Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Choosing the right Raspberry Pi for you!”.
Hey there, my name is gary sims and this is android authority. I have a question for you. What is your creative outlet? What do you do when you want to express your creativity for some people? It’S music or it might be literature or it might be, making youtube videos, it might be art and it could be building things that involve hardware and software. Now, if you are the kind of person, any kind of tendency that you want to build things circuits or write programs, then you might find a raspberry pi, really really useful in helping you express your creativity in that area. Now problem is, there are lots of different raspberry pies to choose from there’s just so many nowadays.
In fact, i had a quick look at there’s at least a dozen models, if not more, that are currently on sale, let alone the ones that have gone uh in the past. So in this article today i want to help you pick the raspberry pi. That will be best for your needs, so if you want to find out more, please let me explain now back in the day of course, there was just one raspberry pi, the initial raspberry pi that got launched, but then over the years there have been revisions and Different models and improvements and upgrades – and in fact today there is a whole range of different raspberry pi devices that you can buy. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the different ones. First of all, we’re going to understand what a raspberry pi is and then we’re going to look at the different ones to see which best suits your needs in terms of features, performance and, of course, price. So what is the raspberry pi? Well, basically, the raspberry pi foundation was set up to kind of fill this gap in the home computer market, which kind of boomed during this sort of the 80s and 90s, and then kind of waned away a bit with the advent of kind of consoles and things Like that to try to get people interested in building things, whether it’s software or hardware, a combination of software and hardware and the raspberry is a small board, a single board computer. That has everything you want on it to run a complete system and basically a full desktop. In fact, with linux running on it, you get networking you get usb, you get obviously the cpu and the memory and the gpu you get hdmi connectors.
You’Ve got camera connectors. You’Ve got everything you need in this one small package now that was the original idea. Since then, the raspberry pi foundation have branched out in a couple of other directions and we’ll cover those directions in a moment.
But the basic idea is it’s a small board, a single board computer, that you can do everything you need in this one little package and it’s great for interfacing with hardware, because it has a set of pins that you can connect to things like temperature, sensors or Lcd displays or stepper motors or whatever it is, you need to connect to them, so you can control and monitor things and then build the project of your dreams. Now, following the original raspberry pi, we’ve had the raspberry pi 2, the raspberry pi 3, and now the raspberry pi 4.. Each one brings new features: new processing power, but they’ve aimed at the same kind of price point, which is 35 now there are two models of these balls there’s what they call the model b and the model a and that’s kind of a reflection of the history Of way back when, in the uk we had the bbc micro and that came in a model a and a model b and the kind of the generation of kids that grew up, then in the home computer thing with the bbc micro zx spectrum, the commodore 64.
The vic-20, and so on, they kind of took that idea over to the raspberry pi. Now the raspberry pi model b is the more complete one. You get more ports, you get more memory, sometimes you get more uh facilities, more features and the model a has is cut down. But because it’s been cut down, you get a smaller price, so maybe the model, a ones kind of are at 25, whereas a model b is 35 and then there’s also the model b plus, which is often a kind of a tweak or an upgrade to an Existing model b, so you might have got the kind of the raspberry pi, let’s say three b and then you get the three b plus, which you’ve got some tweaks into it, but again maintaining that kind of 3b price of 35. So, of course, the leading edge one for today is the raspberry pi 4 model b, and that is the best one that you can buy in terms of the single board computer and it comes in different ram configurations, 2, 4 and 8 gigabytes. Now, let’s just talk about the ram on the raspberry pi 4 for a moment, if you are trying to use this as a full desktop where you want to be able to open up web browsers and python programming environments and even visual studio code, then the more Memory, you have the better, so i would recommend the 4 or even better, the 8 gigabyte version, if you’re kind of using your raspberry pi 4 embedded into a project somewhere.
So it’s at the heart of a system, a robot or some kind of thing that you’re building. Then you might not need that full desktop. You might not need all of that ram, so you can go with the the two gigabyte version and kind of connect to it remotely.
So it depends on what you’re trying to do so if you get desktop lots of graphical stuff, more memory, the better, if it’s kind of just sitting there inside of this thing that you’ve got running. For example, i’ve got a video on how you can track uh airplanes, overhead, using a small aerial and so on. I’Ve got a i’ll give you a link to that in the description below now. For that one, you don’t need to use the eight gigabyte version because it just sits there day and night monitoring the aircraft that are flying uh over my house. So the two gigabyte model is absolutely fine, but if i’m trying to do, for example, some coding with the desktop then you’re gon na want the bigger model.
Now there is a variation of the raspberry pi that is quite different in its form factor, but still compatible with the same general raspberry pi ecosystem called the raspberry pi zero. Now it really really is a tiny, tiny board and you can still run the same linux based desktop on it. You can still talk to those same pins.
You can still control things and monitor temperature and so on, but it’s much much smaller and the performance is much much less using a single core processor rather than a quad core quarters a72, like you’ve, got in the big raspberry pi. This is a single core arm. V6, in fact, architecture chip so much much slower.
However, it’s still capable of doing exactly the same things once you’ve got limits running on it. You can still do all the same things, but not quite the same speed, but the beauty of the raspberry pi zero is the price. The cheapest one without any kind of wi-fi or wireless, is just five dollars: okay and then the bigger brother kind of with wi-fi and bluetooth built-in, it’s just ten dollars. So if you want something small again to integrate into a project, then maybe the ten dollar one with the wi-fi would be a great choice and you could probably pick up two or three of those for the same price.
You could pick up one raspberry pi 4, but again it depends on whether you want to be doing full, desktop web surfing and all that kind of stuff from it. Then you wouldn’t go with the zero. The zero is good for, including inside of a project. Now, there’s also the raspberry pi pico. Now that costs four dollars so you’ve got the raspberry pi zero at five dollars. You’Ve got the right pico at four dollars and what’s the difference with the raspberry pi pico is a micro controller board.
So on the raspberry pi zero and the raspberry pi 4, you boot up linux from a 16 gigabyte or a 32 gigabyte ssd card, and it can take quite a while as it kind of as it boots up and the desktop finally comes up. And then you now, that’s not what a micro controller is like a microcontroller is very, very different. It’S kind of almost instant on it’s got very small amount of ram, very small amount of uh flash storage. You kind of flash the program on there and when you apply the power, it’s almost instantly up and running, doing whatever it is that you want to do.
It doesn’t run linux at all. You have to use macro python or c c, plus plus and compile the code directly kind of bare metal onto the micro controller. However, because it’s much much slower much much less resources doesn’t use anywhere near as much battery uh power. So therefore, it’s much better for certain other uh projects and i’ve got a video about the raspberry, pi, pico and i’ll leave a link in the description below. So we’ve got the raspberry pi 4.
As i’ve mentioned, we have the raspberry pi zero and the zero w. The one with the wi-fi we’ve got the pico at the other end of the scale. We’Ve got the raspberry pi 400, which looks much more like an actual computer.
It’S kind of styled on the idea of the home computers from the 80s and 90s, something like a commodore 64, that kind of thing, basically a keyboard with everything you need on it and then under the keyboard in the box, it’s kind of the computer itself, you Plug in the mouse you plug in the hdmi connect it up to a monitor, turn it on and there you go. There. You’Ve got your linux desktop and you can start using it. So it’s not as intimidating as a raspberry pi 4, which may look like you know, kind of just that circuit board with chips and solders and pins on it.
You might think, oh i. I can’t approach that with a raspberry, pi, 400, much more approachable because it looks like a computer. It’S got a keyboard, you start typing on it, but of course you can do very much the same thing. You can still talk to hardware.
You can still program in c and c plus and go lang and rust and of course, in python and anything else you want to do so. You can learn software. You can learn hardware in a much more contained unit bit more expensive, but because you are getting the keyboard and everything, but it’s slightly higher performance than the raspberry pi as well, and one final thing before we go. I want to draw your attention to the android authority. Newsletters do go over to android authority.com newsletters, where you can sign up to a whole range of different newsletters that we have hopefully you’ll find one there that caters for your needs, including the gary explains newsletter, which covers everything. I’Ve been doing over here, android authority, also over on the garry explainers channel, plus a whole bunch of other things. I found interesting during the last month, or so. If you sign up there, i promise i won’t use that email just for anything other than just to send you the newsletter, and i hope you find it interesting. Okay, so that’s about it! So if you want a micro controller from the raspberry pi people then go with the raspberry pi pico. If you’re looking for a very, very cheap, tiny linux computer five dollars, ten dollars then go with the raspberry pi zero.
If you want the board, so you can connect up cameras and you can hit up different kinds of circuits, then go with the raspberry pi if you’re looking for a home computer that allows you to practice. Software and hardware gives you all the capabilities, but it’s in a much more presentable box than go with the raspberry pi. 400.. Okay, that’s it! My name is gary sims. This is android authority. I really hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the different types of raspberry pi.
400 – and i really hope it’s helped – you choose the model that you need to express your creativity, whether it’s in hardware or software, or a combination of the both that you pick the right model for you. I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please do give it a thumbs up, don’t rely on the youtube recommendation. Algorithm best to subscribe to the website, hit that bell notification, icon and then you’ll know.
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