Raspberry Pi

[NorwaySpruce]

Help!

My seven year old is into Scratch coding, and wants a Raspberry Pi from Santa.

I have a Pi B+ and a charger (and 8Gb NOOB SD card!?). Will be the worlds smallest Christmas present, but hey.

I might buy a Pibow case, as I am susceptible to advertising...

Around the house, we have keyboards, monitors, and various leads. But what do I need to make it 'go' on Christmas Day?

I am happy to read stuff in advance, so any 'idiot's guides' etc. are welcome...

My husband says you will need an 8 gig so memory card, a usb keyboard and mouse (he recommends wireless) a hdmi cable and advises you to check your TV has a hdmi connection. You will be able to download the software you need. Apparently. My husband is a technology geek but I know very little. Infact, the only thing I know about the raspberry pi is thst my husband once used it to make a jelly baby scream and once hid it in our bedroom in a bid to convince me that God was talking to me.

Sd not so

Ohh, thank you!

We have the 8Gb card, we have keyboards and mice coming out of our ears.

We have a monitor with HDMI connections, I think.

My son was wittering on about 'sprites' and NOOBS. No clue at all.

I don't want to find myself looking at a tiny circuit board on Christmas morning, unable to do a single thing.

I am actually Googling courses, so utterly clueless am I. We seem to live in the only corner of the UK without a coding club though.

Whatever happened to Playmobil and Lego?

DS(9) would love this but I understand only one word of what you speak and that is Scratch.

Where can I find a real idiot's guide?

Having been on a course with similarly clueless teachers, I'd recommend including a holder/base in the kit, a breadboard, some LEDs, wires, buzzers and the like. This set seems to include most of it and a book of the same name can be purchased too.

There are lots of fantastic projects online that make use of things such as balloons, string and a camera module. In fact, the camera module would be fun to have as it opens up possibilities such as taking photographs of a sprouting bean every minute/hour/whatever, photographing your home from above (using string and balloon too).

It might be worth downloading the software onto the memory card before wrapping everything up - it'll be a faff to have to do that on Christmas Day!

I bought a card with the operating systems on and ready to go (there were 2 or 3 on there). It was only a few pence more than an empty card.

There are a some good books aimed at kids, this is the one I've been looking at. It's aimed at slightly older kids but from my very quick look through I think my 8 year old could manage it with some support.
www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Raspberry-Carrie-Anne-Philbin/dp/1118751256/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412696302&sr=1-3&keywords=raspberry+pi+projects

The B+ requires a Micro SD card, not an SD card.

You want a case, because if you run it without one you are pretty certain to find out just how much static your carpet generates.

If you're going to hook it to the Internet, be warned that (a) it's a lot easier with a cable into your router than over wireless, although the wireless adapters do work and (b) if you were relying on parental controls on PCs/laptops/etc, remember the Pi won't have any.

I've got a bunch of them, and I use them for everything up to fairly substantial software development jobs. They're just Linux boxes, after all. They can be a bit sensitive to the quality of the USB power supply, and they're not hard to blow up if you're careless in attaching hardware: if you're going to mess around with motors and sensors and so on then investing in something that does opto-isolation might not be a bad idea.

There are some fab kits on amazon for various things, along with some books.

I'd definitely recommend getting a case.

The keyboard,mouse etc you've got sorted.

The sd card (will be an adapter with a micro sd inside I assume, like the one with my sons)will likely need formatting and having the software installed on it. Some do say it's meant to work straight out of the box but, like the majority of people who bought the b+ with card, I didn't find it so. The instructions for formatting,downloading and installing the software can be found by going to the address found on the piece of paper in the box which gives you the pdf instructions

No, Trip, tbe B+ (note the plus) takes a Micro SD directly (and needs a different case as a result).

Thanks for all the new replies!

I haven't looked properly at the SD card we have, but it came bundled with the Pi, so I guess it's the right size.

I think I'm going to have to set it all up some time this month and make sure it works, I don't think I could face formatting and downloading stuff on Christmas morning

I've bought the book jThompson linked to, and the kit that goes with it, hopefully that will give son #2 something to work on.

Duhgld I know the Pi itself takes the micro sd, but it comes in an adapter to use in your pc to format and download. I only pointed it out because when I purchased the B+ with card for my son there was a review on amazon saying it was no use as it came with an sd card rather than micro sd! They didn't realise it was in an sd adapter so ordered a separate micro sd!!!

Norway, the formatting and downloading doesn't take much time at all. I'm sure your lad would be happy to do it

I guess you don't know NOOBS means "new out of box software"

My DD says that the Raspberry Pi User Guide by Eben Upton is very good(she's 15 and just started using hers in earnest - new computer studies teacher has decided to use Pi for their controlled assessment which is good).

If your monitors don't have HDMI input, that's ok, they presumably have DVI so just get an HDMI /DVI cable.

place marking as DS2 is a bit of a computer geek and this might be a perfect prezzy for him, thanks.