My first real encounter with embedded computers was all the way back in 2015 on a Raspberry Pi 2B, which packed a blazing quad-core 900MHz CPU and a whole gigabyte of LPDDR2 RAM. I remember booting up Raspbian Wheezy and playing games like "Squirrel eat Squirrel" and "Minecraft: Pi Edition". I also wrote my very first "Hello World!" program on that Pi. I used that Pi 2B to learn about programming fundamentals like variables, if-else statements, while loops, for loops, input statements, lists, input, and functions. Despite their simplicity, I found it thrilling to write these programs. I derived joy from having stupidly long for loops or naming my variables after memes.
I remember the CPU would get warm or sometimes even hot to the touch, so I put some heatsinks on it because I thought it'd run faster. I didn't know it was too simple to throttle and what I thought was hot was barely breaking a sweat. It was fascinating to see a whole computer on such a tiny board that was so cheap, I was blown away! Sure, it wasn't as powerful as a laptop or desktop, but Raspbian was so light and my programs were so simple it didn't matter. Since the original Raspberry Pi was so tied on RAM and had such a weak CPU, Chromium didn't come with Raspbian, but when Raspbian PIXEL came it was totally game-changing: Chromium was available on the Pi! The Pi was now a real desktop replacement, it was probably almost as gutsy as my Chromebook, which is to say not very. Nevertheless, it seemed magical to me. The Raspberry Pi was my gateway system, it helped me learn to program, it introduced me to embedded systems, and it taught me computers can be fun. Nowadays, Raspberry Pis are way more powerful than my old 2B and can come in much smaller sizes, but they haven't fundamentally changed. Besides, the old 2B is still great for applications with limited thermal headroom, every Pi has its place. This summer I'm going to make some firebending gloves, and to do that I'm going to use either a Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Pico to read an accelerometer and control a valve to release bursts of fuel. Both of these Pis are even weaker than my old 2B and pack way less memory, but that's not a problem. They're extremely cheap and have very low power consumption, which is why I'll use them. Kudos to the Raspberry Pi foundation for making coding and embedded tech accessible to anyone, my life wouldn't be the same if I hadn't first booted up my Raspberry Pi 2B. I think everyone should give a Raspberry Pi a shot, whether you want to animate a cool project, learn to program, build your own smart home, or even just give them a shot as a desktop computer, you never know what you'll find out! Look out for more Pi-related articles in the future.
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DanielI'm a software engineer, volunteer IT support, amateur blogger, casual gamer, and tech enthusiast. I also love cars and the great outdoors. Archives
May 2021
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