Wednesday, January 9, 2013

My Review of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi

I have been interested in playing with a Raspberry Pi for quite some time and it'll be a while before I do as I have too many other projects to work on right now, but I decided to go through this book to see how useful it would be. I have to say it's definitely a recommended reading for anyone getting into this great, inexpensive computer!
It is quite detailed on how to go through everything from setup to advanced topics like using GPIO to control things and read sensor information. I also think the primer on Python is a great way to get people thinking more about using Python for things. I have been trying to get going in Linux for a bit now and found these instructions, even though it's for the RPi, to be quite useful. There's even a section on how to connect and use an Arduino with the RPi. I appreciate that section!
My only complaint and the reason I gave it 4 stars is the lack of thorough editing before releasing this book. There were multiple grammatical errors in the book that I found to be a bit annoying for a published book, although I know they can be hard to find. I also found a mistake in the code in one of the loops that would make it go forever as one of the variables is never incremented. You need to know a little programming to use what's in this book so most people reading this with some sort of understanding would likely catch the error but for those that are new to it may not.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and found it very useful. Now I need a little more time and my own board to play around with!

Disclaimer: This book was received as part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program. All comments represent my thoughts and opinions.

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