Notes

Raspberry Pi 400 - First Impressions

I was a child programming on my TV, with a Sinclair ZX81 followed by ZX Spectum. Computers that are built into keyboards which you can easily plug into a TV are a part of my DNA. Given this I couldn't resist getting the new Raspberry Pi 400! ?



Here are my initial thoughts on the hardware, and also on using it for development that is light in weight.



I like it :)





Tech Specs

The Raspberry Pi 400 is essentially an actual Raspberry Pi 4 inside a keyboard. You can read much better descriptions elsewhere The main details from the tech specs are:



- 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 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 plethora of applications (LibreOffice) and dev tools (Geany, Mathematica, Scratch) and utilities (Chromium, VLC Media Player), and games (Minecraft).





First Impressions on the Hardware

It was simple to plug in the 400 and get it to work. It's a nice gadget with many connectors and ports on the back. The keyboard is okay. The device costs PS67 in the UK. I purchased the complete kit (which includes a mouse power supply, HDMI cable, and an official guide) for PS94. The keyboard is great for the price, but it does feel a bit "plasticy" given the price.



The 400 doesn't have an audio-out. Audio is delivered via the HDMI output. For me, this is a problem because my monitor doesn't have speakers. While it's not a huge issue, it's something I didn't think of.



The connector for the Raspberry Pi camera module is another thing that the 400 lacks. Again, this isn't an issue for me, but if you're hoping to build any camera projects then the 400 isn't the best choice.



The 400 features a GPIO header at its back. This allows you to easily build electronic projects with an ethernet cable. The Adafruit TCobbler Plus allows you to connect the 400 to breadboards to build...stuff!



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



Overall the hardware is great and I really like the design. These devices can be purchased by schools and code clubs to be used in their computing labs.





Developer Experience

I've spent the morning setting up my Raspberry Pi 400 up, and I'm pretty pleased. My setup includes:



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



On the whole this setup was very simple. It was so simple , it was almost boring! I had a couple of issues, but on the whole it was easy to set my Raspberry Pi 400 up so that I could write code, use Docker and push any changes to GitHub. For example, I'm currently writing this blog post in VS Code, building it using Jekyll within the Docker container.



The only issue that I encountered was the ARM support for various Docker images. Minecraft servers The default Ruby dev container image wouldn't build because it had some dependencies that did not have ARM variations. In the end, I used the Ruby 2.7 docker image as a starting point, and copy/pasted into my own Dockerfile the necessary parts of the definition I required (removing Node, Zsh, Oh my Zsh and several other things). I'm not certain what it was that was causing the build to fail, so I need to revisit the process and figure it out however it's important to remember that the Rasberry Pi is ARM that it is based on, not all development tools have ARM builds.



Having installed tools, and experimented, I've written an extremely basic Rust code (with the same build time as my MacBook! ) I've written a bit of GPIOZero based Python 3 code (controlling butons and LEDs) I've set up an environment for a Jekyll/Ruby development container and updated my blog.





Conclusion

I have several Raspberry Pi computers (1, 2 and 3). The majority of them are Model B format, but I have couple of Zeros, too. All of them sit in a container, unopened. I've played with them, then put them away. Although the performance isn't top-notch but the design is important. It feels like the Raspberry Pi 400 has the power I require (for small projects) and comes in the form factor I'm happy to plug into my desk.



And on top of that...it provides me with a huge nostalgia rush using it!






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


Homepage: https://chakribakri.net/