Schlagwort: resources

How to set up and use your brand-new Raspberry Pi

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Reading Time: 5 minutes
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you bagged yourself a brand-new Raspberry Pi for Christmas, and you’re wondering what you should do next.

Well, look no further, for we’re here to show you the ropes. So, sit back, pull on a pair of those nice, warm socks that you found in your stocking, top up your eggnog, and let’s get started.

Do I need an operating system?

Unless your Raspberry Pi came in a kit with a preloaded SD card, you’ll need to download an operating system. Find a microSD card (you may have one lurking in an old phone) and click here to download the latest version of Raspbian, our dedicated Raspberry Pi operating system.

To get Raspbian onto the microSD card, use free online software such as Etcher. Here’s a video from The MagPi magazine to show you how to do it.

Use Etcher to install operating systems onto an SD card

Lucy Hattersley shows you how to install Raspberry Pi operating systems such as Raspbian onto an SD card, using the excellent Etcher. For more tutorials, check out The MagPi at http://magpi.cc ! Don’t want to miss an issue? Subscribe, and get every issue delivered straight to your door.

Turn it on!

Here, this video should help:

How to set up your Raspberry Pi || Getting started with #RaspberryPi

Learn #howto set up your Raspberry Pi for the first time, from plugging in peripherals to setting up #Raspbian.

Insert your microSD card into your Raspberry Pi. The microSD card slot should be fairly easy to find, and you need to make sure that you insert it with the contact side facing the board. If you feel like you’re having to force it in, you have it the wrong way round.

Next, plug your HDMI cable into the Raspberry Pi and your chosen HDMI display. This could be a computer monitor or your home television.

If you’re using a Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Zero W, you’ll need a mini HDMI to HDMI cable or adapter.

If you’re using a Raspberry Pi 4, you’ll need a micro HDMI to HDMI cable or adapter.

Next, plug in any peripherals that you want to use, such as a mouse or keyboard.

Lastly, plug your power cable into your Raspberry Pi. This is any standard micro USB cable (if you have an Android phone, check your phone charger!), or a USB-C power cable if you’re using the Raspberry Pi 4.

Most kits will come with all of the cables and adapters that you need, so look in the box first before you start rummaging around your home for spare cables.

Once the power cable is connected, your Raspberry Pi will turn on. If it doesn’t, check that your SD card is inserted correctly and your cables are pushed in fully.

Still in doubt? Here’s Sally Le Page with more:

How to use a Raspberry Pi ft. Dr Sally Le Page

What is a Raspberry Pi and what do you need to get started? Our ‘How to use a Raspberry Pi’ explainer will take you through the basics of your #RaspberryPi, and how you can get hands-on with Raspbian and #coding language tools such as Scratch and Mu, with our host, Dr Sally Le Page.

Once on, the Raspberry Pi will direct you through a setup process that allows you to change your password and connect to your local wireless network.

And then, you’re good to go!

Now what?

Now what? Well, that depends on what you want to do with your Raspberry Pi.

Many people use their Raspberry Pi to learn how to code. If you’re new to coding, we suggest trying out a few of our easy online projects to help you understand the basics of Scratch — the drag-and-drop coding platform from MIT — and Python — a popular general-purpose programming language and the reason for the “Pi” in Raspberry Pi’s name.

Maybe you want to use your Raspberry Pi to set up control of smart devices in your home, or build a media centre for all your favourite photos and home movies. Perhaps you want to play games on your Raspberry Pi, or try out various HATs and add-ons to create fun digital making projects.

Whatever you want to do with your Raspberry Pi, the internet is full of brilliant tutorials from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and online creators.

Some places to start

Get involved with the Raspberry Pi Foundation

From community events and magazines to online learning and space exploration – there are so many ways to get involved with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The Raspberry Pi community is huge, and spreads across the entire globe, bringing people together to share their love of coding, digital making, and computer education. However you use your Raspberry Pi, know that, by owning it, you’ve helped the non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation to grow, bringing more opportunities to kids and teachers all over the world. So, from the bottom of our hearts this festive season, thank you.

We can’t wait to see what 2020 brings!

Website: LINK

25/12/2019
How to set up and use your brand-new Raspberry Pi

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Reading Time: 5 minutes
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you bagged yourself a brand-new Raspberry Pi for Christmas, and you’re wondering what you should do next.

Well, look no further, for we’re here to show you the ropes. So, sit back, pull on a pair of those nice, warm socks that you found in your stocking, top up your eggnog, and let’s get started.

Do I need an operating system?

Unless your Raspberry Pi came in a kit with a preloaded SD card, you’ll need to download an operating system. Find a microSD card (you may have one lurking in an old phone) and click here to download the latest version of Raspbian, our dedicated Raspberry Pi operating system.

To get Raspbian onto the microSD card, use free online software such as Etcher. Here’s a video from The MagPi magazine to show you how to do it.

Use Etcher to install operating systems onto an SD card

Lucy Hattersley shows you how to install Raspberry Pi operating systems such as Raspbian onto an SD card, using the excellent Etcher. For more tutorials, check out The MagPi at http://magpi.cc ! Don’t want to miss an issue? Subscribe, and get every issue delivered straight to your door.

Turn it on!

Here, this video should help:

How to set up your Raspberry Pi || Getting started with #RaspberryPi

Learn #howto set up your Raspberry Pi for the first time, from plugging in peripherals to setting up #Raspbian.

Insert your microSD card into your Raspberry Pi. The microSD card slot should be fairly easy to find, and you need to make sure that you insert it with the contact side facing the board. If you feel like you’re having to force it in, you have it the wrong way round.

Next, plug your HDMI cable into the Raspberry Pi and your chosen HDMI display. This could be a computer monitor or your home television.

If you’re using a Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Zero W, you’ll need a mini HDMI to HDMI cable or adapter.

If you’re using a Raspberry Pi 4, you’ll need a micro HDMI to HDMI cable or adapter.

Next, plug in any peripherals that you want to use, such as a mouse or keyboard.

Lastly, plug your power cable into your Raspberry Pi. This is any standard micro USB cable (if you have an Android phone, check your phone charger!), or a USB-C power cable if you’re using the Raspberry Pi 4.

Most kits will come with all of the cables and adapters that you need, so look in the box first before you start rummaging around your home for spare cables.

Once the power cable is connected, your Raspberry Pi will turn on. If it doesn’t, check that your SD card is inserted correctly and your cables are pushed in fully.

Still in doubt? Here’s Sally Le Page with more:

How to use a Raspberry Pi ft. Dr Sally Le Page

What is a Raspberry Pi and what do you need to get started? Our ‘How to use a Raspberry Pi’ explainer will take you through the basics of your #RaspberryPi, and how you can get hands-on with Raspbian and #coding language tools such as Scratch and Mu, with our host, Dr Sally Le Page.

Once on, the Raspberry Pi will direct you through a setup process that allows you to change your password and connect to your local wireless network.

And then, you’re good to go!

Now what?

Now what? Well, that depends on what you want to do with your Raspberry Pi.

Many people use their Raspberry Pi to learn how to code. If you’re new to coding, we suggest trying out a few of our easy online projects to help you understand the basics of Scratch — the drag-and-drop coding platform from MIT — and Python — a popular general-purpose programming language and the reason for the “Pi” in Raspberry Pi’s name.

Maybe you want to use your Raspberry Pi to set up control of smart devices in your home, or build a media centre for all your favourite photos and home movies. Perhaps you want to play games on your Raspberry Pi, or try out various HATs and add-ons to create fun digital making projects.

Whatever you want to do with your Raspberry Pi, the internet is full of brilliant tutorials from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and online creators.

Some places to start

Get involved with the Raspberry Pi Foundation

From community events and magazines to online learning and space exploration – there are so many ways to get involved with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The Raspberry Pi community is huge, and spreads across the entire globe, bringing people together to share their love of coding, digital making, and computer education. However you use your Raspberry Pi, know that, by owning it, you’ve helped the non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation to grow, bringing more opportunities to kids and teachers all over the world. So, from the bottom of our hearts this festive season, thank you.

We can’t wait to see what 2020 brings!

Website: LINK

25/12/2019
Our ultimate guide to running your own Coolest Projects event
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Coolest Projects, our world-leading technology fair for young people, takes place in seven countries this year: Ireland, the UK, USA, Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Milan in Italy.

Volunteer-led Coolest Projects events

Teams of marvellous volunteers organise and run the events in the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Milan! They are doing incredible work to give children in their regions the chance to present their tech creations and be celebrated for their skills and creativity.

And we want to support you in our global community to do the same: organise your own regional Coolest Projects events, wherever you are, so that young people near you can showcase their work and be inspired by others’ inventions.

5 reasons to host your own Coolest Projects event

Running your own Coolest Projects is your chance to:
1. Celebrate the creativity of young creators
2. Grow your local coding and volunteer community
3. Engage parents and educators with technology
4. Develop connections with local businesses
5. Build the worldwide network of Coolest Projects participants, partners, and volunteers
The Coolest Projects Regional Handbook

We’ve put together a free Coolest Projects Regional Handbook that walks you through everything you need to organise your own Coolest Projects event!

Our brand-new handbook brings together everything you need to plan, prepare for, and host your own regional Coolest Projects event. It includes practical advice on:
- Building your Coolest Projects team
- Managing an event budget
- Choosing a venue
- Sponsorship and partner management
- Communications and marketing
- Coolest Projects licensing
Your regional event does not have to be large or formal — it can be as big or small as your community’s volunteers want it to be, and tailored to your community’s needs and interests.

Like the volunteer teams who already run regional Coolest Projects, you too can run your own event — with our handbook as guidance.

Download your free handbook now!

If you’re interested in bringing Coolest Projects to your community, email us at [email protected] so we can connect you to other volunteers in your region who have expressed their interest to us! Letting us know you want to be involved will also enable us to give you more support while you’re getting started.

You’ve only got a little time left to register your idea

To participate in this year’s Coolest Projects, just register your project idea by the deadline (see below)! And don’t fret: you don’t have to have started your project to register, just the idea is enough.

If you don’t want to present something by yourself, you can register in a team of up to five members.

And you don’t need to have finished your project to present it at the event, because the most important thing is to showcase your love and enthusiasm for tech!

Registration deadlines:

Registration for all Coolest Projects events is free! And you’re also more than welcome to visit and check out the amazing projects without submitting your own. For more information, and to get your free visitor tickets, visit the Coolest Projects website and select your nearest event.

Website: LINK
30/01/2019
UK Scouts! New resources to support the Digital Maker badge

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Reading Time: 2 minutes
Six months ago, we announced our partnership with the Scout Association in the UK: we launched the new Digital Maker Staged Activity Badge, releasing new badge requirements, along with resources for stages 1 and 2, to help tens of thousands of young people learn how to create with technology.

Fun fact: when we launched the badge, it became the very first one to feature the new Scouts logo.

More resources!

Since then, we’ve been developing resources for more stages of the badge, and we’ve just released activities to support more of stage 2 and stage 3.

The Scouts on Twitter

We’ve teamed up with our friends at @Raspberry_Pi to give you even more resources to get stuck into! Here’s, Scout Ambassador, @astro_timpeake telling you why it’s so important that young people improve their digital technology skills. Read more here: https://t.co/4vwOwBDpv4 https://t.co/kKY4BVB0a2

Because the Digital Maker badge is a staged activity badge, any section of the Scouts movement can tackle it. And since an activity that interests and engages a Beaver is likely to be quite different to one that engages an Explorer Scout, we’ve increased the variety of activities we’re providing.

More tech!

The first set of activity resources we released either needed no technology or laptops only, as the leaders we spoke to told us it shouldn’t be too difficult to get hold of some laptops for a session. For the new resources, we’ve increased the variety of tech that we recommend using. Some of the activities use the micro:bit, since it’s a low-cost, easy-to-use bit of tech. For leaders unfamiliar with the micro:bit, we’ve put together this guide on using the device.

More activities!

With all our activity resources, we show how digital making fits into the scouting movement and into many typical activities you’d do with your troop. For example, you can program the micro:bit to be the musical accompaniment to your next campfire. Or, you can create your own custom map to show points on a recent hike that you did together — anything from where someone fell over, to where you saw the most amazing view.

More support!

Next year, we’re going to release even more material to support Scouts tackling the Digital Maker badge. We’ll carry on producing videos like this lovely one:

Computers in the real world

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2018-09-28.

We’re also going to be trialling some leader training days to build your digital making confidence. In the meantime, if you have any questions, you can always email [email protected].

Website: LINK

21/11/2018
Learn how to document your code

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In our latest resource, we show you how to create a website and use it to document your coding projects.

Why document your code?

Search the web with the right key words for your programming conundrum, and you’re bound to find someone who has written software to address a question that’s at least similar to yours. And not only that, they’re also making their software freely available under an open source license, and writing documentation to help you use their code. How awesome is that?!

Many people who write code are eager to share their programs and allow others to use and remix them according to their own needs. This is why the open source community is so inviting for makers, especially those who want to make projects that are yet beyond their ability to build from scratch.

So unless you plan on turning your code into a money-making commodity, you’re writing scripts that you can share with others. By adding clear, supporting online documentation to your code, you’ll help people all over the world to not only use your software but to also understand what everything does and become better programmers themselves.

Our resource

In our latest resource, we show you how to use docstrings to automatically create documentation for your Python code. Then, we walk you through using Sphinx to build a website showcasing this documentation and any example scripts you want to share with the world.

You’ll learn how to create supporting documentation to guide users through elements of your code, add multiple pages to your website, and use themes to costumise the site’s layout and make it stand out.

You can find the resource here, and our full list of free resources here on our projects site.

More free resources

We’ve also recently released a new Sense HAT music player project, along with a resource teaching basic Raspberry Pi terminal navigation skills with a fun game to find all the Pac-Man ghosts.

Website: LINK

18/07/2018
How to build a competiton-ready Raspberry Pi robot

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With the recent announcement of the 2019 Pi Wars dates, we’ve collected some essential online resources to help you get started in the world of competitive robots.

Robotics 101

Before you can strap chainsaws and flamethrowers to your robot, you need to learn some basics. Sorry.

As part of our mission to put digital making into the hands of people across the globe, the Raspberry Pi Foundation creates free project tutorials for hardware builds, Scratch projects, Python games, and more. And to get you started with robot building, we’ve put together a series of buggy-centric projects!

Begin with our Build a robot buggy project, where you’ll put together a simple buggy using motors, a Raspberry Pi 3, and a few other vital ingredients. From there, move on to the Remotely control your buggy tutorial to learn how to command your robot using an Android phone, a Google AIY Projects Voice Kit, or a home-brew controller. Lastly, train your robot to think for itself using our new Build a line-following robot project.

Prepare your buggy for battle

Put down the chainsaw — we’re not there yet!

For issue 51, The MagPi commissioned ace robot builder Brian Cortiel to create a Build a remote control robot feature. The magazine then continued the feature in issue 52, adding a wealth of sensors to the robot. You can download both issues as free PDFs from The MagPi website. Head here for issue 51 and here for issue 52.

Pi Wars

To test robot makers’ abilities, previous Pi Wars events have included a series of non-destructive challenges: the balloon-popping Pi Noon, the minimal maze, and an obstacle course. Each challenge calls for makers to equip their robot with various abilities, such as speed, manoeuvrability, or line-following functionality.

Tanya Fish on Twitter

Duck shoot, 81 points! Nice one bub. #piwars https://t.co/UCSWaEOJh8

The Pi Wars team has shared a list of hints and tips from Brian Corteil that offer a great place to start your robotics journey. Moreover, many Pi Wars competitors maintain blogs about their build process to document the skills they learn, and the disasters along the way.

This year’s blog category winner, David Pride’s Pi and Chips website, has a wealth of robot-making information.

If you’d like to give your robot a robust, good-looking body, check out PiBorg, robot-makers extraordinaire. Their robot chassis selection can help you get started if you don’t have access to a laser cutter or 3D printer, or if you don’t want to part with one of your Tupperware boxes to house your robot.

And now for the chainsaws!

Robot-building is a great way to learn lots of new skills, and we encourage everyone to give it a go, regardless of your digital making abilities. But please don’t strap chainsaws to your Raspberry Pi–powered robot unless you are trained in the ways of chainsaw-equipped robot building. The same goes for flamethrowers, cattle prods, and anything else that could harm another person, animal, or robot.

Pi Wars 2019 will be taking place on 30 and 31 March in the Cambridge Computer Laboratory William Gates Building. If you’d like to take part, you can find more information here.

Website: LINK

20/06/2018
Can you survive our free zombie resources?

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Reading Time: 3 minutes
Looking for something more exciting than pumpkin carving this Halloween weekend? Try your hand at our free new creepy, zombie-themed resources — perfect for both digital makers both living and undead!

Pride and Prejudice for zombies

If you’ve always imagined Lady Catherine de Bourgh as resembling one of the undead, you’re not alone. And if you don’t know who Lady Catherine de Bourgh is, now is the perfect time to read Pride and Prejudice, before using our resource to translate the text for your favourite zombies.

This resource will show you how to apply abstraction and decomposition to solve more complex programming problems, in line with the Raspberry Pi digital curriculum.*

*Zombie translation: Grrrrr arrrrggg braaaaains aaaaaah graaaaarg urrrrrg Raaaarghsberry Pi gurriculum.

Zombie apocalypse survival map

Are you ready to take on the zombie infestation and survive the apocalypse brought about by the undead? This resource shows you how to create a map of a specific area and mark the locations of supplies, secret bases, and enemies, and thus ensure the best chances of survival for you and your team.

In line with our digital curriculum, this resource shows you how to combine programming constructs to solve a problem, and how to design 2D and 3D assets.

Where’s Zombie?

Our ‘Where’s Zombie?’ resource is a step-by-step guide to turning your apocalypse survival map into a zombie-tracking game. Use the GPS on your phone to collect supplies while avoiding the undead.

By the way, if you’re not into zombies, don’t worry: these resources are easily modifiable to fit any genre or franchise! Jane Eyre for kittens, anyone? Or an ‘Hide from the stormtroopers’ map?

Pioneers

If you’re a person between the age of 11 and 16 and based in the UK or Ireland, or if you know one who enjoys making, make sure to check out our newest Pioneers challenge, Only you can save us.

We’re tasking our Pioneers to build something to help humankind survive a calamity of epic proportions. Are you up for the challenge?

Transferable skills

The Raspberry Pi digital curriculum was created to support our goal of putting the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

As Carrie Anne Philbin, Director of Education for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explains:

We have a large and diverse community of people who are interested in digital making. Some might use the curriculum to help guide and inform their own learning, or perhaps their children’s learning. People who run digital making clubs at schools, community centres, and Raspberry Jams may draw on it for extra guidance on activities that will engage their learners. Some teachers may wish to use the curriculum as inspiration for what to teach their students.

By working through resources such as the ones above, you’re not only learning new skills, but also building on pre-existing ones. You’ll expand both your understanding of digital making and your imagination, and you’ll be able to use what you’ve gained when you create your own exciting projects.

All of our resources are available for free on our website, and we continually update them to offer you more ways to work on your abilities, whatever your age and experience may be.

Have you built anything using our resources? Let us know in the comments!

Website: LINK

27/10/2017