Raspberry Pi 2 - A Basic Overview & Introduction
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,497 words · ~7 min read
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if you head out to a restaurant and order a $35 dessert you might expect the
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waiter to bring you more than just a plain slice of raspberry pie but getting
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this Raspberry Pi for the same price might just end up to be a fantastic deal
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a printed circuit board might not taste as good as a piece of sweet pastry but
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these little guys are a heck of a lot more versatile with people using
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raspberry pies as the basis of projects that run the gamut from home security
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and automation to Robotics and even beer
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making when I found out the Raspberry Pi 2 had been released I had to put it into
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action myself welcome to my review of the Raspberry Pi 2 model
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B Intel's new 750 series ssds utilize
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the NVMe standard providing speeds never seen before on a consumer series storage
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Drive click now to learn more probably the most striking feature
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of the RAs R Pi 2 is how much stuff they manage to cram onto a PCB the size of a
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credit card you get an S so also known as system on chip that features a 900
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MHz CPU and a 250 MHz GPU 1 GB of ddr2
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RAM on the back of the board and four USB 2.0 ports and a fullsize HDMI port
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that supports audio a 3.5mm stereo Jack that actually supports video out through
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an adapter if you're hooking up to an older TV 10100 Ethernet a Micro SD slot
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for storage and a micro USB port that that powers the whole thing you don't
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get a power cord but a USB wall wart that supports one amp of current should
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work fine for most users I used a standard 1 amp phone charger and had no
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problems although you might want to look into getting something like a charger
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ready for 2 amps if you're pumping a lot of juice through those USB ports there's
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also a couple bits you won't find on your standard desktop motherboard the pi
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includes connectors for an optional mini LCD display like you'd see on a digital
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camera like we're kind of filming on now and the optional $25 separately sold
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Raspberry Pi camera module which allows you to record 1080p video but probably
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the most important feature for those of you who really want to dive into a
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special project is the 40 pin general purpose input/output usually just called
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gpio these pins are fully programmable and allow you to control tons of
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different things with the pi such as thermometers for portable weather
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stations uh motors for miniature tanks and RC vehicles and maybe even a
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wireless door lock Etc but before I dove
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in and try to turn the pie into something Uber cool something on the
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spec list caught my attention the CPU on the Raspberry Pi is actually the same
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CPU an ARM cortex A7 that's in the
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Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini just at a lower clock speed with how we use smartphones
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for lots of basic tasks like watching YouTube videos web browsing and
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listening to music I got to wondering could the Raspberry Pi 2 especially if
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it has double the RAM and quad druple the CPU cores of the previous model be
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used as a basic PC could this little $35
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computer actually replace a desktop that's just being used for stuff like
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maybe a Facebook machine I was determined to find out so I went ahead
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and inserted the micro SD card that was included and pre-loaded with raspan a
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distribution of DB and Linux specifically adopted for the Raspberry
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Pi keep in mind though that if you order a pie it won't come with that micro SD
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card but you can download raspian and load it onto your own card for free
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after first displaying a Configuration utility with some basic options such as
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keyboard layout the P takes about 20 seconds to boot into the raspian desktop
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which looks a little like macOS from the late 1990s uh gray background the
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taskbar at the top it comes with a simple web browser console a PDF reader
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a simple text editor several programming environments and a strip down version of
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Minecraft in case you want to forget about your project for a few minutes and
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just play with your wood and things um
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also a word of warning this is a Linux environment and it's a bit of a weird
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one to boot it may be a bit of a struggle to work with even if you aren't
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a Linux wizard but I believe in you
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you're a skilled and intelligent person and with the help of online resources
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you can do this once you're good to go one of the main things people are going
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to try to do is use the Raspberry Pi for gaming outside of just Minecraft and it
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does quite well if you're looking for a little micro siiz ret Retro Gaming
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platform there's tons of projects online for people making super small even
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sometimes mobile Retro Gaming machines based on the Raspberry Pi platform and
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honestly I'm not surprised as it excels in this category first off this won't
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really be that good of a PC replacement for people who even just want to use it
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for Gmail and to laugh at some memes the pi has some issues with certain elements
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on many modern websites and has a steep learning curve for anyone who doesn't
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have quite a bit of experience in Linux so who is this actually for well
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basically anyone who has an idea for a cool project and the patience to see it
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through by learning how to configure things in Linux can make good use of the
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pi plenty of people have gotten their retro gaming consoles completely up and
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running in a matter of hours and others have even taken it further by building
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custom cases with joysticks and miniature screens to have a fully
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functional retro handheld or gaming station but if you don't want to game
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there are hundreds and hundreds of other uses for the Raspberry Pi that are
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limited basically only by your imagination media servers smart
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thermostats and even electric electronic bottle openers have all been powered by
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the Raspberry Pi so if you have 35 bucks burning a hole in your pocket for some
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reason and you're not in the mood to spend it on dessert it might be worth
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finding out just what you can come up with speaking of desserts our friends
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fees a built-in mic a mic in/ dual headphone out combo line in Bluetooth
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to noise ratio and it's available over there for another 4 days or so of course
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this product is available through mastop at a significantly discounted price
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thanks to their group buy model essentially the more people buy the more
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prices goes down for a set minimum and it has already reached its lowest price
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out this drop and many others in the link in the description or at dr.p s/l
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techtips that link doesn't give us a kickback or anything but it does let
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them know that we sent you all right guys what would you do
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with one of these little tiny machines I have a few ideas of my own which might
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make it onto lineus Tech Channel but let me know in the comments down below over
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