I was amazed how much technological advancement our computing industry have gone so far. Based on Moore’s law for every 2 years the computing power like processors, memory modules, number of transistors in an IC also doubles in number.
I remembered during our college thesis that we were using the Microchip’s famous PIC16F844A where in our programming language was more on assembly language. Then after I graduated and was working already, I heard the rise of Arduino, Beagle Boards and Raspberry Pi.
So I decided to buy the latest version of Raspberry Pi which, is the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B which costs around $35 or around P1700.00 for just the board itself not including any accessories. So I searched around the internet if there are any local distributors or re-sellers of raspberry Pi and luckily found some results. One re-seller was RockSoftTech you can check their site http://www.rocksoftech.com/ which I got the complete kit that they were selling for around P4400.00 which includes the necessary accessories like Micro-sd card, HDMI cable, power supply, case and others.
For a quick run down of specs for Raspberry Pi 2 Model B:
- A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU
- 1GB RAM
- 4 USB ports
- 40 GPIO pins
- Full HDMI port
- Ethernet port
- Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
- Camera interface (CSI)
- Display interface (DSI)
- Micro SD card slot
- VideoCore IV 3D graphics core
When my package arrived I was excited to open it, check the contents and test to see if I can successfully boot it without blowing it up. 🙂
For a quick rundown of the Contents of the Raspberry Pi Kit from RockSoftTech:
- Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
- HDMI Cable
- Transcend 16 GB Class 10 Micro-SD
- Rasberry Pi 2 Model B case
- Heat sink
- Edimax USB Wifi Adapter 150mbs
- Power Supply 5v 1A rating
Initial impressions with the board itself is that it has an excellent built. The form factor is slightly larger compared to a credit card which is an amazing feat considering it is a full blown computer. I think the ports are also placed in their proper places are easily accessible. I have some issues with the case that it comes with, one is accessing the GPIO pins are kind of hard because there are no cut outs or holes in the case another is that it would be nice if they consider attaching a small fan for cooling process of Rasberry Pi.
The Micro-SD card comes with a pre-installed OS, which is called NOOBS but I will try to tinker with it first and write another blog on how to set up the Raspberry Pi running either Linux or Windows 10. Then try using the basic GPIO pins that it came with like lighting an LED or reading data from basic senors like switches, temperature or humidity.
Code Unboxing 