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Raspberry Pi user guide (3rd ed.)
Upton E., Halfacree G., Wiley Publishing, Chichester, UK, 2014. 312 pp. Type: Book (978-1-118921-66-1)
Date Reviewed: Dec 2 2015

Most of the great discoveries happen accidentally, and the invention of Raspberry Pi (a small credit card-sized computer board) is one of them. An observation that many young students do not know the details of the hardware and software of the computers that they use or play games with, as it was seen by the older generation, led to the development of the small-size board. The board provides young people many opportunities to learn about computers from both hardware and software aspects and build wonderful things using it. A guide written by one of the co-creators (as this book is) will help readers on their learning journeys.

This book of 300 pages is divided into five parts (with a total of 17 chapters), three appendices, one index, and one short introduction. Part 1 (divided into seven chapters) focuses on the details of the board. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the different versions of the available boards, the processor, and the operating system (OS). Chapter 2 discusses different inputs/outputs of the board, setting different connections, and installing NOOBS Linux on the board. Chapter 3 talks about system administration of the Linux OS NOOBS. Sometimes things do not work as they should, so chapter 4 on troubleshooting is included. Chapter 5 is all about networking issues. Chapters 6 and 7 are about Raspberry Pi software configuration tools and their basics. Part 2 (divided into three chapters) focuses on three applications of Pi viz: home theater PC, productive machine (such as Office applications), and a web server. Part 3 (divided into three chapters) mainly focuses on using Pi to write programs in Scratch, Python, and Minecraft (a game development environment). Part 4 (divided into four chapters) focuses on new hardware applications of Pi. Chapter 14 focuses on the basics of hardware with Pi. Chapter 15 focuses on the general-purpose input/output (GPIO) port, and chapter 16 focuses on the camera module. The last chapter focuses on add-on boards with Pi. Part 5 (divided into three appendices) collects supplementary material for Python, the camera module, and high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) display modes.

Despite being only 300 pages long, this book is able to cover numerous basic aspects of both hardware and software for a young beginner. To test the book, I gave it to my 11-year-old son with a new Raspberry Pi model; without much of my help, he started learning programming with ease. I think the book is a must for every young person who wants to learn the basics of computers. I strongly recommend it to the next generation and also to those who want to enter into the area of the Internet of Things (IoT).

More reviews about this item: Amazon

Reviewer:  Manish Gupta Review #: CR143989 (1602-0085)
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