What is Raspberry Pi, how does it work and what are its uses
The shapes of computers have changed over time. As the computer at the beginning of its era needed a whole room. Later it came the size of my desk. Then it became portable and super thin, and later it came into phones and smartwatches. Perhaps the Raspberry Pi is a picture of the evolution of computers.
Raspberry Pi is known as the go-to piece of hardware for building tech nerds and personal use tech projects. It allowed building gaming platforms, home viewing platforms, or even VPN servers.
Raspberry Pi comes in a very small size, about the size of a credit card. It is simply a complete computer. It comes with an integrated central processor and a graphic processor integrated into a single circuit.
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What is raspberry pi
Raspberry Pi can be described as a computer, a motherboard, or other appropriate descriptions. But it’s technically known as a SoC, an option for System on a Chip. Any integrated system integrated within a single chip.
In addition to coming with the CPU and GPU as mentioned above, it also includes RAM and USB ports, and all of those components are on one board.
The Raspberry Pi does not come with built-in storage, but instead has a port to drive SD cards for storage. With these cards, you can store and run entire operating systems, as well as various files.
The board includes, as you can see, ports for connecting the monitor as well. In addition, it is very small, does not consume a lot of energy, and in return, it comes at a very low price of $35.
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Its uses and the most important information about it
Raspberry Pi is being developed by a non-profit organization that bears the same name as its product. The first Raspberry Pi was designed to be a personal computer used to teach programming, but it became popular among technology professionals until it became a major product among them.
Several models of Raspberry Pi have been released since it came to the world. Some of these versions have gone through stages of upgrade and modification, but the latest version is currently the Raspberry Pi 4, which is available at a price of around $40 via Amazon.
This version comes with highly attractive technical specifications, as follows:
- AMD Quad Core 1.5 GHz CPU
- 500MHz VideoCore VI . GPU
- 4 GB RAM
Older versions are still available at a price of around $35, as mentioned. Perhaps the specifications of the Raspberry Pi 4 are quite enough to be reliable in its intended use, and not to create a PC for work or games, for example.
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start using it
In order to start using the Raspberry Pi you must have a power source. Just like smartphones and some laptops, the Raspberry Pi 4 relies on a USB-C power port. But it is preferable to purchase a dedicated power adapter for it.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, this small device needs a microSD card to store data of various types, and this is the type that the fourth version depends on, while the old versions were based on large-sized SD cards.
As for the rest of the components, they are the same components as any personal computer, which includes a mouse, keyboard, and HDMI connections to display content. Besides, most users need a container for this small chip, especially if it is going to be used as a physical PC:
These devices are based on the Linux operating system by default, which is a free and open source operating system as we know it. Its programming language is Python, and it is available in numerical versions starting with the Raspberry Pi Zero.
Of course, this board is not purchased to rely on as a personal computer, except in the narrowest of circumstances, but instead it is used in building and developing technical and software projects by experienced people. The Raspberry Pi still serves the main purpose of its development, which is to learn programming.
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