After my talk at J-Fall I got the question what is required to get started with #JavaOnRaspberryPi. In my book I list the components that are used, but indeed a short overview was missing (it’s now added to the ebook…). So here we go:

Raspberry Pi

While working on the book, I used a Raspberry Pi 3. But as it is nice to work with a fast processor and enough memory, I recommend to use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 or 8Gb of memory. This also includes the Raspberry Pi 400, which is actually a type 4 built into a keyboard.

Shopping list:

• Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 (or 8) GB memory
• USB-C Power supply of 5v, 3A (= 15W)
• Micro SD card (16GB or more)

You will also need the following:

• HDMI screen
• HDMI cable, but be careful to select the correct one:
  • Raspberry Pi Zero has a Mini HDMI port
  • Raspberry Pi 4 and 400 have two Micro HDMI ports
  • Other ones have a normal HDMI port
• PC with SD card slot or an adapter to prepare the Micro SD card
• USB Mouse
• USB Keyboard (except for the Raspberry Pi 400)
• Network cable or WiFi connection

Electronics

You can buy the various components of this list separately, but you will find most of them combined in an electronics starter kit. This is the list of components used in this book:

• Breadboard
• Breadboard wires (male/male and female/male)
• T-board with extension cable (optional, but handy)
• Resistors (330Ω and others)
• LEDs of various colors
• RGB LED
• WS2812B LED strip, a short piece, or a long one if you want to go wild ;-)
• Push button
• LED number segment display (eg. HTC514RI)
• 74NC595 Serial-In-Parallel-Out shift register
• HC-SR04 distance sensor
• Analogue light sensor
• 1602A LCD with 2 rows of 16 characters
• A few components that can be controlled with the following protocols. The examples used in this book are given:
  • SPI: 8x8 LED matrix with MAX7219
  • I²C: GeekPi Relay Board
• Arduino Uno for the serial example and LED strip projects