From 0 to 1: Raspberry Pi and the Internet of Things

Tech companies are buzzing with anticipation about the Internet of Things. What is it and why should you care? This class takes you through the possibilities that the Internet of Things can open up. It also explains in brief how it can be achieved.

We'll start with understanding the basic setup of a 'smart' home. The thing that makes it smart is a special type of computer. Microcontrollers are examples of special purpose computers that can be used for automating things.

The Raspberry Pi is tiny but still packs quite a punch. The Broadcom System on A Chip (SOC) is the secret sauce that makes this possible.

You can connect many things to a Raspberry Pi - Camera. HDMI, audio, GPIO - this class takes you on a tour of

the Raspberry Pi Board

The Raspberry Pi's SOC only has a small RAM. Where do you store your data, OS etc then? Use a Micro-SD card to store all your files and data.

The Raspberry Pi only runs specific kinds of operating systems - but there is still a lot of choice. Beef up on your OS fundamentals - RISC, CISC architectures, Open source vs closed source and make an informed choice of OS.

It's time to get started. We'll walk you through the steps involved in installing an Operating system.

Raspbian is the OS we've chosen to install. It's pretty similar to Debian - a linux distribution. Go on a tour of the OS.

Walk through a few useful linux shell commands including grep.

Adding a user and giving them permissions is not as straightforward as Windows. Redirection symbols come in real handy when you want to capture or parse the output at a command line.

Installing a software requires a few specific commands. These will be a lifesaver, whenever you use any Linux based OS in the future.

Connecting your Raspberry Pi to the internet can be a little tricky if you have never worked on a Linux based OS. We'll walk you through it step by step and there is a guide attached as well.

If you are absolutely new to coding, don't be intimidated in the least - its just like cooking.

A list is a list, as the name implies. Everything in life is a list, including strings

Let's do some stuff with lists.

Dictionaries, the name itself best describes what they are: collections of key-value pairs that you can look up blazingly fast. If-Else Statements come in real handy when you need to check for a condition.

Ever wondered what's the biggest difference between Excel, and a serious programming language? Loops. Loops are big productivity boosters.

Lists and Dictionaries are inextricably linked with loops. Use loops to do something with each element of a list or each key-value pair of a dictionary.

If coding is like cooking, functions are like food processors. They automate repetitive tasks by mechanically taking stuff in and churning stuff out.

Modules are awesome, you can do amazingly complex things by importing a module, without having to code stuff from scratch.

Walk through the various steps involved in a physical computing project. These are general enough that you can use this same process with any project , regardless of whether it is a Raspberry Pi that you're using as the main unit.

Devices communicate through interfaces, these are boundaries that connect them to other devices and define how the communication will be. Digital communication starts with binary and includes many possible interfaces -Serial, parallel, UART, Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and I2C. Pulse Width Modulation is a way to convert digital to analog.

This is the most critical step in physical computing - designing a circuit that connects your Raspberry Pi to other devices. We'll start from basics - what is the Ohm's law? What is resistance? Understand the specific roles that the different GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi play.

To tie it all up, you'll need to write a program that controls the devices in your circuit. RPi.GPIO in Python or WiringPi in C are options but the basic steps are the same.

Here are few things you might want to add to your shopping list.

Our first physical computing project! Have some fun turning an LED on or off with your Raspberry Pi.

Read input from a Push Button, which is a tiny switch.

Take a reading from a photoresistor which is a light sensor. Use an RC circuit to measure the resistance of the photoresistor.

Use the Ultrasonic sensor to figure out if there is something is near the Raspberry Pi - and how far away it is.

We'll build upon the previous 2 projects. If a person walks into a room and the room is too dark - turn on the light switch. The project uses 3 circuits - Light sensor, Ultrasonic sensor, Relay to control a switch

We'll build upon the previous 2 projects. If a person walks into a room and the room is too dark - turn on the light switch. The project uses 3 circuits - Light sensor, Ultrasonic sensor, Relay to control a switch

WiringPi is a library that was written for Arduino like programming on the Raspberry Pi. Pulse Width Modulation is a way to convert digital to analog - we'll explore both of these in this class .