Raspberry Pi® Hardware Projects, Volume 1

This edition first published 2013

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-118-58894-9 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-118-72391-3 (ePDF)

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Introduction

You’ve got a Raspberry Pi – now what? This book has the answer; it’s packed full of fun Raspberry Pi projects to inspire you. From getting your Pi generating comedy insults, testing your reactions and building a talking animatronic toy that tweets to building your own disco light show, prepare to be entertained and amazed by your credit card–sized computer.

One word of warning: After you start you might never stop! Electronics and coding can be addictive; who knows what you might go on to make with the skills you learn from this book.

Appendix A, “Getting Your Raspberry Pi Up and Running”, is a beginner’s guide to your first steps with the Raspberry Pi. If you’ve never coded before, Appendix B, “Introductory Software Project: The Insult Generator”, will get you started programming in Python. Chapter 1, “Test Your Reactions”, will get you wiring up simple ­computer-controlled circuits. Chapter 2, “The Twittering Toy”, will show you how to make your code talk to Twitter and get you hacking household items. Chapter 3, “Disco Lights”, shows you how to control LED strips and make them dance in time to the music. Along the way you will pick up the skills you need to develop your own ideas to make projects work exactly how you want them to.

Building and making is incredibly rewarding and satisfying. We want to get more people of the world to become producers of technology rather than consumers. The projects in this book are starting points – step by step, they’re easy to follow so you can get results quickly. But then the real satisfaction can come, that which comes from making the project your own. At the end of each chapter there are ideas and suggestions to extend the project, together with background information to point you in the right direction. The real addictive fun begins when you see your own ideas become reality.

Welcome to the world of digital making.