It is difficult to believe that it’s been four years since I wrote the first edition of this book. In 2014, there was one version of the Raspberry Pi, a comparatively underpowered board with only one core in its ARM processor and only twenty GPIO pins to play around with. I was excited to order my first Pi, and I actually had to get on a waiting list to be on the second shipment list.
In addition, it seemed that every time you turned around, someone else was introducing a single-board computer (SBC) that was trying to appeal to the same niche that the Pi did—mainly hobbyists and makers who were ready to step up from the Arduino to something a bit more powerful.
The Pi resisted all attacks on its throne, however (not that it was ever interested in competing), and thrived. There are now seven models of the Pi: the model 1, the model 2, the model 2B, the model 3, the model 3B, the Pi Zero, and the Zero W. The Pi 3 is a computing powerhouse compared to the original model; its quad-core architecture lets it perform tasks like computer vision and machine learning, and overclocking it can give you speeds up to 1.5GHz, compared to the original’s 700MHz. Meanwhile, the Zero and the Zero W have such a low price point ($5US and $10US, respectively) that I often have to field questions from readers like “Why should I use an Arduino? The Pi Zero is cheaper!”
And the Pi is not the only game in town. Depending on how much you’re willing to spend, there are quite a few other SBCs that can be used for whatever project you’ve got in mind, ranging from the $30 BeagleBoard to the $550 NVidia Jetson TX2. I still like the Pi, however; it’s the board that first got me started playing around with embedded computers and the xxii hobby projects that you can do with them. It’s inexpensive, so when I burn it up or brick it (as I’ve done quite a few times) I can replace it without breaking the bank. And it’s still powerful enough for quite a lot of things.
Thanks for reading this new book with me. If you’re a fan of my original book, thanks for sticking with me and putting up with the several mistakes that made it through to publication, and if you’re a new reader and a new Pi user, welcome! I hope to use the following pages to introduce you to an exciting new world of projects and computing.
Если вам понравилась эта книга поделитесь ею с друзьями, тем самым вы помогаете нам развиваться и добавлять всё больше интересных и нужным вам книг! |
|---|