Raspberry Pi For Dummies. McManus Sean

p>Sean McManus

      Raspberry Pi® For Dummies®

      Raspberry Pi^® For Dummies^®, 3rd Edition

      Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

      Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

      Published simultaneously in Canada

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      Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950656

      ISBN: 978-1-119-41200-7; 978-1-119-41202-1 (ebk); 978-1-119-41201-4 (ebk)

      Introduction

      The Raspberry Pi is at the forefront of the maker movement, where people make their own inventions using a mixture of traditional craft skills and modern coding and electronics knowledge. It's also given more and more people access to a computer that provides a gateway into programming, electronics, and the world of Linux – the technically powerful (and free) rival to Windows and Mac OS. As a supercheap computer, the Raspberry Pi is also being pressed into service in media centers and as a family computer for games, music, photo editing, and word processing.

      Although the Raspberry Pi presents new opportunities to everyone, it can also be a daunting prospect. It comes as a bare circuit board, so to do anything with it, you need to add an operating system on an SD or microSD card and connect it up to a screen, mouse, and keyboard. To get started, you need to learn a few basics of Linux, or at least get acquainted with PIXEL, the graphical desktop. You might be a geek who relishes learning new technologies, or you might be someone who wants a new family computer to use with the children. In either case, Raspberry Pi For Dummies, 3rd Edition, helps you get started with your Raspberry Pi and teaches you about some of the many fun and inspiring things you can do with it.

      About This Book

      Raspberry Pi For Dummies, 3rd Edition, provides a concise and clear introduction to the terminology, technology, and techniques that you need to get the most from your Pi. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn how to

      ❯❯ Connect your Raspberry Pi.

      ❯❯ Change its settings so that it works optimally for you.

      ❯❯ Discover and install great free software you can use on your Raspberry Pi.

      ❯❯ Use the desktop environment to run programs, manage files, surf the web, and view photos.

      ❯❯ Use the Linux command line to manage your Raspberry Pi and its files.

      ❯❯ Use the Raspberry Pi as a productivity tool.

      ❯❯ Edit photos.

      ❯❯ Play music and video.

      ❯❯ Create animations and arcade games with the child-friendly Scratch programming language.

      ❯❯ Write your own games and other programs using the Python programming language.

      ❯❯ Compose music by programming with Sonic Pi.

      ❯❯ Get started with electronics, from an introduction to soldering to the design and creation of electronic projects controlled by the Raspberry Pi.

      Incidentally, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an ebook, you’ve got it easy – just click or tap the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

      Why You Need This Book

      After you shake the Raspberry Pi out of the little electrostatic bag it comes in, what next?

      This book answers that question. It enables you to get your Raspberry Pi up and running and also introduces you to some of the great things you can do with it, through satisfying practical projects. With this book as your companion, you can write games and other programs and create your own electronic gadgets, all with no prior programming knowledge.

      The Raspberry Pi is most likely a bit different compared to other computers you’ve used, so this book also helps you to do some of the things on your Pi that you expect of every computer, such as play music and edit documents.

      You can learn a lot of this through trial and error, of course, but that can be a frustrating way to spend your time. Using this book as a reference, you can more quickly start using your Raspberry Pi, whatever you plan to do with it.

      Foolish Assumptions

      Raspberry Pi For Dummies, 3rd Edition, is written for beginners, by which we mean people who have never used a similar computer. However, we do have to make a few assumptions in writing this book, because we wouldn't have enough space for all its cool projects if we had to start by explaining what a mouse is! Here are our assumptions:

      ❯❯ You are familiar with other computers, such as Windows or Apple computers. In particular, we assume that you’re familiar with using windows, icons,