Get your kit ready
Prepare your USB cables, SD cards and a cup of tea. It’s Raspberry Pi project time…
With more than 34 million units sold, the Raspberry Pi is not only one of the world’s most popular computers – it’s also one of the most important. Originally designed to help kids learn about technology, this inexpensive, single-board system is the leading choice for makers, developers and hobbyists who want to do everything from building industrial robots to setting up retro arcade machines. Whether you’re aged eight or 80, if you love technology then the Raspberry Pi is made for you. And there are models from £5 to £65 to suit any budget.
Whatever you do with your Raspberry Pi, you’re going to need an SD card with an operating system on it. The official Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a popular choice and in many cases is a great start for many projects. It’s available in Desktop and Lite flavours at www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems. There’s an official Raspberry Pi Imager utility that you can use to write this (or a selection of other Oses) to an SD card, or you can use the NOOBS tool. We favour
Balena Etcher, which has the advantage of being able to handle compressed images.
Troubleshooting
Throughout this feature we’ll use a few different OS images, so we’ve made a handy guide to writing them below. If you run into difficulties, it’s always worth remembering that a faulty SD card might be to blame, so it’s worth trying a different one if things go wrong.
Cheap power supplies are another cause of errors. For older model Pis these are less of a problem, but the Pi 3 and above really do need a good 5.2V or they’ll be subject to CPU throttling and instability. The Pi 4 has switched its power input from micro USB to USB-C, and unfortunately this new port isn’t USB-C compliant. So if you use a fancy smart charger, it probably won’t power the device, and might possibly damage it.
You won’t run into these issues if you use the official charger, so do that. If you’re opposed to that, we’re told that cheaper USB-C cables (ones that lack the smart charge chip) work fine. Cheaper chargers should work too, but they may not be so reliable, so caveat emptor.
We’ve handpicked some fun, useful and interesting projects to showcase the tremendous scope of things that can be achieved with the humble Pi. From retro gaming to machine learning and Bitcoin, the possibilities are truly endless…