A Raspberry Pi is a small, credit card sized, fully-functional computer. It includes a CPU, RAM, internal storage, USB ports, multiple HDMI video outputs, an ethernet port, and built-in Wi-Fi support.
Raspberry Pis use an ARM processor. These are excellent CPUs because they are small, consume little power, and generate very little heat compared to the more robust CPUs from Intel and AMD. The processors are also very fast for their size and perfect for the types of things that a Raspberry Pi is typically asked to do.
Uses
While the ARM processors are great, they do not rival the higher-level processors available from Intel and AMD. While your desktop must manage many different tasks, including compute-heavy apps such as video editing, the Raspberry Pi is best when it is given a specific task to perform. The great thing is that they are so cheap, it is perfectly reasonable to have several that each have a singular focus.
Here are a few of the common use cases.
Education
The Raspberry Pi is widely used in schools for educational projects. Students can create science experiments, interactive displays, or robotics projects using the Raspberry Pi platform. It is also a great tool to test out programming projects that you want to isolate from your desktop. I personally use a Raspberry Pi as a git repository for all my coding projects.
File/Media Sharing
With 2 USB 3.0 ports plus 2 more USB 2.0 ports, the Raspberry Pi can host a lot of storage. The CPU is powerful enough to share files, including media files, over the network. I use a Raspberry Pi as an Emby media server.
Retro Gaming
One of the most enjoyable projects for a Raspberry Pi is to set it up as a retro gaming console. There is an entire community built around setting up your Raspberry Pi as an emulator and running all manner of old video games on it.
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