Preface

The Raspberry Pi is a quaint example of technological innovations that come by once every two or three decades and set off a revolution that touches every aspect of human life from scientific exploration to entertainment to education. What is exciting this time around is that there are several such innovations happening simultaneously. They might sound like, and are in a way, buzzwords, but they are in fact real, and are changing our lives in so many ways, so few of which we are consciously aware of. We are speaking of innovations in entrepreneurship, such as crowdsourcing or the emergence of DIY with an almost cult-like following to innovations in technology that are current, such as 3D printing and Internet of Everything, and innovations that are impending such as 4D printing, smart manufacturing, and much more.

The Raspberry Pi has already found several uses as evidenced by hundreds of websites, project examples, and crowdsourcing campaigns. People have used the Pi to build robots, teach programming, restore old gaming consoles, stream videos, collect data, and do many other things. The Pi itself has gone through design iterations and continues to spur competing systems. People have taken advantage of this and have hooked up the Pi to many different ecosystems, expanding its ubiquity and utility.

The purpose of this book is to help those who are excited about the Raspberry Pi and have project ideas in mind, or would simply like to get their hands dirty and practice implementing projects so that they can then use that knowledge for other endeavors. We tried to take a practical approach, introducing the Pi in the first couple of project that you can skip if you are familiar with the Raspberry Pi and have used it before. We then discuss projects of increasing complexity. We have also attempted to diversify the projects to demonstrate various uses for the Pi throughout the book.