Learning Raspberry Pi in Johannesburg

Foxhound5366

Foxhound5366

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I’ve always wanted to learn how to code some things on a Raspberry Pi, but can’t find the motivation to just buy a kit and google some courses. Is that the best way to learn?

I had a dream of there being some kind group of techies giving courses to adults face-to-face, where everyone learns something and has fun building projects together. Does such a thing exist in Johannesburg? Or is it way too social for programmers?

My personal context is I did a bit of Java programming and now only know how to write JavaScript, which is fine for websites but probably won’t be useful here. I like to think I’m a fast learner though so not put off by having a crash course and just starting with the basics.

Please help, what’s the best places to start?
 
Foxhound5366 said:
I’ve always wanted to learn how to code some things on a Raspberry Pi, but can’t find the motivation to just buy a kit and google some courses. Is that the best way to learn?

I had a dream of there being some kind group of techies giving courses to adults face-to-face, where everyone learns something and has fun building projects together. Does such a thing exist in Johannesburg? Or is it way too social for programmers?

My personal context is I did a bit of Java programming and now only know how to write JavaScript, which is fine for websites but probably won’t be useful here. I like to think I’m a fast learner though so not put off by having a crash course and just starting with the basics.

Please help, what’s the best places to start?
Click to expand...
They do exist but I am not in JHB. Also, what do you exactly want to learn because these boards run Linux, so a wide variety of languages are available to you.
The question revolves more around what you want to do with this board
 
PaulGherkin said:
They do exist but I am not in JHB. Also, what do you exactly want to learn because these boards run Linux, so a wide variety of languages are available to you.
The question revolves more around what you want to do with this board
Click to expand...
Aah to start with just some dumb robotic projects will be fun: I saw a guy create a raspberry pi-powered robot and connect it to ChatGPT and a webcam, so that ChatGPT could look for danger and steer the robot around the world. Got me kinda inspired.
 
You can buy a esp32 dev board for dirt cheap and see if you really have an interest. You can do quite a bit of robotics projects with one of them.

Places do exist where like minded people meet. This one is in centurion but there may be one in JHB as well.

www.house4hack.co.za

House 4 Hack – What will you build next ?

Tuesdays Tuesday night is House4Hack night - bring your projects, open-mind, beer and visit us after 18.00 on any Tuesday night! We are open till late (normally past 12) and it is an opportunity to socialize, hack, dream, scheme with like-minded people. It is a very informal event where...
www.house4hack.co.za www.house4hack.co.za
 
Foxhound5366 said:
I’ve always wanted to learn how to code some things on a Raspberry Pi, but can’t find the motivation to just buy a kit and google some courses. Is that the best way to learn?

I had a dream of there being some kind group of techies giving courses to adults face-to-face, where everyone learns something and has fun building projects together. Does such a thing exist in Johannesburg? Or is it way too social for programmers?

My personal context is I did a bit of Java programming and now only know how to write JavaScript, which is fine for websites but probably won’t be useful here. I like to think I’m a fast learner though so not put off by having a crash course and just starting with the basics.

Please help, what’s the best places to start?
Click to expand...
Not aware of anything in JHB, i mean there are some hacking coffees and things which might have people interested in the Pi's and other ESP chipsets etc but i don't know of an actual "lets build stuff together" option.

books are good, eBooks, youtube videos and possible Udemy (i'm not a big fan of it but there sometimes good stuff). What units do you have that you wanna use in the meantime?
 
B-1 said:
You can buy a esp32 dev board for dirt cheap and see if you really have an interest. You can do quite a bit of robotics projects with one of them.

Places do exist where like minded people meet. This one is in centurion but there may be one in JHB as well.

www.house4hack.co.za

House 4 Hack – What will you build next ?

Tuesdays Tuesday night is House4Hack night - bring your projects, open-mind, beer and visit us after 18.00 on any Tuesday night! We are open till late (normally past 12) and it is an opportunity to socialize, hack, dream, scheme with like-minded people. It is a very informal event where...
www.house4hack.co.za www.house4hack.co.za
Click to expand...
Interesting, I had no idea things like that existed! Thanks for sharing. Have you attended the Centurion event and found it entertaining?
 
neoprema said:
Not aware of anything in JHB, i mean there are some hacking coffees and things which might have people interested in the Pi's and other ESP chipsets etc but i don't know of an actual "lets build stuff together" option.

books are good, eBooks, youtube videos and possible Udemy (i'm not a big fan of it but there sometimes good stuff). What units do you have that you wanna use in the meantime?
Click to expand...
I don’t have any units lol, I’ll be starting from scratch. I just thought a guided experience with other learners might be more fun than doing it all myself, but it seems like if I want that I’ll have to go back to high school and join a robotics class (we never had those in my day).
 
Willie Trombone said:
Get a board and start with YouTube. As for esp32 and other microcontrollers like it, the difference between that and a pi is a pi is a more advanced system that is capable of running a desktop OS (it’s a micro processor) vs the other which is a micro controller, more geared for simple code and controlling hardware, but not ideal for storing and processing complex data and code. There’s certainly overlap, but there are differences. Which to choose depends on your use case. A pi is more complex, requires longer boot time, but can be way more flexible while a microprocessor is no nonsense, gets the job done with fewer hang ups but for a limited set of tasks. Microcontrollers interface nicely with hardware to perform relatively simple tasks.

Microcontroller vs Microprocessor - Difference Between Centralized Computer Chips - AWS

What's the Difference Between Microprocessors and Microcontrollers? How to Use Microprocessors and Microcontrollers with AWS.
aws.amazon.com aws.amazon.com
Click to expand...
Do raspberry pi and microcontrollers accept the same programming language? Or which are the primary languages required for each?

I wouldn’t mind getting started on a microcontroller if the lessons I learn there carry across directly to raspberry pi.
 
YouTube is my go to as I am not a developer or coder and know enough to be useful but dangerous. Sitting with three RPi 3's at the moment trying to get them up and running to see what I can do with them. Loading CasaOS on one but almost nothing available in the App Store will run on such an old RPi. Looking at getting Home Assistant up and running again on one RPi and the other using for Solar Assistant for our SunSynk inverter.

Not that he does detailed How To's but search for 'Dave's Garage' on YouTube, he shows some pretty cool projects using ESP32's with LED's as well as a host of other interesting video's about his days at Microsoft, old OS's, old computers, etc.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Do raspberry pi and microcontrollers accept the same programming language? Or which are the primary languages required for each?

I wouldn’t mind getting started on a microcontroller if the lessons I learn there carry across directly to raspberry pi.
Click to expand...
C/C++ is most common I think for Microcontrollers but there is also MicroPython or CircuitPython. Probably any programming language is available on the Pi but Python would also be a good choice there unless you specifically want to learn another language.

Javascript/Node.js is also available if you want to leverage your previous experience.
 
InvisibleJim said:
C/C++ is most common I think for Microcontrollers but there is also MicroPython or CircuitPython. Probably any programming language is available on the Pi but Python would also be a good choice there unless you specifically want to learn another language.

Javascript/Node.js is also available if you want to leverage your previous experience.
Click to expand...
Raspberry Pi as I said runs a full Linux implementation.

So you can write programs on the device, or for the device in:
C
C++
Golang
Python
Java
C# with .net core
etc..

Need I go on? Probably not!

The DIFFERENCE between RPi and a ESP32 is that the FORMER is a SYSTEM ON CHIP complete with MMU, cache, RAM etc whereas the ESP32 is a MICROCONTROLLER which does NOT HAVE MMU, etc or the processing power to run Linux. Note that it MAY run embedded OSes of which many types exist
 
PaulGherkin said:
Raspberry Pi as I said runs a full Linux implementation.

So you can write programs on the device, or for the device in:
C
C++
Golang
Python
Java
C# with .net core
etc..

Need I go on? Probably not!

The DIFFERENCE between RPi and a ESP32 is that the FORMER is a SYSTEM ON CHIP complete with MMU, cache, RAM etc whereas the ESP32 is a MICROCONTROLLER which does NOT HAVE MMU, etc or the processing power to run Linux. Note that it MAY run embedded OSes of which many types exist
Click to expand...
You seem a little angry at my answer. I'm sorry if I have offended you.
 
Willie Trombone said:
Agree, Python has the best support on Pi by far.
Click to expand...
To my mind, learning French and Zulu can both be useful, but the question is which is the one language to rule them all. I think that would be C++ instead of Python, wouldn’t it? I’ve heard it come up in more random discussions anyway. Or is Python the hot new thing these days?
 
Not understanding the correlation of why you need a Pi to learn coding...those are two entirely exclusive things.

Python is more of a scripting language, whereas C++ is a full problem application building language so also two entirely different things.

I'd say you'd want a Pi if you want to learn Linux purely as it's an independent system.

Programming you can learn on anything you are currently working on.
 
.
Foxhound5366 said:
To my mind, learning French and Zulu can both be useful, but the question is which is the one language to rule them all. I think that would be C++ instead of Python, wouldn’t it? I’ve heard it come up in more random discussions anyway. Or is Python the hot new thing these days?
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as one language to rule them all. Python is great to get things up running quickly and to play around. Writing c is good if you need performance and want to get closer to the hardware. But most decent programmers know at least a few languages.
 
Get copies of MagPi magazines. They were free to download from the Raspberry Pic website at a stage. Read the articles, they are very helpful to someone thinking about taking the leap.
 
PaulGherkin said:
Raspberry Pi as I said runs a full Linux implementation.

So you can write programs on the device, or for the device in:
C
C++
Golang
Python
Java
C# with .net core
etc..

Need I go on? Probably not!

The DIFFERENCE between RPi and a ESP32 is that the FORMER is a SYSTEM ON CHIP complete with MMU, cache, RAM etc whereas the ESP32 is a MICROCONTROLLER which does NOT HAVE MMU, etc or the processing power to run Linux. Note that it MAY run embedded OSes of which many types exist
Click to expand...

Or just be a total savage and learn x64 assembly on the RPi. 😈
 
Oh gosh, I shouldn't have checked this out on Takealot. Look how cute this thing is!

R2 349 however ... ouch. I mean I know it's basically an entire mini computer, just ready to plug in an HDMI computer and go ... but still. I wish it were more accessible.

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