The Purpose of the Raspberry Pi

When attempting to explain what a Raspberry Pi is to the uninitiated it seems they do not truly understand the power that such a device brings. You have a full featured computer that is the size of a credit card! This means you can do most things full sized machines can do but do it in less space. You wanna send a Pi up in a weather balloon to collect data? That is a perfect use for it. You won't see someone sending their laptop up there. This is just one of many DIY project uses of a Pi.

Another great use of the Pi and its original intention is in education. the Raspberry Pi is an amazing platform to get kids interested in computer science and programming. You could give an elementary school age child a Pi and tell them to do whatever they want with it. It is a risk free environment for them to play around a tweak with the Pi for hours. And if the seriously mess anything up then all it takes to fix it is to reformat and reinstall the lightweight operating system that was built for the Pi.

Electrify Your Clothes!

Most people would never think to add processing power to their clothing but that is exactly what the Arduino LilyPad is for. It is small and lightweight and specifically designed to be sewn into costumes to take them to the next level. Using special electrical thread you can use the LilyPad to do most things the Uno can do. Many people use it to add an array of dynamic lights to a dress or to use it to control servo motors to make it appear you have more than two arms! If you are interested in this check it out here!

REVIEW: Raspberry Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi 2 was released earlier this year in February and introduced a new standard in affordable single board computing. The Raspberry Pi 2 is the successor to the Raspberry Pi Model B+. It has identical I/O to the B+ but has more memory and an upgraded processor. If this cool piece of maker technology interests you then check it out here.

TUTORIAL: VOIP Server on a Pi

A VOIP server is a great use for a Raspberry Pi. it both shows you the power of the Pi and gets you acquainted to the Linux environment you will be working in with the Pi. Mumble is the best option for this project because they are an open source project and have a great community backing the software. For more information check out their website.

Raspberry Pi Quick-Start Tutorial

So you have your brand new Raspberry Pi that you bought from www.pispark.com and you are looking to get up and started as quickly as possible. Here is a quick step by step guide to installing and configuring your Pi's operating system.

1. Acquire an SD card that fits the size for your Pi. Full size SD cards are for models A and B and nano SD cards are used in  models A+ and B+ as well as in the Raspberry Pi 2. It is recommended that your SD card size is at least 8GB.
2. Download NOOBS from here. This is the software released by the Raspberry Pi Foundation for new users to quickly get started. Unzip the files for use later on.
3. Download and install the SD card formatting software for the platform you are using from here.
4. Insert your SD card into your computer. You may need a SD to USB adapter if your computer does not have SD card slots for your size card. After your card is inserted start the SD card formatting software and select the drive where your SD card is located and format it.
5. After the card is formatted drag an drop the unzipped NOOBS files into the SD card.
6. Now eject your SD card and put it into your Raspberry Pi.
7. Now that the card is in your Pi make sure that you have a USB mouse and keyboard plugged in and that the Pi is hooked up to a monitor or TV. Once that is done connect your Pi to power over its micro-USB port. Most Android phone chargers will work for this.
8. Upon being connected to power your Pi will begin to boot. If the SD card formatting was done successfully you should see a menu with various operating systems that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has compiled. We recommend you pick the Raspbian operating system because it is the most widely used raspberry Pi operating system and has a great community backing it up. Just click its icon and hit install.
9. Now on first boot of Raspbian you will come to a configuration menu. Here you can set things such as the system time. You can use the TAB key to navigate to the finish button when done.
10. After that you should be greeted by a command prompt asking for a username. By default the Raspbian username is pi. Enter pi and hit enter. It will then ask for a password. By default the Rapbian password is raspberry. Enter that and hit enter once again.
11. You will now be logged into your Pi and ready to go. Here you have full access to a Linux system via the command line. If you wish to start a more familiar desktop environment enter the command startx and your Pi will load a full featured desktop environment.

Now you should be ready to get started on your Raspberry Pi project. Get out there and get making!