Raspberry Pi hardware and set-up

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Before you boot up your Raspberry Pi, I’d like to take you on a little tour of it. In this step you will learn about the main components on a Raspberry Pi computer.

This course uses the latest Raspberry Pi 4 model. If you are using an older model, you will see some differences, but most instructions will still work the same.

What’s on the board?

Get out your Raspberry Pi computer and take a look at it. Find the Raspberry logo and make sure it is the right way up, as shown on the diagram.

The green board is a printed circuit board. You’ll see various large and small components on it. If you look closely, you’ll see that the components are connected by conductive lines that are printed onto the board. You’ll also see some helpful labels that identify some of the components you can see.

• Processor: The large silver square to the right of the Raspberry Pi logo is the processor or CPU; it’s a 64-bit, quad-core ARM processor
  
  

• RAM (memory): To the right of the processor you’ll see a large black rectangle, which is the RAM, the computer’s working memory
  
  

Your Raspberry Pi 4 could have come with 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM, depending on the model. If you will be using your Raspberry Pi as a desktop computer, it is worth choosing the largest amount of RAM that you can afford.

• Connectivity: The shiny rectangular chip above the Raspberry Pi logo provides wireless networking and Bluetooth connectivity

There are also connectors on top of the board:

• Display and camera: There are also two connection ports on top of the board; if you look closely you’ll see that one is labelled DISPLAY and can be used for connecting a display such as a touchscreen, and the other is labelled CAMERA and can be used to connect an official Raspberry Pi camera

Around the edge of the board you’ll find lots more ports to connect additional components:

• GPIO pins: At the top of the board, you’ll find two rows of General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins, which are used to connect and interact with additional electronics components such as buttons and LEDs; I’ll explain more about this later in the course
  
  

• Ethernet port: Along the right-hand side, you’ll find an Ethernet port for optionally connecting to a wired network
  
  

• USB ports: There are four USB ports for connecting a variety of devices such as keyboards, cameras, and external storage drives; two of these (the blue ones) are faster USB 3 ports and the other two are USB 2 ports
  
  

• USB C power: Along the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C power connector; a Raspberry Pi doesn’t have an on/off switch, but turns on when you connect the power and off when you shut it down
  
  

• Micro HDMI ports: To the right of the power connector, there are two micro HDMI ports for connecting screens
  
  

You’ll need an adaptor if you have a regular HDMI cable. If your HDMI monitor has a speaker, you’ll also be able to play sound through the monitor.

• 3.5mm audio jack: The audio jack is helpful if your monitor doesn’t have a speaker

• microSD card slot: Turn your Raspberry Pi board upside down and you’ll see the SD card slot where you can place the SD card that you prepared in the previous step

The SD card stores the Raspberry Pi OS and your programs and files. The data remains on the SD card when you turn your Raspberry Pi off and will still be there when you turn it on again.

In the next section, you will look at additional components that you will need to make a fully functioning desktop computer and it will be time to get started connecting everything together.