What is a Raspberry Pi and why should I care?

The Raspberry Pi (also called RPi for short) is an awesome piece of hardware that really brings the world of computers and programming and custom hardware projects into the hands of people without massive research and development labs and/or endless amounts of money to play with technology.

I have always wanted to play around with ideas and try exploit hardware and software but I have never been in a position to play around because the hardware I have had has been necessary for actually doing work and/or not really been in a position to work directly on my motherboards to see what I can or can't do.

So to cut a long story short having a RPi opens up so many possibilities. I have multiple projects which I have done with my RPi's (which I hope to find time to share) and I'm constantly thinking of new things based on the exposure to the world of hardware solutions.

But my PC is a Quad-core i7 and a Raspberry Pi only has a 700Mhz single core processor? Isn't that useless?

I have seen a lot of people complaining about how "this is 2014, how can it be so slow?", and while it is a valid concern when it comes to things like your laptop for work or your gaming PC, for the Raspberry Pi its PERFECT! Here is why:

Computing power isn't everything you've been told it is...

Let me try explain the lies we've been fed. For today's power hungry Operating Systems (OS's) like Windows 8 and Mavericks, etc. we have the requirement for hardware that is truly groundbreaking (and therefore expensive and powerful). Our OS's today really do an amazing amount of things and require powerful CPU's for all the games and applications that we as users want to use and the quicker they respond to our requests, the better the performance perception. So a bigger and faster CPU (like a quad core i7) is able to respond to the users request very quickly and make the users experience pleasant. So bigger is better when the user is waiting for a response, but that's not the only place people need a machine to do something for them.

Think about a task that you could execute on a daily schedule and you don't really care if it take 10 nano seconds or 1 minute to execute because you wont be watching or waiting. This is where the RPi comes into its own. You are able to setup services which will execute in the background and perform automated tasks without any input from you. And this is where the sky is the limit. The possibilities are only limited by how far you want to push the RPi. Here is a list of my personal projects as well as some of the most amazing options on the web.

Its cheap...

I think this speaks for itself. In today's economy it is always nice to find a little relief when it comes to our pockets. This device allows a person to experiment with a piece of hardware that hasn't cost an arm and a leg only ($25 excl SD card and power supply). No one wants to risk damaging an expensive device due to "curiosity" and so the RPi gives the curious at heart a device to play and potentially damage without the fear of an expensive loss.

I don't think I would be the engineer I am today if I wasn't able to "fix" all the toys which had some form of electronics (which stopped working after I fixed them) and all my fathers Betamax machines which had the nicest motors and ended up in the nicest beatings of my life because I destroyed a relic, but sadly nowadays we don't get to experience the joy of learning from destroying. The deconstruction of a device truly is one of the best ways to learn how it works and the RPi gives us back the ability to learn by possibly destroying.

It's low powered...

The average PC power consumption is around 80 - 250 watts (not including high performance systems that can get to 1000 watts) and a Raspberry Pi is only 2-5 watts! This is a massive power reduction and allows you to leave the RPi on FOREVER!!! As overly dramatic as that may sound it is quite an amazing device to only require such a small amount of energy and the newer B+ model has even better performance.

Adding a battery to the project makes the project completely mobile and adds even more possibilities, some of which would be impossible with a full PC.

Its basically a tortoise, but we know the tortoise won at the end...

Ok so if you don't understand my reference to a tortoise winning you might want to read this, but basically its where the saying "slow and steady wins the race" comes from. I'm not trying to say that the RPi is the best and only thing you will ever need, but there are some repetitive tasks and low powered projects you can try where the RPi will be the best option.

If you are looking for an easy introduction into the world of hardware and software you wont find and easier, more cost effective way to start learning what is required.