Who can tell me about Raspberry Pi?

[Chocolatecake12]

Hi
I’m looking for some wisdom on Raspberry pi. My ds will be 12 in December and has expressed an interest in this but I know nothing about it!
So - what actually is it? Cost? Best place to buy? Suitable for a 12 year old?
Enlighten me mumnetters!
Thank you

Have a look for a starter kit on amazon which includes the raspberry pi, plus keyboard, mouse, SD card, power supply.

The newest pi model is the 3b so get a kit that includes one of those.

Then you need an HD monitor with a power supply and HDMI cable.

And finally something like raspberry pis for dummies would probably have been ok for me at 12 (or there might be some books specifically for that age range).

Does your local library do any coding sessions you could go to with him? They often have a Raspberry Pi or two that you can have a go with.

That’s all been very helpful thanks
I’ll have a look at the local library delilah

The Raspberry Pi is nothing more than a tiny, very very cheap (under £35 and down to £5!) and pretty functional computer. It comes as a bare board, so DD will need a case for it, a microSD card (4gig minimum, get a 16gig), you can use a phone charger as the power supply, then a normal keyboard and mouse and a screen with an HDMI to plug it all into.

After that bare minimum, there's a bunch of other odd little addons - cameras, sensors, motors, lights, screens, touch panels, speakers - to turn your boring little computer into almost anything.

thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi to get started - I just bought a B+ £32, but you probably want to look in the Kits section starting from scratch. There are some more project based kits and bundles there too.

projects.raspberrypi.org/en/ has loads of interesting projects. There's vast amounts of resources on t'Web for all sorts of other things.

I clicked on this thread thinking it was some kind of delicious dessert or baked good I'd been missing out on

Also you don’t even need a monitor and keyboard for it if you already have a computer – you can just log in to it over your local network.

Useful for hacking drones (but I think not legal to do this).

A Raspberry Pi is a tiny but complete computer. It runs a full desktop operating system, and is designed to make it easy for children to get started in computing. It's major advantage is that your child can trash it and then it can be reset back to a blank original state with ease.

The Raspberry Pi itself will cost you about £32, but you need some more bits to make it work. At a dead minimum, you need a power supply and a microSD card, and it's probably best to get a case as well. That brings the cost up to about £58.

For typical usage, you'll also need a monitor with digital input (HDMI or DVI) a keyboard and a mouse. I would tend to avoid packages including keyboard and mouse, because IME they are usually rubbish. A decent basic branded keyboard (e.g. Logitech) should be about £10, and a mouse £5. The monitor is going to be the most expensive component if you don't already have a suitable one to hand. Probably about £100.

I'd recommend Pimoroni for the basic Raspberry Pi stuff. Very helpful people.

Maybe add a subscription to MagPi, there are some great projects in there for kids. You can also download for free but there is something about flicking through a magazine that seems to get both mine more interested. www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/

DS is almost 12 and still needs quite a bit of support to achieve the projects though, my coding skills are getting a workout!

To be fair, the pi will connect to a normal TV providing you have an hdmi connection on the back. As others have said, a power suppy, keyboard and mouse, WiFi dongle, 4gig sd minimum will also be needed. You will also need to either have a separate pc in order to download the software for the pi, or buy an sd card with it already installed on.