Chapter 1. An Introduction to the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Home Automation

This chapter provides an introduction to the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Arduino to Raspberry Pi connection bridge, and the subject of home automation.

We'll look at the history of the Raspberry Pi and how it came to being, as well as the Arduino platform, an open source microcontroller that provides developers with a means to interact with their surroundings through a variety of sensors and motors.

Next, we will explore the Arduino to Raspberry Pi connection bridge, a method of attaching an Arduino shield to the Raspberry Pi. We will wrap up the chapter by covering home automation and how technologies such as the Raspberry Pi have put the ability to build complex sensor-based systems in the hands of the open source community.

First, let's start by looking at what we will be covering in the coming chapters of this book. We have a number of exciting projects ahead that will slowly introduce home automation via technologies such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino. These projects include:

• Writing software to control hardware

• Building a thermometer using a thermistor

• Turning the thermometer into a thermostat using relays

• Controlling electric motors using a motor shield

• Writing software to store sensor data generated by your projects

As you go through each chapter in this book, you will gain a basic knowledge of building circuits and hardware for home automation projects. You will then learn to write software to both control your hardware projects and record the data generated by them. Finally, we will consider future projects that you can build with your newly acquired skills.

Our next step is to learn a little about the background of the technologies that we are going to use. We will start with the Raspberry Pi.