Product: 1449344216

This O’Reilly book comes from the same folks who produce Make magazine, which has lots of fun and informative projects for folks who want to dabble with devices of all sorts.

From the first chapter (only 17 pages), it provides warnings to save your from frying your Pi, breaking the board, and offers suggestions to build a durable assembly. I love the drawing, they’re detailed and well labelled. If you have the parts needed to get the Raspberry Pi going (including USB power supply, HDMI cable, powered USB hub, and an SD card with an image of the operating system) then you should have a running system by the end of that chapter.

To use the Raspberry you’ll need to know about Linux, the operating system, and Python, a programming language to create Pi software. The next two chapters give you enough to get going with lots of pointers to Further Reading and websites.

I really like the books readability, and it’s 150 page size means that it won’t overwhelm someone who has never dabbled with circuit boards. If you gave one of your kids this book and a Raspberry Pi, you could have a future computer genius on your hands.

The editing of the book is a little rough, with some repeated paragraphs and missing illustration labeling. These won’t get in your way.
Rating: 5
1449344216
Count: 13