The Raspberry Pi is developed in the UK by the Raspberry Foundation, and it is a credit card sized single board computer. The main intension of this raspberry pi is to produce low-cost computers for students as well as children. It an ideal development board to do some real-time projects, and also cheap and robust to interact with the real-world parameters. It has inbuilt interfacing capabilities for various devices like PC, mobile, external memory devices like SD card, audio devices, and so on.
Hardware Parts inside the Raspberry Pi
Before buying a raspberry pi development board, we want you to know more about the hardware parts and their real-world implementation requirements for projects.
The Raspberry Pi comes with two models: model A and model B. The USB ports availability is the main difference between these two types. The model B includes an Ethernet port, but the model A doesn’t have an Ethernet port. It comes with communication abilities and also contains different open source technologies like multimedia, web based applications, etc. Some of these specifications of hardware structure include:
- 3.5mm audio standard headphone socket
- 5V Micro USB connector
- HDMI audio and video (works with modern TVs and DVI monitors)
- REA video (works with older TVs)
- 2x USB 2.0 ports
- 10/100 Mb Ethernet
- GPIO (general purpose input and output)
- LAN controller
- CSI camera interface
- System on Chip Broadcom BCM2835 700Mhz and 256 Mb/512 Mb RAM
- JTAG debug ports
- Storage SD card slot (supports SD cards up to 32GB)
Projects on Raspberry
1. Raspberry Pi based Motor Speed Control
In this project, a DC Motor speed is controlled using Raspberry Pi.
Hardware and software Requirements
- DC Motor
- Raspberry pi model
- TV or PC monitor
- Motor Driver IC
- Voltage Regulator
- PHP program/wiring pi
This project uses a Raspberry Pi board to control the speed of a DC Motor. The speed of a DC motor is directly proportional to the voltage applied across its terminals, and therefore, if the voltage across the motor terminal is varied, then the speed also gets varied accordingly. So this principle is implemented in this project. A keyboard is attached to the Raspberry pi board to operate the motor at different speeds by pressing corresponding key.
According to the program, the pulse width modulation is generated at the output, and it can be programmed in PHP/wiring pi. Depending on the duty cycle, the average voltage and current change, so the speed of the motor will also change. A motor driver IC is interfaced to the board for receiving pulse width modulation signals and delivering desired output to the DC motor.
2. Auto Intensity control by using Raspberry Pi
By using Raspberry pi, this project is designed to control auto intensity of street lights.
Hardware and Software Requirements
- Raspberry pi board
- TV or PC monitor
- White LEDs
- PHP program/Wiring Pi
This particular project uses a cluster of LEDs as street lights that consume less power, and their life time is also more, when compared to the HID lamps. A raspberry pi is used to control the intensity by developing PWM signals that drives a MOSFET to switch the LEDs to achieve desired operation.
The intensity of these lights progressively vary from evening to next day morning particularly during the peak hours, with full light intensity and then , the decreasing lights’ intensity gradually reduced. MOSFET switching by PWM technique is implemented in the raspberry pi program to have variable voltage across the LEDs
List of Projects Related to Raspberry Pi
- Raspberry Pi Based Solar Street Light
- Programmable Sequential Switching by Using Raspberry pi
- Raspberry pi Powered Wearable Computer
- Synced Music and Christmas Lights
- Home Automation Using Raspberry pi
- Touch Screen Tablet
- Raspberry pi Based Industrial Automation Using Zigbee Communication
- Raspberry pi as an FM Transmitter
- Lego Raspberry pi Enclosure
- Autonomous Robot Arm Control Based on Raspberry pi with Bluetooth Control
Buy a Raspberry Pi Online
It is always better to buy electronic components and kits online that saves time as well as money. There are many online sites to buy Raspberry Pi model and some of these stores are listed below.
Hope that we have given the best answer to the question “where can I buy a raspberry pi?” With the above mentioned online stores and real-time projects you have the best information from this article, and therefore, we anticipate your comments in the comment section below. Apart from this, if you need any help to implement these projects, you can write to us, and then we will try our level best to help you out in this area.
- Hardware Parts inside the Raspberry Pi by pcmag