Until recently I didn't have a chance to try out a Pi, but that changed when I recently acquired a Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Pack by Adafruit. I also looked at a Pi 3 kit from SparkFun which was very similar but I ended up picking the Adafruit option. Although the kit itself was made by Adafruit, it was ordered for me by Hackster.io in exchange for reputation points.
Here is what the kit includes:
- Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B
- Adafruit Raspberry Pi B+ Case - Smoke Base / Clear Top
- Adafruit Assembled Pi Cobbler Plus
- Full Size Breadboard
- Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires
- USB to TTL Serial Cable
- 8GB SD card for Raspberry Pi preinstalled with Raspbian Jessi
- 5V 2.4A Switching Power Supply w/ 6' MicroUSB Cable
- Embroidered Raspberry Pi Badge
- Misc Parts ( Photo Cell, Resistors, LEDs, Switches )
The kit includes almost everything you need just add a HDMI display, USB keyboard and USB mouse. Once everything was up and running, I started to play around with the Pi. Here is a quick list of a few things I tried:
- I played around with a LED and switch following the code listed here ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/physical-computing-with-python/ ) but I have played with Arduino for that sort of hardware/software interaction so I didn't really focus on that for now.
- Played with New Out of the Box Software (NOOBS)
- Tested various operating systems (Raspbian and Ubuntu Mate) that are more of a normal workstation / desktop replacement
- Tested two media center options Open Source Media Center (OSMC) and Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC)
- Used BerryBoot to load multiple operating systems on a single memory card
- Used BerryBoot to load an operating system on a USB thumb drive
- Tested RetroPie but didn't use it much since I didn't have a game controller handy
- Connected remotely via SSH and RDP (after installing xrdp)
Overall I was excited to see the number of options available for Raspberry Pi. For now, I need to pick a project and spend a little more time on it. I was thinking of setting up a network attached storage device, or I might just test the media center options a bit more since I don't have cable.
Bottom line - if you have been interested in trying out a Raspberry Pi and feel like you can get at least one project out of it, don't waste time and get one. The kits are nice, but if you already have some of the components you need you can just get the board itself to start playing around.
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