Notes

Raspberry Pi 400 - First Impressions

I was a child programming on my TV using ZX81 from Sinclair and Spectum. Computers built into keyboards, that you can easily connect to TVs, are part of my DNA. So, with this in mind what could I possibly resist buying the new Raspberry Pi 400! ?



Here are my first thoughts on the hardware and how it can be used for light weight development.



TL;DR - I like it.



Tech Specs



The Raspberry Pi 400 is, essentially an Raspberry Pi 4 housed within the keyboard. You can find more details elsewhere, but these are the most important details of the specs:



- Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.8GHz - 4GB LPDDR4-3200 - Dual-band (2.4GHz and 5.0GHz) IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless Ethernet - Bluetooth 5.0, BLE - Gigabit Ethernet 2 USB 3.0 1 x USB 2.0 ports - Horizontal 40-pin GPIO header - 2 x micro HDMI ports (supports up to 4Kp60) - MicroSD card slot to operate system and data storage 79-key compact keyboard



(full specifications can be found here)



The 400 comes with a 16GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspbian and a variety of applications (LibreOffice) and dev tools (Geany, Mathematica, Scratch), utilities (Chromium, VLC Media Player) and games (Minecraft).



First Impressions on Hardware



It was simple to connect the 400 and start it up. It's a nice gadget with a variety of connectors and ports in the back. The keyboard is okay. The device is priced at PS67 in the UK. I purchased the kit (which includes an electric mouse, power supply, HDMI cable, and an official guide) for PS94. The keyboard is very good for the price, but it does feel a little "plasticy" considering the cost.



The 400 doesn't have an audio-out. The HDMI output is able to play audio. This is an issue for me since my monitor does not have speakers. Although it's not a major issue, it's something I didn't think of.



The connector for the Raspberry Pi camera module is another thing that the 400 lacks. This isn't something I'm concerned about, but if you're looking to build any camera projects then the 400 isn't the best option.



The 400 has an GPIO header on its back. This allows you to easily build electronics projects with an ethernet cable. I have an Adafruit T-Cobbler Plus which allows you to connect the 400 to an Arduino and build...stuff!



The 400 is quick to boot up and is very efficient as a general-purpose desktop computer. It's been a great tool for browsing the web, installing apps, running docker containers and building code.



Overall, the hardware is pretty good and I love the design. The devices can be bought by schools and code clubs to use in their computing labs.



Developer Experience



I spent the day setting up my Raspberry Pi 400, and I am awestruck. My setup includes:



- Setup Chromium and installed the 1Password extension. - Installed Visual Studio Code following these instructions. Installed VS Code Remote Containers extension to allow me to utilize Docker dev containers for code development within.



On the whole the setup was simple. So easy it was almost boring! Minecraft-server-list I ran into a few issues, but on the whole it was a breeze to set my Raspberry Pi 400 up so that I can write code and use Docker and push any changes to GitHub. For instance, I'm writing this blog post within VS Code, building it using Jekyll within a Docker container.



The only issue I had was the ARM support for various Docker images. Because it had dependencies that didn’t include ARM variations, the default Ruby dev container image would not build. In the end I took the Ruby 2.7 docker image as a base and then copied/pasted into my own Dockerfile the necessary parts of the definition I required (removing Node, Zsh, Oh my Zsh and a few other things). I'm not sure exactly what was failng to build, so I need to revisit the process and figure out the details, but it's worth remembering that the Rasberry Pi is ARM based, and not all development tools come with ARM versions.



After installing the tools and played aroundwith them, I've created an extremely basic Rust code (with time to build that is comparable to my MacBook! ), I've written some GPIOZero based Python 3 code (controlling butons and LEDs), and I've set up a Jekyll/Ruby dev container and built/updated my blog.



I have several Raspberry Pi computers (1 3, 2 and 3). They're mostly Model B, but I also have a few Zeros. They are all in a box, unopened. They've been used, and then removed. A large part of that is because the performance hasn't been impressive, but the design aspect is an important factor. I think the Raspberry Pi 400 has enough power for small-scale projects and is small enough to leave it connected to my desk.



It's a great nostalgia rush!



Below you can see two instances of VS Code running (both dev containers) and I'm browsing. It handles everything effortlessly.


Here's my website: https://minecraft-server-list.me/