About Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.

The RPi is more than that, its more than the sum of its parts. You can press into use for just about anything from a Car-puter, media centre pc to any sort of NAS / web / data server. Its GPIO is great for hooking up practically anything to and of course lets not overlook its original purpose as an educational tool.

I think its main success factor is the price, I got mine from ebay with a case thrown in for only £30 delivered! I doesn't come packaged with anything else and you do need a few bits and bobs to get it going, but none of it is bespoke and I have managed to scrounge all of it:

• 4Gb class 6 SD card (sorry ASUS Eee PC 701!)
• Micro USB phone charger - like we haven't got a million of these kicking round already
• USB keyboard and mouse - you only need these for initial setup
• VGA / HDMI cable - also only needed for initial setup
• USB hub - you'll need one of these if you are plugging in any power hungry USB devices

And thats it, no additional outlay

Technical Specs

Chip	Broadcom BCM2835 SoC full HD multimedia applications processor
CPU	700 MHz Low Power ARM1176JZ-F Applications Processor
GPU	Dual Core VideoCore IV® Multimedia Co-Processor
Memory	512MB SDRAM
Ethernet	onboard 10/100 Ethernet RJ45 jack
USB 2.0	Dual USB Connector
Video Output	HDMI (rev 1.3 & 1.4) Composite RCA (PAL and NTSC)
Audio Output	3.5mm jack, HDMI
Onboard Storage	SD, MMC, SDIO card slot
Operating System	Linux: wheezy-raspbian
Dimensions	8.6cm x 5.4cm x 1.7cm