Whether from a historical or theoretical perspective, a decade or a century or a millennium begins at midnight on January 1 of the first year of that decade. For example, the 20th century began on January 1, 1901, not January 1, 1900. The reason is simple: there is no year 0 in the modern calendar, so these periods start from year 1 (using the Gregorian calendar). However, this is not how we refer to periods of time in spoken language and culture. For instance, when we mention the music or movies of the 1980s, we are referring to the years 1980 to 1989.
I can say that the last decade of the 21st century was the decade of cloud computing, social media, mobile technology, and the Internet of Things (IoT), which includes the Raspberry Pi. Recently, Time magazine named the Raspberry Pi one of the 10 best gadgets of the past decade. I completely agree with this.
The Raspberry Pi was initially launched in 2012, and it took me a few years to start using it. Since then, I have completed many interesting educational projects at home and documented some of them on Opensource.com.
Christmas Light Trilogy
For three years, I wrote three articles exploring how to use the Raspberry Pi and the open-source project LightShowPi to control Christmas lights. The first article, “Create Your Own Musical Light Show with Raspberry Pi,” introduced the basics of electronics development and the combination of light shows. The second article, “SSH into Your Christmas Tree with Raspberry Pi,” delved deeper into the methods of controlling lights through remote management and electronic buttons. The final chapter of the trilogy, “Setting Up Holiday Mood with Raspberry Pi,” reviewed the changes introduced in the previous year’s LightShowPi project.
DIY Projects
Over the years, I have turned the Raspberry Pi into several useful devices. Once, I turned it into a Pi MusicBox music player that allows you to import your favorite music streams in a web interface and play them in the room.
Another DIY project was making the Raspberry Pi a mobile video recording device. It required some additional hardware, such as a touchscreen, Raspberry Pi camera, and a battery pack, but it worked well. One of the biggest drawbacks of this device was the limited memory available on the Raspberry Pi at the time. I think if I reconfigured it on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of memory, the functionality of this portable camera could be improved. This might be a project to revisit in 2020.
Another small project I did was a digital clock for the living room using the Adafruit PiTFT small screen. Although this project was simple, it might be the project I have used the longest. That clock stayed on my TV for over a year, running 24/7 until the screen burned out.
Pi Day Series
Last but not least, before Pi Day 2019 (March 14), I published 14 articles within 14 days. This was the most challenging writing project I have ever undertaken, but it allowed me to cover many different topics and hopefully give readers a better understanding of the rich capabilities of the Raspberry Pi.
Looking to the Future
I do not know anyone at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, so I am not aware of its roadmap and future plans. I can (but I won’t) speculate about the future of the brand and its devices, which allow so many people from different social strata around the world to expand their knowledge of computer science, electronics, and open-source development. I hope the management of the foundation stays true to its vision and mission and continues to provide affordable technology to people around the world.
The 2010s are over, what a sweet decade it was. For me, it smells like Raspberry Pi pie.
via: https://opensource.com/article/20/1/raspberry-pi-best
Author: Anderson Silva Topic: lujun9972 Translator: geekpi Proofreader: wxy
This article is originally compiled by LCTT and presented honorably by Linux China.
