Interfacing with the Raspberry Pi

Module 1

This module presents the use of the Raspberry Pi to connect to the Internet, from a user perspective. The first way to use the Raspberry Pi as a networked device is to use it as a general-purpose computer rather than as a programmed IoT device. Using networking with a Raspberry Pi in this way is similar to using the network from any Linux machine, and we present its use in this module. We also present the standard Internet protocols that must be understood in order to develop network programs.

Module 2

This module introduces the networking socket interface that is used to transfer data across the network programmatically. An essential aspect of the Internet of Things is for your IoT device to send and receive data on the Internet, and the socket interface is key to enabling that. We describe how to use socket in Python to act as both a client and a server.

Module 3

This module focuses on how to have your Raspberry Pi interact with online services through the use of public APIs and SDKs. Many interesting and useful services are available in the cloud and this module describes how to write code that accesses those services. We define what an Application Programming Interface (API) is and what a Software Development Kit (SDK) is. We present some API examples and we show the use of the Twitter API in detail using the Twython package.

Module 4

In this module we show how to use the Raspberry Pi to interface with more complicated sensors and actuators. We explore the use of the Raspberry Pi camera module and the use of a servo. The Raspberry Pi camera module is used through the picamera library, which we describe. Servos are controlled by generating pulse width modulated signals and varying their pulse width using library functions.