“Raspberry Pi – Demystified” is an excellent course for students who want to get started with the Internet of Things (IoT) and explore Raspberry Pi for a variety of exciting projects. Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer that can be used to learn to program, build interesting hardware projects, automate your home, build weather stations, and even use them in robust industrial applications. Students have started building really innovative projects using the Raspberry Pi and even created numerous Science Fair projects.

This course introduces the students to the basic use of Raspberry Pi and slowly builds up the knowledge level to the area such as Remote access, Web server, Web development, and even touches upon Android app development using MIT App Inventor. For students who are new to programming, they will learn Scratch and python programming languages and build projects such as an Automated Traffic Light System, Home Security System, and Enhanced Doorbell.

This course also teaches how to develop an android app using the MIT App inventor, which is an open-source web application originally provided created by Google and now maintained by MIT. Some of the impressive apps developed here are the Mole mash Game, Painting App, and a simple browser that consumes less memory.

Raspberry Pi is a small affordable computer that can be explored in multiple ways. The interactions and activities help students to write programs and easily remember and recall the syntax. This course is routinely taken by middle school, high school, and college students who are interested in exploring Raspberry Pi, go beyond the hype, learn to program Raspberry Pi, and try projects with new innovative ideas. IoT is a rapidly emerging area that holds promise for aspiring STEM aficionados to make a great career out of multidisciplinary fields. Applicability of Raspberry Pi and IoT is so wide that it has been utilized to address problems and build solutions in a vast number of domains.

Even NASA got into the act, and in 2018, NASA launched the JPL Open Source Rover Project, which is a scaled-down version of Curiosity rover and uses a Raspberry Pi as the control module, to encourage students and hobbyists to get involved in mechanical, software, electronics, and robotics engineering.