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Articles & Books From Sean McManus
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2022
The Raspberry Pi is perhaps the most inspiring computer available today. It comes with the tools you need to start making your own software, and you can connect your own electronic inventions to it. These tips show you how to discover and install great free software on your Raspberry Pi and how to program in Scratch.
A recipe for having fun and getting things done with the Raspberry Pi The Raspberry Pi makes it easy to learn about computers and computer programming, and Raspberry Pi For Dummies makes it even easier! Using this extremely affordable and compact computer, you can learn to code in languages like Scratch and Python, explore how electronics work, create computer-generated buildings in Minecraft and music in Sonic Pic, become Linux-savvy, make Internet-of-Things devices, or just play around!
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to accessing the GPIO pins in Python on your Raspberry Pi: the GPIO Zero library. Don't confuse this with the Pi Zero — the two are not related. The GPIO Zero library takes the class method approach to control, as opposed to the function method approach of RPi.GPIO and other, similar libraries.
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
You can access GPIO pins on your Raspberry Pi with Python. Unlike Scratch's graphic-based program blocks, Python uses entirely text-based instructions. Its great power is that the basic Python language can be extended to do more things by the use of libraries. These are functions that can be written in Python or any other language to extend what Python can do.
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
You can use your Raspberry Pi to compose your own tunes or Sonic Pi can also use samples, which are snippets of music that you can manipulate, such as by changing their speed or adding effects to them. Sonic Pi includes a wide range of samples, and you can see a list of them by showing the Help pane and then using the Sample button in the bottom left.
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
Need to do some tweaking? You can change the settings on your Raspberry Pi easily enough. The cogwheel at the top of the main menu gives you access to the settings for Kodi, divided into several sections. They include, among others:
Player settings, covering options such as whether the next song or video plays automatically, whether there is cross-fading between songs, and the use of subtitles.
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
The Kodi screen on your Raspberry Pi looks like what you see here. LibreELEC uses Kodi’s simple interface, which is designed to work with only a remote control. If you’re using a remote control, you should find the interface intuitive. The main menu on the left and the empty library area on the right. This shows how Kodi appears before media is added.
Article / Updated 11-08-2017
The Raspberry Pi can play back full HD 1080p video, which makes it ideal as the heart of a cheap and low-powered media center. The NOOBS software includes two Linux distributions, both based on Kodi, that turn your Raspberry Pi into a media center. The choices are OSMC and LibreELEC.Because they’re both based on the Kodi core, they have many similarities.
Article / Updated 11-07-2017
Your Raspberry Pi can shuffle your music if you want to play random songs. Take a look below. The bracketed sections are lists, similar to lists in Python. You can add different instructions (or methods) to the lists to change the order of the items in them. For example, try this, using the reverse method:play_pattern_timed [:c4, :e4, :g4, :c5], [0.
Article / Updated 11-07-2017
Your Raspberry Pi can perform all the tricks when it comes to music. One of the best features of Sonic Pi is the live loop, which enables you to change your music while it repeats.The following program modifies the previous example by turning it into a live loop and adding tempo (BPM is short for beats per minute), synth, and option choices.
