Introduction to Raspberry Pi

Hi everyone.

Let's start something interesting with Raspberry Pi wonderful and powerful electronic device for IOT projects. This is a Raspberry Pi, small portable size computer in your hand. It is a single board computer developed by Raspberry Pi foundation educational and electronic project study in institutes. Please visit the Raspberry Pi site for more information 

In this tutorial, I am going to provide the basic information about the Raspberry Pi which is a tiny and affordable computer that can be used to learn programming and interesting project on the internet of things (IoT) projects. 

Raspberry Pi has many release version, first generation (Raspberry Pi 1 Model B) which was released in 2012, followed by other cheaper version with Model A support.  Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ which is latest in all the Raspberry Pi model release in 2018. Their board is approximately credit card size which supported all the configuration need to as a personal computer. For information about all product you can visit official site of raspberry Pi.

Now let's get deep details into configuration of the Raspberry  Pi 3 Model B+.

Hardware Configuration:

 The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is the latest product in the Raspberry Pi 3 range, boasting a 64-bit quad core processor running at 1.4GHz, dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2/BLE, faster Ethernet, and PoE capability via a separate PoE HAT

Please find the details of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ specification.

• Processor : Broadcom 64-bit SoC @ 1.4GHz
• Memory: 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM
• Connectivity: 
• WiFi 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN
• Bluetooth 4. Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0
• 4 × USB 2.0 ports

• Video & Sound: 
• HDMI port support
• MIPI DSI display port
• MIPI CSI camera port
• SD Card Support: Micro SD format for loading operating system and data storage
• GPIO Access: Extended 40-pin GPIO header
• Input Power: 
• 5V/2.5A DC via a micro USB connector
• 5V DC via GPIO header
• Power over Ethernet (PoE)–enabled (requires separate PoE HAT)
• Environment: Operating temperature, 0–50°C

General Purpose Input-Output (GPIO) connector:

With Raspberry Pi GPIO pin we can able to communicate with external circuitry as the extension board. We can connect and interface the electronic circuits which are used in an embedded system using the Raspberry Pi GPIO interface



More details about the interface and understanding the GPIO pinout can be at Raspberry pi pinout web page.

Each pin has the functionality to carry the analog and digital signal to the external circuit and communication using controlled and configured interface.

Using GPIO standard pin you can able to turn devices on and off such as LED light can be controlled using these GPIO digital pins.


Along with the standard GPIO input-output pin some other interface communication is also supported by GPIO interface.

• I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit): pins allows you to connect and talk to any hardware module circuit that supported this I2C protocol communication. Example If we wanted to connect DHT (temperature and humidity) sensor to our raspberry pi it can use I2C interface to communicate with Raspberry pi.
• SPI  (Serial Peripheral Interface Bus): pins can be used to connect and talk to SPI devices which usually used for data transmission between Raspberry pi to SPI supported devices such as SD card.
• UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transceiver):  it is the serial pin used to communicate with connected other devices.

Software Support:

Raspberry Pi can be loaded with various distributions of the operating system (OS).  Raspberry Pi foundation provides the Raspbian, Linux distribution as well as the third party Ubuntu, Windows 10 IOT Core, AndroidThings and many more based on your required platform for IoT.  this Operating system can be installed on SD card which can be used as the storage devices for operating system and applications.

Once the operating system installed we will be able to access like home computer. There are multiple devices can be connected to Rasberry pi to access like the computer. We can connect Computer desktop using HDMI card, also we can connect the Mouse and Keyboard with a supported USB board.

We can connect this raspberry pi device to our home network using the LAN port or using Wifi support. Once this device is able to connect to the internet we can also able to access the internet service using a raspberry pi.

This is what Raspberry Pi is able to provide the most of the required functionality to start projects on IOT.

This is the Raspberry Pi version which I have got from the Thingsbits online shopping which packed with power cable and USB cable. It cost me around Rs. 2540 Indian rupees which can be affordable for compared to a large computer system.

Additionally, I ordered Heatsink to protect from heat due to the processor which can reach up to 85-degree Celsius to avoid the damage to my raspberry pi board.  

Please watch this video about the introductoin of Raspberry Pi:

So this is how I got this my first product of raspberry pi and seems very interesting to me with its design and compatibility.