One of the most important parts of your robot is the processor system you use to control all the different hardware. In this book, you'll learn how to use Raspberry Pi, a small, inexpensive, easy-to-use processor system. Raspberry Pi comes in several flavors – the original A and B model, and the new and improved A+ and B+ model. The B+ flavor is the most popular and comes with additional input/output capability, four USB connections, more memory, and will be the flavor we'll focus on in this book.
Here are the items you'll need to set up an initial Raspberry Pi development environment:
A Raspberry Pi, Model B 2. There are three other Raspberry Pi models, the B+, the B, and the A. These are models with less processing power and different hardware configurations. In this book, we'll focus on the Raspberry Pi Model B 2; it has the best processing power and the most useful input/output access. However, many of the items in this book will also work with the Raspberry Pi B+ and A versions, perhaps with some additional hardware.
The USB cable to provide power to the board.
A microSD card — at least 4 GB.
A microSD card writer.
Another computer that is connected to the Internet.
An Internet connection for the board — for the initial configuration steps, you'll need a LAN cable and wired LAN connection.
A wireless LAN device.
Here is what the Raspberry Pi B 2 board looks like:
You should also acquaint yourself with the different connections on the board. Here they are on the B 2, labelled for your information:
