My First Project- Raspberry Pi
This project is officially my first one, entering into the world of circuitry and computers. The Raspberry Pi is a fun, affordable computer that you can use to learn programming through fun, practical projects.
The model I bought was model 4(as depicted in the picture above) it came included with USB ports for connecting devices( such as the camera, keyboards, mice etc.), a small quadcore broadcom CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a case with fan. We soon had to keep aside the can and fan because wanted to use a ribbon cable to a breadboard to more conveniently id the pins and attach devices.
Building the Pi
Building and piecing the computer together was relatively easy, with an instruction module already provided in the package. I did however, make a few errors, such as forgetting to insert the SD card( that had the OS loaded on it), and putting the fan on case the wrong way. These were relatively easy to fix however, by just disassembling the case and putting the necessary parts required.
After all the components have been installed, it was time to plug in the power and turn on the computer for the first time. This went relatively well( thankfully), and I was able to boot into the BIOS of the PI computer. It is a linux build with graphical desktop (Note: I connected the case with a micro-HDMI to HDML cable to my display, which was included in the package. Of the two such micro-HDMI ports, the one nearest the power supply port is the one to use)
In the BIOS, there was options for me to install Raspbian, which is the OS made by the developers of Raspberry Pi. Other OS such as RISC OS and Windows 10 IoT Core were available to download, but I skipped on those as it was my first time trying out this project. These different OS’ were available for download whenever you wanted, so there was nothing lost in the process.
The Final Part of the Installation Journey
This is what the Raspbian home-screen looks like, when you first load into the OS. After this, you are free to do whatever you like to, such as coding from any editor or tool, installing games such as Minecraft, learn programming with tools such as Scratch, or even watching YouTube videos on the browser that comes with the Raspbian OS.
My goal is to use this underlay rig to connect and try out various sensors individually, then combine various sensors and codes to demonstrate use cases that real products use. Through this, start thinking about product design, get to a better level of python, how to leverage libraries to get things going and learn some practical skills like soldering as well.
