Gareth Halfacree | Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi User Guide is here! Win a signed copy.

It’s here a month earlier than the expected publishing date because the typesetting elves have been working their tiny hats off. You can now buy the Raspberry Pi User Guide, written by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree, in good old-fashioned book form, with pages made out of paper and everything, which will please those of you who were holding out because you don’t like e-books.

The User Guide serves as an in-depth manual for the Raspberry Pi. It’ll teach you the basics like where to plug the cables in and how to turn it on and use the terminal, and then lead you through learning how to configure it, how to program, how to set it up as a web server, how to use it as a media centre, how to use the GPIO to read buttons and flash lights, and more. I’ve got a copy (already coffee-stained) on my desk, and it’s fantastic; Eben, Gareth and the editorial and production teams at Wiley have done a beautiful job.

If you’d like to win a copy signed by Eben (I may be able to get Gareth to sign it too if I see him in time), just leave a comment below saying exactly what you’d like him to write in his dedication to you. The best/funniest/most tear-jerking will win a signed copy of the book – and some highly sought-after stickers if Rob has any left after his tour of the US. I’ll announce the winner next week.

A nice shiny photo of the rev2 board – and User Guide news

A couple of things today: Eben and Gareth’s Raspberry Pi User Guide is now available in full as a Kindle download from Amazon, and there is a big discount at the moment – it’s only £3.99. The paper version is expected later this month, along with other electronic formats, probably on the 21st.

The user guide is basically a full manual for the Raspberry Pi, and will take you from working out how to plug the thing in to a point where you can write your own software and do your own physical computing (sensors! robots!) with the device; you’ll also find out how to set up your Raspberry Pi as a media centre and much more. (And thank you for the great review, Jim M!)

I’ve also got a high-res picture of the rev2 board with lots of detail from David Siepp at Farnell for you to goggle over. Not much to say here – other than enjoy!

Click to enlarge

I’m going to bunk off for the rest of the day – it’s been a hell of a week.

Meet the Raspberry Pi – download the e-book!

The cut-down version of Meet the Raspberry Pi, written by Eben Upton, our Executive Director, and Gareth Halfacree, is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. It’s only£3.29.

This is the shorter, cut-down version of the book, which is to be followed shortly by a much longer book with more tutorials, more programming, and more physical computing (and longer versions of the existing chapters). This shorter version is ideal for beginners, and will talk you through setting up your Raspberry Pi from scratch, and get you to a position where you can start using your Raspberry Pi like a pro. If you are a more advanced user, you may prefer to wait for the full version of the book to come out – I know the publishers are scrambling to get everything finished, so it shouldn’t be long now.

Big thanks to Gareth and to Eben, and to everyone at Wiley for all their hard work.

Preorder the Raspberry Pi User Guide

We got cover artwork (possibly not the final version, but cover artwork nonetheless) through for the Raspberry Pi User Guide yesterday. This book, written by Eben Upton (Eben, if you’ve been living under a rock, is our Executive Director and the main force behind the Raspberry Pi project) and Gareth Halfacree and published by Wiley & Sons, should be out soon as an e-book (ePub, Kindle and PDF) and as a physical thing made out of trees. Here’s a link to pre-order on Amazon.

Inside, you’ll find everything you need to get started with your Raspberry Pi, including an easy introduction to Linux for total beginners, a guide to getting your SD card working, programming in Scratch and Python, using the Raspberry Pi as a home media centre, using the GPIO to do some physical computing (driving things like lights and motors and recognising switches and sensors), a beginners’ soldering guide, and much more.

The way Wiley & Sons are releasing the book, which is written with the assumption that the reader doesn’t have any technical knowledge (yet – we hope they will by the time they’ve read first few chapters and used the examples), is a little unusual. It’s being published in e-book and physical form in the UK and US, but they’re also releasing a cut-down, abridged version in e-book form only which you can buy at a reduced price. The short version just includes the first six chapters (some of which have been snipped a bit): the chapters on getting started with your Raspberry Pi. Be aware that this abridged version won’t include any material on hardware, or any of the intermediate projects; but if you’re an absolute beginner who wants to save a bit of money, it might suit you.

We’re really excited about the way this has turned out. Eben’s had plenty of journal publications, but this is only his second book. And the first one doesn’t really count, because it’s a rhyming dictionary…