects (referred to as sprites) and they assign tasks or events to these environments and events using expandable blocks with names or labels typically seen in the programming field.
In just a few minutes a youngster can create a programmed “world,” all the while perhaps using a keyboard and mouse for the first time.
As it turned out this process captivated my grandson, and although we took a break after an hour or so to have him explore the RetroPie environment, he eventually asked to return to Scratch and began wanting to explore different programming possibilities.
As an educational tool the Raspberry Pi environment is outstanding. As a computer used for a variety of tasks, the Pi world is equally outstanding. Let’s not forget that the Pi units all have extended capabilities through the use of a GPIO array, a General Purpose Input/Output set of 40 pins that can be used to control external devices.
All that is for another day. In short order, we will have my grandson controlling LED lights and other simple electronic devices.
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