• Question: What do rasberry pi's do?

    Asked by Emilythealien to Oliver on 9 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Georgina.
    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Anything you like!

      They’re actually jut small, cheap computers. They were originally designed by a British company with the aim of being used by schools to teach people about programming, but because they’re so small and affordable, they’re ideal for use in all sorts of projects.

      Obviously, because they are so small they’re not as fast or powerful as a desktop computer, or even a laptop, and they don’t have very much memory or a CD drive or anything — so you can’t replace your main computer with one!

      If I win I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out of Here, I will be getting one to go with my Lego Watt Balance. The plan is to install Linux, a popular free and open-source operating system, and write some data analysis routines in a programming language called Python. That way, people will be able to use the Raspberry Pi to store their data from the balance experiment, and plot graphs of their results. The Pi is ideal because it’s so wee — I may even make a Lego case for it!

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