I have taken the plunge and got my first Raspberry Pi, in kit form. So far, I am quite impressed.

The kit can be bought from a variety of places, such as the Pi shop or from the Amazon link below.

My first impressions are quite favourable. It is a little larger than a credit card sized circuit board, with a bunch of connectors, chips and electronics on top. This latest version includes 4x USB slots, a Micro SD slot, HDMI and audio out and a Micro USB power connector.

The kit includes a power adaptor – there are lots of horror stories online about power supplies for the Pi either not providing enough juice, or much worse, too much and frying the device!

The accompanying case is plastic, but is well made and thought out.  It wouldn’t look amiss nestled next to my PlayStation and HDMI amplifier.

It also comes with the Micro SD card with NOOBS preinstalled, this gives the option of installing various different operating systems, I went with the default Rasbpian OS.

My aim is to have this running a web server, under NodeJS, to add infrared receiver/transmitter capabilities and to add some sensors. Perhaps some radio frequency transmitter too and add a couple of remote controlled light switches. I really want to configure it with a NodeJS web server, so I can control and access it from the house, and perhaps expand it’s use with the Alexa SDK to control lights and TV via voice.

I am also planning on familiarising myself with the hardware electronics side, and perhaps expanding this to be a network of Raspberry Pi devices around the house and in the man cave.

I do need to do some initial setup and I will post those details in a separate entry.

For more entries on the Internet of Things and Raspberry Pi, click here.