Raspberry Pi

The book I read to research this post was Programming The Raspberry Pi by Simon Monk which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. The Raspberry Pi is a low powered computer kit that can be used with various distributions of Linux in this book they use Wheazy. This book tells you about how to program your Raspberry Pi for various things using the Python programming language which is supported in Linux so no 3rd party software has to be installed to work with it. The Raspberry Pi is only around $35 and it will use a 2 GB SD card for storage and will work with any USB keyboard and most wireless ones. To work with wireless a 3rd party bit of hardware has to be added and a driver installed. Many people use there Raspberry Pi as a media center and it will work with the more rugged and more configurable Arduino to control stuff. Usually the Pi controls the Arduino and the latter is able to read things like voltages that the Pi can't. This book is only short and primarily an introduction to this topic but is well written. Often when you buy an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi they come in a kit form at a higher price but you get a load of stuff like a USB keyboard, a computer case and other accessories. They have both revolutionized home automation in particular and if you are tempted to write a script in Python before doing so see if their is a script available on the internet either free or to buy and may only need minor alteration. You will save yourself lots of work. I did quite enjoy reading this book and I think I would recommend it especially to people new to the subject.