Additional information
by Mike McGrath (Author)
The Raspberry Pi is a cheap,
basic, programmable credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a
keyboard. It can be used for many of the things that your PC does, like
spreadsheets, word-processing and playing games, but its real purpose is to
inspire children (and grown-ups) to learn how to program. Over five million
Raspberry Pis have been sold worldwide, so
far!
Raspberry Pi in easy steps
starts with the basic components you'll need, setting up the system and logging
into the console. Then, in easy steps, it covers:
-
Exploring
the desktop, including understanding the Taskbar, customizing
the look and feel, examining the filesystem, and browsing the internet -
Commanding
the system, including getting applications, saving web pages,
reading and writing text, finding files, adding users, changing permissions,
and employing the shell -
Animating with
Scratch - a fun learning environment that enables complete
beginners to create computer programs visually without writing any
code -
Programming with Python -
a high-level (human-readable) programming language that is processed by the
Python 'interpreter' to produce results
fast -
Producing games -
Raspberry Pi ships with a selection of Python games for you to try, but also
includes the Python 'pygame' module that you can use to make your own games,
which is covered in Python in easy
steps -
Developing windowed apps
with Tkinter, the standard Python module that is shipped with
the Raspberry Pi, that you can use to create graphical applications -
Driving
header pins - how to control electrical input and output on the
Raspberry Pi header from Python scripts, including lighting a lamp, adding more
buttons and controlling projects
Use
Raspberry Pi in easy steps to have fun going back
to basics and creating your own applications.
Source code
files from the examples featured in this book are available to download free
for checking against your own work.
Author Biography
Mike McGrath gained his extensive knowledge of computer languages while working as a developer contracting to companies around the world. Mike is an established In Easy Steps author with several guides to his credit including: C++; Javascript, Java, Linux, PHP, SQL and Visual Basic Express.
