Good review of latest and older Books on the Raspberry

[timmoore46]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/18 ... _pi_books/

I liked the pithy comments on the limitations of each book, and I think I'll put the Haynes Manual on my wish list.



Tim

[gordon77]

I was impressed to see our local bookshop had 5 books for the RPI yesterday, plus plenty of other computing books including python, when only a few months ago you could only find books on Microsoft products

[Jim JKla]

Maplins in the UK have been promoting the books along side their starter kits. Not bad for an electronics shop.

[babbage]

I like the Haynes Manual, one of the better ones out there IMHO. My Yoda toy didn't though.

[Mattylad]

I was in Waterstones yesterday, there are several pi books and I had a flick through them.

I was however dissapointed in that they had information about the pi and then a large section on programming in python. While that is good they are covering basic python programming but seemed to lack how to interact with the pi with it - even Ebens book seemed to be like this.

It appeared that only the Haynes manual had sections on how to access the IO ports etc.

It would be good to read good reviews from someone who has all the books.

[Jim Manley]

I was however dissapointed in that they had information about the pi and then a large section on programming in python. While that is good they are covering basic python programming but seemed to lack how to interact with the pi with it - even Ebens book seemed to be like this.
It appeared that only the Haynes manual had sections on how to access the IO ports etc.

Huh? Did you even look at Chapter 12 in Eben's book, "Hardware Hacking", which contains 40+ pages on how to connect the GPIO ports to external I/O components and the software needed to access them? Keep in mind the fundamental purpose of the Pi and the books published so far - to teach kids hardware and software computing concepts. Anyone who is easily bored with these books should be able to extrapolate the concepts in them to more advanced I/O designs - after all, the GPIO ports basically just turn bits on and off or detect the changes in state of external signals. The rest is mostly just a matter of timing - there are lots of examples out on the WWW in everything from ARM assembly language to C if you don't like Python. There are more advanced books coming though, but dead-tree-based publishing is not a business for the impatient

[Mattylad]

Like I said, I flicked through it and it appeared not to have anything.

I also said "It would be good to read good reviews from someone who has all the books".

You obviously have Ebens book then.

I f that does have a section on how to interact, is it extensive?
Does it go through I/O access, using the ethernet port, usb port etc?

I did not say I did not like python, but they all appear to have a large python tutorial.

[alexeames]

I did not say I did not like python, but they all appear to have a large python tutorial.

Could that be because Python is the "anointed" language?

[Jim Manley]

Well, if 40 pages specific to the Pi isn't detailed enough, you may need to get some more background and I can't even think of how that might be done.

Python isn't a toy language just because it's been chosen to teach students. If you've been misinformed that it's just a pokey scripting language because it's interpreted, you should be aware that Python is routinely compiled into modules (as .pyc files) once functionality has been worked out and known bugs have been eliminated. Python is generally implemented in C under the hood, with a bit of assembly language in critical sections if needed, so it's no slouch.

The algorithms for I/O on the Pi are independent of the implementation language, so the C code to access the GPIO ports is analogous to the equivalent Python. As for Ethernet and USB, pretty much any ARM Debian-compatible code (and most ARM Linux libraries, for that matter) should work since both communications methods use hardware/OS-independent standards. It's all about configuring and opening a port for reading or writing, stuffing the appropriate source and destination address/port and content data into packet header and body data structures, blasting everything on its way, verifying that it was successful, and lathering, rinsing, and repeating until all of the data has successfully made it to its intended destination.

[Mattylad]

On the contrary I was pleased to see that python was included rather than anything else and that others were not.

I want to learn it well because I know what it can do, the software I work with is written in it (hence why I want to learn it).

But I just appear to have missed the pages that are specific to programming IO etc on the pi.

I'l look again next time I am there.
(Then order it online )

[alexeames]

On the contrary I was pleased to see that python was included rather than anything else and that others were not.

I want to learn it well because I know what it can do, the software I work with is written in it (hence why I want to learn it).

But I just appear to have missed the pages that are specific to programming IO etc on the pi.

I'l look again next time I am there.
(Then order it online )

To be honest with you the pace of development has rendered dead tree books almost useless wrt GPIO handling in Python. Sad, but true. Three weeks ago I had to update a web tutorial that I wrote four weeks ago because improvements had broken the code examples I gave. What chance do printed books have? Not much to be honest.

My suggestion is that you have a good look at the up-to-date documentation for RPi.GPIO written by the RPi.GPIO author Ben Croston.

http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio ... i/Examples

and perhaps some videos & tutorials on the more recent features written by me within the last month.

Interrupts (first of three)
http://raspi.tv/2013/how-to-use-interru ... d-rpi-gpio

PWM (first of two)
http://raspi.tv/2013/rpi-gpio-0-5-2a-no ... -to-use-it

WiringPi 2 is also a good GPIO system in its python incarnation, but there is precious little documentation.

[Mattylad]

Links saved for later dissemination.... cheers.

[Mattylad]

I have now got Bens RPI user guide.

Looks excellent (apart from the small thin type which I struggle to read).