The Raspberry Pi is a cool single-board computer, modular, onto which you can hook up web cam, loudspeakers, external hard drives, all kinds of devices.
It has wireless and bluetooth connectivity, several USB ports, an Ethernet port. It has everthing I expect from a computer.
It can play music and movies, with the new Raspberry Pi 4 and its 8 Gigabytes of RAM, I can even do real development work without any problem, with tools like PyCharm or IntelliJ.
The Raspberry Pi 400 has recently been released, this is a very cool configuration to think about. For 100.00 USD it comes with the board (4Gb of RAM), a keyboard and a mouse. "All" you need to add is one (or two) HDMI screen(s).
A desktop HDMI screen can be an expensive device...
Along the same lines, below are a couple of configs I came up with before the Raspberry Pi 400 was released..., keeping in mind that those configs are mobile configs, not desktop ones.
The different configurations presented here can be acheived for less than 150.00 USD. And they do work for real.
Note: The configurations presented below have small screens... But nothing is preventing you to plug in a big one.
Here are several configurations for a small Raspberry Pi based laptop, to be taken on the go.
Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
The links in the text below will lead you somewhere in this git repo, with all the STL files and details on the hardware used for each configuration.
In its Pelican box, with a 7" touchscreen (no keyboard needed, it's like a tablet). The Raspberry Pi is behind the screen, ducked in the foam.
With a wood and plexiglass custom case, a breadboard, wireless keyboard with touchpad, and a 7" HDMI screen
Same config, but without the holder, in a Pelican case | It all fits in |
Putting things to work | At work! |
In the box, closed. | Connecting the loudspeakers |
Unpacking | At work. |
With an Adafruit 3.5" TFT, as explained here: Same config, with another enclosure (all STL files available here):
And there is a Raspbian OS 64-bit version in preview... I'm looking forward to the 16Gb version of the Raspberry Pi 4!