Robin Camille Davis
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New toy: Raspberry Pi

May 16, 2013

So, first, let me just say that this toy is new only in that it is newly in my possession. I know I'm behind the game by quite a while. When my software engineer dad excitedly told me he'd gotten on the Raspberry Pi waitlist many moons ago, I said "cool" and that was that.

But then I became an Emerging Technologies Librarian almost entirely by accident, through a series of improbable events. I was caught off-guard but am now diving enthusiastically into technologies both emerging and already emerged, including the Raspberry Pi. What's nice about being late to the game is that others have blazed forth with inspiring projects.

PiAfter perusing the Adafruit Raspberry Pi tutorials, I got so excited that I bought myself the Raspberry Pi starter kit for a hundred bucks. I went through the easy Gmail LED notifier tutorial and am working on getting sound-making buttons operative. Both mini-projects are introducing me to how the RPi works and what the heck a breadboard is even used for and what resistors do. If there's one thing I'm enjoying, it's learning how utterly ignorant I am about such non-complexities as press button, make beep sound. Here I should mention that the RPi was originally designed for children.

And what do I plan to do with this? It usually takes me a while to get confident enough with a new skills set, but I hope to find a handful of fun uses within our Library. I've got my eye on a Little Printer, particularly after attending a delightful Library APIs workshop.

But first, to master fundamentals. Press button, make beep sound.