Introduction

This book explores a number of things you can do with your Raspberry Pi 3, from controlling hardware with Python, to using it as a media centre, or building games in Scratch. The beauty of the Raspberry Pi 3 is that it’s just a very tiny general purpose computer (which may be a little slower than you’re used to for some desktop applications, but much better at some other stuff than a regular PC), so you can do anything you could do on a regular computer with it. In addition, the Raspberry Pi3 has powerful multimedia and 3D graphics capabilities, so it has the potential to be used as a games platform, and we very much hope to see people starting to write games for it.

We think physical computing building systems using sensors, motors, lights and micro controllers is something that gets overlooked in favour of pure software projects in a lot of instances, and it’s a shame, because physical computing is massive fun. To the extent that there’s any children’s computing movement at the moment, it’s a physical computing movement. The LOGO turtles that represented physical computing when we were kids are now fighting robots, quadcopters or parentsensing bedroom doors, and we love it. However, the lack of General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) on home PCs is a real handicap for many people getting started with robotics projects. The Raspberry Pi 3 exposes GPIO so you can get to work straight away.

I keep being surprised by ideas the community comes up with which wouldn’t have crossed my mind in a thousand years: the Australian school meteor tracking project; the Boreatton Scouts in the UK and their robot, which is controlled via an electron cephalography headset (the world’s first robot controlled by Scouting brainwaves); the family who are building a robot vacuum cleaner. And I’m a real space cadet, so reading about the people sending Raspberry Pi 3s into near earth orbit on rockets and balloons gives me goose bumps.

Success for us would be another 1,000 people every year taking up Computer Science at the university level in the UK. That would not only be beneficial for the country, the software and hardware industries, and the economy; but it would be even more beneficial for every one of those 1,000 people, who, I hope, discover that there’s a whole world of possibilities and a great deal of fun to be had out there. Building a robot when you’re a kid can take you to places you never imagined I know because it happened to me!

When the Raspberry Pi 3 was out, I was very eager to get one. But to be on a safer side I made a detailed study and came up with the best combination of accessories which helped me to have a hassle free experience with the latest model.

The aim of this instructable is to provide a complete guide to beginners on selection of suitable accessories and the Operating systems compatible with Raspberry Pi 3.