Getting to Know the Raspberry Pi

Getting to Know the Raspberry Pi  You probably wouldn’t have picked up this book if you hadn’t already heard about the amazing, low-cost computer for everyone, the Raspberry Pi. Besides being inexpensive, what’s made the Raspberry Pi so appealing is that it’s pretty easy to use. You can even change it to do things its designers never dreamed of. Unlike most consumer electronics, tablets, and desktop computers, the Raspberry Pi is designed to let you investigate how it works and change how it operates by writing your own software programs. This is all possible because the Raspberry Pi uses an inexpensive but powerful processor and a free operating system, which is based upon the popular Linux platform. In this chapter, we take a look at what you need to get going and show you how to set it up. We also tell you where to get a Raspberry Pi and the accessories you need to run it. We explain how to set up the operating system, how to connect the hardware, and what to do if you run into any pr…