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INTRODUCTION OF RASPBERRY PI:-

Raspberry pi is a credit-card sized computer manufactured and designed in the

united Kingdom by the Rasperry pi foundation with the intention of the teaching basic computer science

to school students and every other persion interested in computer hardware, programming and DIY-

DO-it Yourself projects. The Raspberry pi is manufactured in three board configurations throw licensed

manufacturing deals with Network element14 (Premier Famell), RS Components and Ego man These

companies sell the Raspberry pi online.Egoman produces a verson for distribution solely in China and

Taiwan, which can be distingusished from other pis by their red coloring and lack of FCC/CE

marks .The hardware is the same across all manufacturers.

The Raspberry pi has a Borad com BCM2835 system on a chip (soc),which includes an

ARM1176JZF-S700 MHZ processor, Video core IV GUP and was originally shipped with 256

megabytes of RAM, latter upgrade (Model B & Model B+) to 512 MB. It does not include a built-in-

hard disk or solid-stste drive, but it uses an SD card for booting and persistent storage, with the Model

B+ using a Micro SD. The Foundation provides debian and Arch Linux ARM distribution for

download. Tools are available for Python as the main programming language, with support for BBC

BASIC(via the RISC OS image or the Brandy Basic clon for Linux), C,Java and perl.

In 2014 , the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the  compute Module, which

packages a BCM2835 with 512 MB RAM and an eMMC flash chip into a module for use as a part of

embedded systems.

While the ARM CPU delivers real-world performance similar to that of a 300MHz Pentium 2,

the Broadcom GPU is a very capable graphics core capable of hardware decoding several high

definition video formats. However, in order to keep costs of the Raspberry Pi low, the UK charity has

only licensed the H.264 codec for hardware decoding (and it is unclear if users will be able to

purchase/activate additional codecs). In that regard, the Videocore IV GPU is rather potent as it is

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capable of hardware decoding 1080p30 H.264 with bit-rates up to 40Mb/s.

The Raspberry Pi model available for purchase at the time of writing — the Model B — features HDMI

and composite video outputs, two USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100 Ethernet port, SD card slot, GPIO (General

Purpose I/O Expansion Board) connector, and analog audio output (3.5mm headphone jack). The less

expensive Model A strips out the Ethernet port and one of the USB ports but otherwise has the same

hardware. It is this model that is the “$25 PC” that originally made so many headlines.

What does the Raspberry Pi do?

The allure of the Raspberry Pi comes from a combination of the computer’s small size and affordable price. Enthusiasts envision using the small form-factor PC as a cheap home theater PC (HTPC), or secondary low-power desktop. Institutions, like schools and businesses, could benefit from deploying a fleet of computers for a fraction of the cost of traditional desktop towers. The small size makes for an easy-to-hide computer that sips power and can be mounted behind the display with an appropriate case. It could also be used in niche applications, like digital signage. While it will not blow away any recent hardware in performance, it does make for a cheap secondary computer which could be useful for troubleshooting and researching solutions if your man rig fails to boot as well.

The Raspberry Pi is not the only small device of its kind — two prominent examples in the enthusiast community are the Arduino and BeagleBoard. Although the systems are of similar form-factors, the Raspberry Pi is a greatly different beast. On the hardware front, the Raspberry Pi is based around an ARM SoC that is very much closed source. Conversely, the Arduino and BeagleBoard systems are based on fully open source hardware. The BeagleBoards do use ARM processors (TI OMAP 3530 SoC), but different GPUs. The Arduino boards are even further dissimilar due to using 8-bit and 16-bit Atmel micro-controller chips. The biggest difference between something like the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi is in the intended usage. The Arduino is meant to be used as a development board with micro-controllers that will be programmed and then integrated into larger machines or electronics and allowed to run on their own. On the other hand, the Raspberry Pi is meant to be used as a final product and operate as a traditional desktop computer (in fact, the distributors refused to ship the Raspberry Pi until it  received CE/FCC EM interference certification). Admittedly, the BeagleBoards do dip into the Raspberry Pi’s usage territory with projects like BeagleBoard Ubuntu and XBMC support, but the devices do have a higher barrier to entry due to its price.2 | P a g e MMEC MULLANA

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Smaller differences include the use of a non-modular design in the Raspberry Pi — no removing/replacing chips — as well as clock speed, power usage, and price differences. Also, the Arduino and BeagleBoard both have extensive device lineups that include expensive higher end models whereas the Raspberry Pi computer is designed around the idea of producing a computer that is “capable enough” as cheaply as possible.

When keeping expectations in check — especially where performance is concerned — the Raspberry Pi is a capable little computer for the price. Although the merits and future of the device as a low cost educational tool for UK children remains to be seen, the hacking, modding, and enthusiasts computing crowds are already hard at work designing and planning projects of their own around the tiny device.

THE MAKING OF PI

The idea behind a tiny and affordable computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton, Rob Mullins,

Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, based at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became

concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students

applying to read Computer Science. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were

coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very

different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.

Something had changed the way kids were interacting with computers. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on using Word and Excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

There isn’t much any small group of people can do to address problems like an inadequate school curriculum or the end of a financial bubble. But we felt that we could try to do something about the situation where computers had become so expensive and arcane that programming experimentation on them had to be forbidden by parents; and to find a platform that, like those old home computers, could boot into a programming environment. From 2006 to 2008, we designed several versions of what has now become the Raspberry Pi; you can see one of the earliest prototypes.By 2008, processors designed for mobile devices were becoming more affordable, and powerful enough to provide excellent multimedia, a feature we felt would make the board desirable to kids who wouldn’t initially be interested in a purely programming-oriented device. The project started to look very realisable. Eben (now a chip architect at Broadcom), Rob, Jack and Alan, teamed up with Pete Lomas, MD of hardware design and manufacture company Norcott Technologies, and David Braben, co-author 3 | P a g e MMEC MULLANA

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of the seminal BBC Micro game Elite, to form the Raspberry Pi Foundation to make it a reality. Three years later, the Raspberry Pi Model B entered mass production through licensed manufacture deals with element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Electronics, and within two years it had sold over two million units.

We don’t claim to have all the answers. We don’t think that the Raspberry Pi is a fix to all of the world’s computing issues; we do believe that we can be a catalyst. We want to see affordable, programmable computers everywhere. We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children, and we’re looking forward to what the future has in store.

Processor:-

The SoC  used in the first generation Raspberry Pi is somewhat equivalent to the chip used in older smart phones (such as i Phone / 3G / 3GS). The Raspberry Pi is based on the Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an 700 MHz  ARM1176 JZF-S processor, Video Core IV GPU, and RAM. It has a Level 2 cache of 128 KB, used primarily by the GPU, not the CPU. The SoC is stacked underneath the RAM chip, so only its edge is visible. While operating at 700 MHz by default, the first generation Raspberry Pi provided a real world performance roughly equivalent to 0.041  gflops.  oN the CPU level the performance is similar to a 300 MHz PentiumII of19971999. GPU provides1 Gpixel/sor1.5 Gtexl/sof graphics processing or 24 gflops of general purpose computing performance. The graphics capabilities of the Raspberry Pi are roughly equivalent to the level ofperformance of the Xbox of 2001.

Software for the Pi :-

The Pi runs GNU/Linux and variants of similar operating systems. Running Windows is not such a success story, there are too many technical problems with Windows in getting it running on the Pi, so Windows has been deemed impractical on the Pi.I am a huge user and supporter of Red Hat GNU/Linux derivatives. So, I found that Red Sleeve is the Red Hat Enterprise/Cent OS variant that runs on the Pi. This opens the door to an entire world of uses for the Pi as a small server. The Red Sleeve distribution has most of the binaries that are available on regular x86-based Cent OS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Red Sleeve, the Pi can then become a DNS server, file server, web server, firewall, cluster, or whatever you choose that can run without hitting the maximum RAM. A single or multi-purpose server of these types or others will probably not be an issue with memory, with light use. Memory intensive applications generally become an issue with the X11 desktop and running end user applications. Today virtualisation is very popular so some may say that the cost of spinning up a virtual machine is less than running a Raspberry Pi.  But, calculate the power consumption for your hypervisor, and weigh out the differences to see which method in fact costs less overall.   Sometimes, a physical box or physical segmentation is needed, or avoiding high costs of running a full hypervisor is a factor, and this is where the Pi can step in.

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Fig.1

software working

The GrovePi communicates with the Raspberry Pi using I2C protocol. The Raspberry Pi acts as a Master and GrovePi as slave at address 0x04. The Raspberry Pi sends commands to the GrovePi. The Grove Pi processes the commands and sends back data.

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The Grove Pi can be easily integrated with the other Grove Sensors using Serial, Digital, Analog or I2C interface. The Grove Pi can do time sensitive operations as well as gather data and send them to the Raspberry Pi at periodic intervals. This saves a lot of processing power on the Raspberry Pi.

RAM:- On the older beta model B boards, 128 MB was allocated by default to the GPU, leaving 128 MB for the CPU. On the first 256 MB release model B (and model A), three different splits were possible. The default split was 192 MB (RAM for CPU), which should be sufficient for standalone 1080p video decoding, or for simple 3D, but probably not for both together. 224 MB was for Linux only, with just a 1080p frame buffer, and was likely to fail for any video or 3D. 128 MB was for heavy 3D, possibly also with video decoding (e.g. XBMC). Comparatively the Nokia 701 uses 128 MB for the Broadcom VideoCore IV. For the new model B with 512 MB RAM initially there were new standard memory split files released( arm256_start.elf, arm384_start.elf, arm496_start.elf) for 256 MB, 384 MB and 496 MB CPU RAM (and 256 MB, 128 MB and 16 MB video RAM). But a week or so later the RPF released a new version of start.elf that could read a new entry in config.txt (gpu_mem=xx) and could dynamically assign an amount of RAM (from 16 to 256 MB in 8 MB steps) to the GPU, so the older method of memory splits became obsolete, and a single start.elf worked the same for 256 and 512 MB Pis. The second generation has 1 GB of RAM.

Peripherals:-Generic USB keyboards and mice are compatible with the Raspberry Pi.Video:-The video controller is capable of standard modern TV resolutions, such as HD and Full HD, and higher or lower monitor resolutions and older standard CRT TV resolutions; capable of the following: 640×350 EGA; 640×480 VGA; 800×600 SVGA; 1024×768 XGA; 1280×720 720p HDTV; 1280×768 WXGA variant; 1280×800 WXGA variant; 1280×1024 SXGA; 1366×768 WXGA variant; 1400×1050 SXGA+; 1600×1200 UXGA; 1680×1050 WXGA+; 1920×1080 1080p HDTV; 1920×1200 WUXGA. It can generate 576i and 480i composite video signals for PAL-BGHID, PAL-M, PAL-N, NTSC and NTSC-J.

Accessories:-

Camera – On 14 May 2013, the foundation and the distributors RS Components & Premier

Farnell/Element 14 launched the Raspberry Pi camera board with a firmware update to

accommodate it. The camera board is shipped with a flexible flat cable that plugs into

the CSI connector located between the Ethernet and HDMI ports. In Raspbian, one enables the

system to use the camera board by the installing or upgrading to the latest version of the OS and

then running Raspi-config and selecting the camera option. The cost of the camera module is  20

EUR in Europe (9 September 2013). It can produce 1080p, 720p, 640x480p video. The footprint

dimensions are25 mm x 20 mm x 9 mm.

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Gertboard – A Raspberry Pi Foundation sanctioned device, designed for educational purposes, that

expands the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins to allow interface with and control of LEDs, switches, analog

signals, sensors and other devices. It also includes an optional Arduino compatible controller to

interface with the Pi. Infrared Camera – In October 2013, the foundation announced that they would

begin producing a camera module without an infrared filter, called the Pi NoIR . HAT (Hardware

Attached on Top) expansion boards – Together with the model B+, inspired by the Arduino

shield boards, the interface for HAT boards was devised by the Raspberry PI Foundation. Each

HAT board carries a small EEPROM (typically a CAT24C32WI-GT3 ) containing the relevant

details of the board, so that the Raspberry PI's OS is informed of the HAT, and the technical details

of it, relevant to the OS using the HAT.

Operating systems:-

The Raspberry Pi primarily uses Linux-kernel-based operating systems.The ARM11 chip at the heart of the Pi (pre-Pi 2) is based on version 6 of the ARM. The current releases of several popular versions of Linux, including Ubuntu , will not run on the ARM11. It is not possible to run Windows on the original Raspberry Pi, though the new Raspberry Pi 2 will be able to run Windows 10.The Raspberry Pi 2 currently only supports Ubuntu Snappy Core, Raspbian, OpenELEC and RISC OS.

Community:-

The Raspberry Pi community was described by Jamie Ayre of FLOSS software company Ada Core as

one of the most exciting parts of the project.Community blogger Russell Davis said that the community

strength allows the Foundation to concentrate on documentation and teaching. The community is

developing fanzines around the platform, such as The Mag Pi. A series of community Raspberry

Jam events have been held across the UK and further afield, led by Alan O'Donohoe,principal teacher of

ICT at Our Lady's High School, Preston, and a teacher-led community from RaspberryJam has started

building a crowd sourced scheme of work.

Raspberry Pi projects and uses: With single-board microcomputers like the Raspberry Pi becoming increasingly widespread, hobby

computing is becoming easier and cheaper than ever before.

It's not just robotics experts and programming whiz-kids who can have some fun with it either; there's a

vast range of uses you can put single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi to without having

mountains of time, kit and expertise. 

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If you've recently picked up a Raspberry Pi, here's our list of list of six quick projects to get you started.

1. Raspberry Pi projects: Make a Gameboy:-

No, seriously. This is a legitimate and doable project for the more advanced user. In terms of the actual

coding involved it's not the most challenging - you're essentially installing an emulator on your

Raspberry Pi - the actual hard work comes in the form of soldering the different pieces together.

fig.2

game boy(video gameing)

. Travis Brown, over at XodusTech has produced a detailed log of how he

brought back to life his Gameboy using a Raspberry Pi.

The best thing about creating a Pi-Pocket (as he calls it) is that it's not just Gameboy games you can play

with the project. The Pi-Pocket is also capable of playing NES, Sega Master System, Game Gear games

as well as popular Linux-based titles such as Doom and Duke Nukem.

2. Raspberry Pi projects: Home Arcade Box :-

While it's not powerful enough to run many modern games, some enterprising tech-heads have twigged

that the Pi is just about perfect for playing emulators on. Emulators, for those not in the know, are

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programs that allow you to play titles from older, outdated consoles such as the SNES, the Sega Genesis

and even the original Playstation on PC using freely available ROMs. 

 

fig.3

home arcade box

While it's not powerful enough to run many modern games, some enterprising tech-heads have twigged

that the Pi is just about perfect for playing emulators on. Emulators, for those not in the know, are

programs that allow you to play titles from older, outdated consoles such as the SNES, the Sega Genesis

and even the original Playstation on PC using freely available ROMsThe legal catch is that you need to own a

physical copy of the games, or it's piracy. So that means on no account should you use this as an

opportunity to play all those SNES games that your mum wouldn't buy you back in 1991.

2. Raspberry Pi projects: Media centre for your TV:-

Setting up a Raspberry Pi as your home media centre might be the perfect project.  By hooking it up to

your TV via HDMI, you can get all your media in your living room without having to fork out for Apple

TV. Specific operating systems such as  Ras Plex  and Rasp bMC  (based on the Plex and XBMC

frameworks respectively) have even been built in order to make it as easy as possible for you to get

started. 

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fig.4

media center for tv

Setting up a Raspberry Pi as your home media centre might be the perfect project.  By hooking it up to

your TV via HDMI, you can get all your media in your living room without having to fork out for Apple

TV. Specific operating systems such as  Ras Plex  and Rasp bMC  (based on the Plex and XBMC

frameworks respectively) have even been built in order to make it as easy as possible for you to get

started. 3. Raspberry Pi projects: Wirelessly control your stereo:-

Advances in audio technology are making it increasingly easy to take your tunes everywhere you go.

For aspiring audiophiles on a budget, the Raspberry Pi can help you realise your Hi-Fi dreams with a

minimum of fuss, using it as a music server in a similar way to the media centres described above.  

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fig. 5

wirelessly control stereo

by using the Rune Audio disk image, you can connect your Raspberry Pi to your home audio setup and use it to control all your music, whether it's stored locally, on one of your devices, or on a remote storage drive. You can search and organise your library and play tracks through your browser or smart phone, and the Pi will direct it all through your big shiny speakers. For truly superlative audio quality, you can even send the signal through a USB Digital Analog Converter for HD sound. If that tickles your fancy, have a go yourself with our guide on how to use a Raspberry Pi to control your hi-fi.

4. Raspberry Pi projects: Build a download hub :-

What with the Internet being an almost limitless repository of digital content, it seems like we spend a

frustrating amount of our lives waiting for downloads to finish. A great way to get round this can be to

route all your downloads through a Raspberry Pi and into an external storage device. 

Rather than clogging up your main computer with piles of files that have to fight with your everyday tasks for disk space and processor speed, using a Pi as a dedicated hub for all your torrents, streams and other downloads leaves you free to get on with your life while you're waiting for the entire box set of

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The Walking Dead to finish. An added bonus feature of this is that if any malware or viruses happen to hitch a lift with your content, you can safely scrub them clean without risking the infection of your main computer.

fig.6 download hub 

6. Raspberry Pi projects: create a dedicated Minecraft machine:-

Minecraft is one of the biggest success stories of the indie game world, and was bought from the

original creators by Microsoft earlier this year. The sandbox construction sim is essentially an infinite

digital LEGO set, and is naturally hugely popular with kids. However, its simplistic, blocky graphics

also mean it's ridiculously easy to run, and the latest versions of the default Raspbian OS come with a

custom-optimised copy of the game pre-installed. 

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fig.7 minecraft machine

If you've got kids that play Minecraft and you're tired of constantly having them monopolising your tablet or computer, a Raspberry Pi can be an inexpensive, durable machine that they can use for schoolwork, movies, and all the digital digging they can handle. All you need is a cheap monitor, mouse and keyboard, and you can even easily confiscate it if they're using it too much. 

7. Raspberry Pi projects: Build a case:-

One of the reasons the Raspberry Pi is so cheap is that it's shipped with nothing but the bare essentials:

no keyboard, no cables, and no case. However, all that exposed circuitry can look worryingly fragile,

and it's a scary thought that your new machine could break at any time. You can buy cases for your

Raspberry Pi in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours. But a fun, simple starter project can be building

one yourself. The beauty of the Pi is that it's small enough to fit into just about anything. With some

judicious modification, you could make a case out of an old tobacco tin, or a hollowed-out book.

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fig.8 Build a case

8. Raspberry Pi projects: Write your own game:-

Raspberry Pi is the perfect platform for novice programmers. The Raspbian OS even has built-in programs pre-installed to make getting involved with coding as easy as possible.One of the best projects for dipping your toes in the waters of programming is creating your own game - it's quick, straightforward, and at the end of it, you'll have a functional result that you can show off to friends and family.

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fig.9 write own game

9. Raspberry Pi projects: Create your own cloud server:-

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fig.10 own cloud server

With an always-on internet connection and an external hard drive, you can create your own free cloud

storage server If you want to unshackle yourself from the limitations of cloud storage services such as

Drop box and Google Drive, then Raspberry Pi is a good low-cost option. A quick Google search will

bring up plenty of tutorials on how this can be acieved. The website, Life hacker, has one of the easier to

follow tutorials on how to set this up.

HOW DOES THE RASPBERRY PI WORk?

Here’s how it works: An SD card inserted into the slot on the board acts as the hard drive for the Raspberry Pi. It is powered by USB and the video output can be hooked up to a traditional RCA TV set, a more modern monitor, or even a TV using the HDMI port. This gives you all of the basic abilities of a normal computer. It also has an extremely low power consumption of about 3 watts. To put this power consumption in perspective, you could run over 30 Raspberry Pi’s in place of a standard light bulb!

If you’re feeling a bit over whelmed with all of the talk of the features included in the Raspberry Pi. So far we’ve covered what the Raspberry Pi is and what features it comes with. But what can you actually do with such a little computer?

The answer is a ton! Some of my favorite projects are creating wireless home speakers, a media center for my TV, and even a personal web server! These projects are driven by the free operating system you can download for the Raspberry Pi called Raspbian. This operating system is a lightweight version of Linux that is optimized for this low powered device.

Each of these projects requires some work to set up, but they’re a perfect way to get your feet wet with computer programming and operation.

The last thing I want to mention about the Raspberry Pi is the community. This is probably the greatest feature of the Raspberry Pi, but probably one of the least talked about. The community that uses the Raspberry Pi is the most helpful one that I have seen across the tech spectrum. One of the perks of the educational aspect of this device is that every project someone does with it is extremely well documented with step-by-step instructions and often includes pictures. The forums for the community span many counties and every level of expertise .

With that, here are your Quick and Dirty Tips for getting to know Raspberry Pi:

1. The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive and miniature computer.

2. It was developed as an educational tool, and has been made available to everyone, no matter your computer expertise (or lack thereof).

3. The Raspberry Pi is a versatile computer that can be made into just about anything.

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4. If you’ve been wanting an inexpensive way to get into programming and DIY tech projects, this is an awesome place to start!

ADVANTAGE :-

Power consumption - The Pi draws about five to seven watts of electricity. This is about one tenth of what a comparable full-size box can use. Since servers are running constantly night and day, the electrical savings can really add up. I have calculated that the basic Pi kit (Pi board, case, and power supply) will pay for itself with about one year's worth of electricity savings if it's left to run 24x7x365.  I ended up with the CanaKit Basic Kit (ASIN # B00DG9D6IK) which is very affordable and good quality.

1. No moving parts - The Pi uses an SD card for storage, which is fast and has no moving parts.  There are also no fans and other things to worry about.  A Class 10 SD card is usually the best performing compared to lower class cards, but this will mainly only affect boot time where there is the most I/O.  There is a compatibility chart for SD cards here, results may vary but overall I've had very good luck with Transcend cards which provide a good value.

2. Small form factor - The Pi (with a case) can be held in your hand.  A comparable full-size box cannot.  This means the Pi can be integrated inside of devices, too.

3. No noise - The Pi is completely silent.

4. Status lights - There are several status lights on the Pi's motherboard.  With a clear case you can see NIC activity, disk I/O, power status, etc.

5. Expansion capabilities - There are numerous devices available for the Pi, all at very affordable prices.  Everything from an I/O board (GPIO) to a camera.  The Pi has two USB ports, however by hooking up a powered USB hub, more devices can be added.

6. Built-in HDMI capable graphics - The display port on the Pi is HDMI and can handle resolutions up to 1920×1200, which is nice for making the Pi in to a video player box for example.  There are some converters that can convert to VGA for backwards compatibility.  A list of HDMI to VGA converters can be found here.  I ended up using the Sanoxy HDMI to VGA cable (ASIN # B0088K7QUQ) which has worked well so far.

7. Affordable - compared to other similar alternatives, the Pi (revision B) offers the best specs for the price, at least that I've found.  It is one of the few devices in its class that offers 512 MB of RAM. The Pi has come down in price since it first arrived, and is finally affordable as a hobby, business use, or whatever need there is.

8. Huge community support - The Pi has phenomenal community support. Support can be obtained quite easily for the hardware and/or GNU/Linux software that runs on the Pi mainly in user forums, depending on the GNU/Linux distribution used.  A good list of distributions can be foundhere.

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9. Overclocking capability - The Pi can be over clocked if there are performance problems with the application used, but it is at the user's risk to do this.

10. Multiple uses - Having the storage on an SD card makes it easy to swap with other SD cards running other GNU/Linux distributions to quickly and easily change the functionality of the Pi. If you want to set up the Pi to run as a server to test it out, then later try something else, just swap the SD card and you're done. Using the "dd" command on a GNU/Linux computer, a backup of the SD card can be created and later restored if needed.

Drawbacks of the pi:-

With all of the positive things about the Pi, there are a couple of items that I feel are very minor drawbacks:

ARM architecture - While ARM is a highly efficient and low powered architecture, it is not x86 and therefore any binaries that are compiled to run on x86 cannot run on the Pi. The good news is that entire GNU/Linux distributions have been compiled for the ARM architecture and new ones are appearing all of the time. There are very few applications that absolutely need x86. The only one that I found so far to be a problem is Wine, which runs Windows programs. Unfortunately, Wine does not work on the Pi.

RAM not upgradable - The main components of the Pi are soldered to the motherboard, including the RAM which is 512 MB.  This is not a problem though as GNU/Linux can easily run on this. I've found the Pi uses about 100 MB of RAM while running as a small server (this is without running X11).

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