Got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas? Welcome to the family!
If you’re not new to Raspberry Pi, don’t run away yet — it would be lovely if you could scroll to the comments and drop your best hints and tips, or maybe even a beginner-friendly project idea. You are part of said family mentioned in the title, after all!
If you’re still reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve just unwrapped a shiny new Raspberry Pi. First of all: welcome! (And yes, welcome to those of you who bought one for yourselves; you are also most welcome). You’re about to enter a world full of tinkering, learning, and creativity.
What can I use it for?
Your Raspberry Pi is a small but mighty single-board computer. Don’t let its size fool you — it can run full operating systems, so you can use it as a home computer. This is especially easy if you’ve got a Raspberry Pi 400, 500 or 500+, as those models are pretty much ‘plug-and-play’. You can find details for all of our hardware on our product pages.
One of the special things about Raspberry Pi boards is the GPIO pins (the spiky metallic bits running along one side of the board), which can be wired up to lights, servo motors, switches, and more. We’ve seen our boards and microcontrollers flying on the International Space Station, powering robots, performing home assistant duties, monitoring wildlife, and running machine learning models. If you’ve thought of it, someone has probably put a Raspberry Pi in it.
Where to start
Here are the best resources to use as a Raspberry Pi newbie:
Raspberry Pi Press
Raspberry Pi Press has published loads of books. The best place to start may be The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, as it’s perfect for people needing guidance every step of the way.
The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook is a huge book of tutorials, project showcases, guides, product reviews, and much more from the pages of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. This edition includes a get-started guide covering every Raspberry Pi model, so it’s also a good choice for beginners.
If you’re a bit more confident in your coding skills and partial to digital nostalgia, Code the Classics should be right up your street. It’s a good-looking book that’ll teach you how to run and edit vintage games, while also sharing game design tips and tricks from the masters.
Have a scroll through our online book store. We’ve been publishing titles for ten years now, so there should be something for everyone, whether you’re interested in creating wearable tech, exploring photography and video on Raspberry Pi, or reading about the computers that made the world.
Raspberry Pi Official Magazine
Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is our monthly publication. It’s stuffed full of tutorials, interviews, and reviews, so it’s a good place to look if you’re thinking of buying an accessory for your Raspberry Pi, or if you simply want to immerse yourself in the community.
You can buy physical issues from some UK supermarkets and newsagents, as well as the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge, UK. It’s also available from our online store, which ships around the world. You can get a digital version via our app on Android or iOS, and all of our back issues are available to download for free.
Raspberry Pi Forums
Stuck? Got questions? Got coder’s block? The Raspberry Pi Forums are full of helpful (and extremely nerdy) people, including many of our own engineers, who’ve been exactly where you are now and can help you work through the problem. Don’t be scared — there is literally no enquiry too incidental for the forums; I myself have posted a lot of nonsense, and everyone was very nice to me.
YouTube creators
We love the online maker community, and YouTube is an especially helpful resource if you’re new and looking for a gentler-paced walkthrough, or if you need things explained in beginner-friendly terms.
Some bigger accounts posting content often include DigiKey, element14, Electromaker, and Adafruit.
Or, if you’d like to lose a few hours down a digital rabbit hole, take a look at some of the recent videos from accounts we are subscribed to. We have literally too many YouTube friends to mention.
Enjoy the journey and have fun
Every Raspberry Pi owner remembers their first boot-up, their first blinking LED, and their first (and 500th) “Why isn’t this working?” moment — we’re all still learning, no matter how many years we’ve been tinkering. Embrace the process. Play. Explore. Break (software) things. Fix them again. That’s what this community is all about.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Raspberry Pi, and happy making.
The post Got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas? Welcome to the family! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
from News - Raspberry Pi https://ift.tt/TMq5gDQ
Labels: News - Raspberry Pi, IFTTT
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home