Best Gift to Your Children: Credit Card Sized Computer

Computer science is an academic discipline in almost all universities world wide. #Computer programing is also taught as a compulsory subject in primary and high schools. In fact, computer has pervaded the modern life. Computers are in our homes, in our office, in the departmental stores .... It is used in almost every walk of the society. In current time, computers are quite affordable in price and availability. A cute computer may be a perfect educational #gift to your #children. But, the kids may not like the bulky computers.

Computers are black box to us

But the computers are closed inside the cabinets. It is not easy for anybody to open and see the actual device inside a computer cabinet. So, learning of computers is not as easy as a transistor radio receiver or an electronic circuit. There is a need to have easily accessible computing device which helps to explain the principle to the younger school students.

Raspberry Pi has filled that gap

Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit sized single board computer developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation in 2012. It plugs into your computer monitor or TV and uses standard keyboard and mouse. It consists in a system-on-chip (SoC) ARM processor with built-in memory (RAM or random access memory), USB ports for connecting mouse and keyboard, ethernet port for network connection, HDMI video output port, RCA video output port, and separate audio output port. It has also CSI port for connecting camera. It runs on 5 volts 700 mA power supply that commonly used to charge your mobile battery.

It does not require a standard hard disk, but it uses a SDHC card or flash sticks (4 GB or higher) as hard disk. The operating system is loaded on the SDHC card. It runs on the open source GNU/Linux operating system. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has customized Debian GNU/Linux for it which is renamed as Raspbian. Several other GNU/Linux operating systems can also be installed. Installation is very easy. You need to just download the zipped operating system from Raspberry Pi website. You can update and install additional application software from Raspbian mirror sites world wide.

Raspberry Pi works as a full fledged desktop computer

#Raspberry Pi runs all applications under a #GNU/Linux environment. Only the RAM of it is limited presently to 512 MB. It can run all general applications, such as browsing the internet in a wired or wireless network, running office applications using Libre Office, playing games, running program using any language compiler, such as Scratch or Python, GCC etc. It can run Matlab like high level program such as GNU Octave. It can run machine vision application such as OpenCV.

Mathematica is included absolutely free of cost

A commercial high level programing software called Mathematica is freely available for Raspberry Pi users through a memorandum of understanding between Wolfram Research and Raspberry Pi Foundation. By that, the home edition of Mathematica (non-professional license for use by hobbyists and enthusiasts costs US$295) is absolutely free for Raspberry Pi users. That is a great step towards enriching STEM education undertaken by Stephen Wolfram of Wolfram Research. As Dr. Stephen Wolfram puts it in his blog, "I think it’s pretty amazing that we’re now at the point where all the knowledge and computation in the Wolfram Language can run in a $25 computer".

Raspberry Pi Camera is also available

A cute add-on device called Raspberry PI Camera is also released. It is a 5 MP camera and can be connected to the Raspberry Pi board using a camera port called CSI port.

Raspbian automatically detects the camera as soon as it is plugged into the Raspberry Pi. The camera can capture high definition video at 30 frames per second speed. It does not contain any microphone. If somebody wishes to record audio then a microphone can be connected using a USB port. Raspberry Pi Camera is available for both visible and infra-red wavelengths. That means you can capture pictures in dark nights. That is perfect device to detect the animal movements at night outside your window.

Raspberry PI has a GPIO interface

It has a multi pin general purpose input output (GPIO) interface. GPIO pins can be used to control external electronic circuits, such as a microcontroller device. Students can use GPIO interface for learning simple electronic control circuits, such as switching on and off a LED via Python programing. The possibility is not limited.

Raspberry PI has become very popular around the world

The Raspberry Pi has the ability to interact with the outside world, and has been used in a wide array of digital do it yourself (DIY) projects, from musical synthesizers and motion detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infra-red cameras. The Raspberry Pi is being used by kids all over the world to learn programing and understand how computers work. Raspberry Pi has also been used as the computer in a nano satellite kit called CubeSat. As of October 2014 more than 3.8 million Raspberry Pi have been sold world wide. Although it is very cheap, every re-seller can afford to make a small profit, and hence more and more re-sellers are interested to promote it in almost all countries.

Please explore and have a Raspberry Pi for you or your school going children. It would be an ideal educational gift. Let them play and learn using Raspberry Pi.

What do you think about Raspberry Pi? Is it not worth for the learning arena in computer and IT. If you would like to read my posts regularly, then please click 'Follow' and send me a LinkedIn invite. You may follow me at Twitter.

Here are some other posts I have written:

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Photo credit: http:/www.raspberrypi.org

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Debesh Choudhury is an academician and researcher. He is interested in the science and engineering of optics and electronics. He uses GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source Software for all his works related to computers, be it educational or entertainment, professional or personal.