The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive, feature-rich modern computer created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Since the release of the Model B in 2012, the community surrounding the computer has grown, allowing for an incredible amount of projects and software to be created for the device. These range from programming languages, educational applications, hardware prototypes, and of course, video games.
In this chapter, you will learn the following topics:
- The different flavors of a Raspberry Pi
- Setting up an SD card
- Hooking up your Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released four major models of the Raspberry Pi computer. They the are Model A, Model B, Model B+, and Model A+. The Raspberry Pi's CPU is the Broadcom BCM2835 chip. It contains an ARM processor running at 700 MHz and a powerful graphics chip. The board features HDMI and Composite (RCA) video outputs, USB ports, two expansion slots, a Micro USB port for power, and an array of GPIO (General-purpose input/output) pins to interact with the outside world.
Since all models share the same basic hardware platform, all the examples in this book are applicable to all the versions.