Getting Started With Raspberry Pi (Make: Projects)

This book is a very nice introduction to the Raspberry Pi. The book is easy to read and the book is fairly short (180 pages). I was able to go through a chapter or 2 a night and finish off the book in less than a week.Each chapter gives enough information to give the reader a basic understanding of the topic. The chapters are not complete references of the subject matter. At the end of each chapter are references that can be used to get more information. In the Kindle version of the book these are hyperlinks. Many of the references were free.This book gives all the information needed to execute the example code. The examples were short and interesting.I'm waiting to get a compatible webcam before completing chapter 9 and I didn't do all the examples in the chapter on Scratch but other than that I read the entire book and executed all the examples. I very much recommend this book and give it a rating of 5 stars.I had a few problems but still stick with my 5 star rating.Problem 1: Running HeadlessPage 31 had a link to Raspberry Pi Hub. I couldn't get this to work. I found another example on the internet I had to modify and follow, [...]Problem 2: NameError: name 'i' is not defineI was getting a compilation error with the sample code on page 42. I finally had to add an "i=0" before the while statement and an "i=i+1" inside the while statement.Problem 3:Playing Video-pygame.mixer.quit location not clearThe text following the example on page 57 says that pygame.mixer.quit needs to be included "before you play". I thought this meant before the movie.play() command. However, I needed to include it before the movie = pygame.movie.Movie("foo.mpg") command or I would get video and no audio.

For any electronics and Linux novices wanting to learn raspberry pi, this is the book for you! I came to this book with a high school physics level understanding of electronics, almost no knowledge of Linux, and a hobbyist level understanding of programming. The book took me step by step through a few small projects that really helped me to understand the possibilities that open up when using the raspberry pi. These projects are small and quick and each introduce you to a basic usage example like image processing, interfacing with hardware, and networking. While these projects and their explanations are by no means exhaustive, they give you a rough idea of what is going on and then introduce you to some other websites and books that might help if you want to pursue any given topic further.I also found the way that they annotated the programming to be extremely helpful, although they occasionally glossed over details that I would have liked to know more about.Overall, I loved this book. It might be too simple for people who have experience with platforms like the raspberry pi, but for a newbie like me, this book turned out to be an invaluable resource.

Getting started with Raspberry Pi is useful for a quick start with Pi but it's not without some minor flaws. I'm reviewing the 1st Ed.(Dec2012). The book first talks about the Pi and gives general background. It mentions some peripherals that are supposed to come out in 2013: 5 megapixel camera (attaches to dedicated port), LCDs that use the DSI port. Since these haven't been released yet you wouldn't find any info in the book.THE GOOD:+ This is a thin small book which will not cause "I have to read and understand all that?" anxiety.+ Shows a fairly broad range of uses for Pi, including installing Raspbian Linux OS, a brief intro to Python, using the PyGame frameworks for graphics/sounds/input, hardware interfacing with the Pi's GPIO port pins, working with Arduino, and more.+ Each chapter has a list of books/links to additional resources for you to explore. It's nothing you couldn't already find but it saves you time instead of searching and getting distracted online.THE BAD:- For some strange reason there are no "grayscale photos" as to be expected - instead there are handdrawn(!) line drawings. This is kind of silly to look at, especially on Pages 3/4/5 when the Pi hardware is discussed. Why no "proper" photos, especially when there are proper screenshots?- Slight typo on Page 9, some section header text is not formatted correctly- Page 11 has two paragraphs with very similar sentences, reads almost like an unintended repeat to me.- The "Intro to Linux" is really short. If you are not familiar with Linux and shell commands you will need another reference. To be fair the book does have a list of suggested books/websites at the end of each chapter, but I feel a couple more pages on Linux would have been helpful.- The section on using GPIO could have elaborated on electronic fundamentals, particularly the dangers of overvoltage/overcurrent through a GPIO pin. This also applies to Arduino, but the thing is if you screw up and damage Arduino (Uno) you can generally replace a cheap socketed chip and be back in business. Pi's hardware is all surface mounted chips that cannot be user repaired so you need to be careful with hardware interfacing. For beginners I would recommend the Pi-face interface board unless you know what you are doing.OVERALL if you want to get up to speed quickly using Pi it's a useful book. However note that you may need additional hand-holding or resources for Linux/Python if you are not familiar with these.SUGGESTIONS:For Python a very gentle introduction is Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming for readers with no programming experience. Don't be misled by the "kids" title, the book is suitable for older readers.A nice python reference (useful for programmers who want to pick up Python by reading about the language rather than read a "tutorial" type book) is The Quick Python Book, Second EditionIf you are a hardware hacker and want to build your own interface circuitry then you might want to look at Adafruit Raspberry Pi Prototyping Plate Kit for a ready-for-use PCB that will help implement your circuitry faster.I hope this has been helpful!