Book Image

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers - Third Edition

By : Steven Lawrence Fernandes, Tim Cox
Book Image

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers - Third Edition

By: Steven Lawrence Fernandes, Tim Cox

Overview of this book

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers – Third Edition begins by guiding you through setting up Raspberry Pi 3, performing tasks using Python 3.6, and introducing the first steps to interface with electronics. As you work through each chapter, you will build your skills and apply them as you progress. You will learn how to build text classifiers, predict sentiments in words, develop applications using the popular Tkinter library, and create games by controlling graphics on your screen. You will harness the power of a built in graphics processor using Pi3D to generate your own high-quality 3D graphics and environments. You will understand how to connect Raspberry Pi’s hardware pins directly to control electronics, from switching on LEDs and responding to push buttons to driving motors and servos. Get to grips with monitoring sensors to gather real-life data, using it to control other devices, and viewing the results over the internet. You will apply what you have learned by creating your own Pi-Rover or Pi-Hexipod robots. You will also learn about sentiment analysis, face recognition techniques, and building neural network modules for optical character recognition. Finally, you will learn to build movie recommendations system on Raspberry Pi 3.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Communicating using a serial interface


Traditionally, serial protocols such as RS232 are a common way to connect devices such as printers and scanners as well as joysticks and mouse devices to computers. Now, despite being superseded by USB, many peripherals still make use of this protocol for internal communication between components, to transfer data, and to update firmware. For electronics hobbyists, RS232 is a very useful protocol for debugging and controlling other devices while avoiding the complexities of USB.

The two scripts in this example allow for the control of the GPIO pins to illustrate how we can remotely control Raspberry Pi using the serial port. The serial port can be connected to a PC, another Raspberry Pi device, or even an embedded microcontroller (such as Arduino, PIC, or similar).

Getting ready

The easiest way to connect to Raspberry Pi via a serial protocol will depend on whether your computer has a built-in serial port or not. The serial connection, software, and test...