Page 12 - Raspberry Pi as a Foundation for Boosting Computer and Technology Literacy

Introduction
Beyond its initial educational purpose, Raspberry Pi has blossomed
into a powerhouse for DIY enthusiasts and industries alike, being uti-
lized in numerous applications, including IoT projects, media centres,
servers, game consoles, and even in advanced projects like robotics
and AI learning platforms.
The Raspberry Pi has a thriving community of developers, educa-
tors, and hobbyists who share projects, tutorials, and software through
numerous online platforms, making it easy for newcomers to enter
the Raspberry Pi ecosystem and effectively navigate their learning and
project development journeys.
In a way, this is an exploratory biography of our learning experience
as we take the reader through the world of Raspberry Pi, from simple
and fun projects for absolute beginners to more advanced projects, all
intending to enhance your understanding and skills in the ever-evolv-
ing field of computing. We hope this is a journey about discovery, cre-
ativity, and the joy of learning by doing that will increase your under-
standing of what Raspberry Pi is capable of. Our journey spans over
ten years, so it is unreasonable to expect that these 100 pages will cov-
er all one needs to know and understand to become a seasoned user.
To make it easier for you to continue to learn on your own, we will
add some resources both while we write about a certain topic and at
the end of the book, where several websites, clubs, tutorials as well as
books and magazines will be mentioned.
This monograph has the following layout: after a brief introduction,
there is an account of different Raspberry Pis that have existed and can
still be purchased. If, at the moment of reading this, you think about
buying one, our recommendation would be to go to either a Raspberry
Pi 4 (4 or 8GB) or a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB), which is the latest iteration of
the Raspberry Pi single-board computer family (at the time of writing
this monograph: late 2023 and early 2024). Then we move to the Rasp-
berry Pi official operating system, a Debian-based distribution spe-
cially optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware that comes with some
pre-installed software and utilities to make set-up and use as simple as
possible. We continue by describing Raspberry Pi accessories, official
and unofficial, and finish this chapter by mentioning some HATs that
we find interesting, including some housings that make it possible for
a DIY enthusiast to make a Raspberry Pi-based NAS (Argon40’s EON),
a beautiful desktop computer (solid copper maker block manufactured
by DeSalvo Systems), etc. An important chapter of our monograph dis-

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