Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Engineering and Technology

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

The Universal Brain For All Robots

N.Abirami1, V.Goutham2
1

Assistant Professor, Computer Science & Engineering,

Sree Sastha Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chennai.

[email protected]
2

Student, B.E.(CSE) V-Semester, Computer Science & Engineering,

Sree Sastha Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chennai.
[email protected]

Abstract The Raspberry Pi (RasPi) is an ultra-low-cost, singleboard, credit-card sized Linux computer which was conceived
with the primary goal of teaching computer programming to
children. It was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation,
which is a UK registered charity. The foundation exists to
promote the study of computer science and related topics,
especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning
computing. The device is expected to have many other
applications both in the developed and the developing world.
Raspberry-Pi is manufactured and sold in partnership with the
world-wide industrial distributors Premier Farnell/Element 14
and RS Components Company. The Raspberry Pi has a
Broadcom BCM2835 system on chip which includes an
ARM1176JZF- S 700 MHz processor, Video Core IV GPU, and
256 megabytes of RAM. It does not include a built-in hard disk
or solid-state drive, but uses an SD card for booting and longterm storage. The Foundation provides Debian and Arch Linux
ARM distributions for download. Also planned are tools for
supporting Python as the main programming language, with
support for BBC BASIC, C and Perl. The gadget looks rather
odd next to sleek modern offerings such as the iPad, and appears
to have more in common with the crystal radio sets of the 1950s.
However, the machine is a fully- fledged computer and can be
connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, as well as speakers
and printers.

it up you get a nice little desktop environment, it

includes all of the things that you need to do to get
started to learn programming. There's lots of
information out there on the internet that you can
take away and start programming code in to make
things happen.
The great thing about these boards as well is in
addition to software, you can play with hardware.
So these little general purpose pins here allow
access to the processor and you can hang off little
hardware projects that you build and you can
control via the code you are writing through the
software application. So, this is a great tool for kids
to learn how computers work at a grassroots level.
II.WHAT IS A RASPBERRY PI?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer

that plugs into TV and a keyboard. It is a capable
little PC which can be used for many of the things
that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, wordprocessing and games. It also plays high-definition
video. A Raspberry -Pi leads a power supply or SD
cards that are not included but can be purchased
later. One can buy preloaded SD cards too. The
Raspberry Pi measures 85.60mm x 53.98mm x
17mm, with a little overlap for the SD card and
Fig 1: Raspberry Pi Module
connectors which project over the edges. It weighs
I. INTRODUCTION
around 45g. Overall real world performance is
Rob Dudley of The Raspberry Pi something like a 300MHz Pentium 2. Raspberry-Pi
Foundation designed this little board here, the cannot boot without an SD card.The Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi, to address a lost generation of uses Linux kernel-based operating systems.
computer programmers and hardware engineers. So, Raspbian, a Debian-based free operating system
this little board here is low cost, it's easily optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware, is the
accessible, it's very simple to use. When you power current recommended system.The GPU hardware is

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Engineering and Technology

accessed via firmware image which is loaded into

the GPU at boot time from the SD-card. The
firmware image is known as the binary blob, while
the associated Linux drivers are closed source.
Application software use calls to closed source runtime libraries which in turn calls an open source
driver inside the Linux kernel. The API of the
kernel driver is specific for these closed libraries.
Video applications use Open MAX.There are a
number of operating systems running, ported or in
the process of being ported to Raspberry-Pi. Like,
AROS, Android 4.0, Arch Linux ARM, Debian
Squeeze, Firefox OS etc.

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

Hardware accelerated video (H.264) encoding

became available on 24 August 2012 when it
became known that the existing license also
covered encoding. Previously it was thought that
encoding would be added with the release of the
announced camera module. However, no stable
software support exists for hardware H.264
encoding .The New Raspberry Pi model B's would
be fitted with 512 MB instead of 256 MB RAM.

Fig 3: Internals of Raspberry Pi

Fig 2: Raspberry Pi Board

III.WHATS THE FILLING OF A RASPBERRY PI?

Initial sales were of the Model B, with

Model A following in early 2013. Model A has one
USB port and no Ethernet controller, and costs less
than the Model B with two USB ports and a 10/100
Ethernet controller or the B+ with four USB ports.
Though the Model A does not have an 8P8C
(RJ45) Ethernet port, it can connect to a network by
using an external user-supplied USB Ethernet or
Wi-Fi adapter. On the model B the Ethernet port is
provided by a built-in USB Ethernet adapter. As is
typical of modern computers, generic USB
keyboards and mice are compatible with the
Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi does not come with a realtime clock, so an OS must use a network time
server, or ask the user for time information at boot
time to get access to time and date for file time and
date stamping. However, a real-time clock (such as
the DS1307) with battery backup can be added via
the IC interface.

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POWER-5v micro USB connector

There has been a lot of speculation about the
power supply design for the production Raspberry
Pi devices. The alpha boards use a pair of switchmode power supplies to generate 5V and 3V3 rails
from a 6-20V input on a coaxial jack, and LDOs to
generate the low-current 2V5 and 1V8 rails for the
analog TV DAC and various I/O functions.

Fig 4: Power

AUDIO/VIDEO
1) RCA

An RCA connector, sometimes called a

phono connector or cinch connector, is a type of
electrical connector commonly used to carry audio
and video signals. The connectors are also
sometimes casually referred to as A/V jacks. The
name "RCA" derives from the Radio Corporation of
America, which introduced the design by the early
1940s for internal connection of the pickup to the
chassis in home radio-phonograph consoles. It was
originally a low-cost, simple design, intended only
for mating and disconnection when servicing the

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Engineering and Technology

console. Refinement came with later designs,

although they remained compatible.

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

disk drives and network adapters) to personal

computers, both to communicate and to supply
electric power.

2) HDMI

HDMI
(High-Definition
Multimedia
Interface) is a compact audio/video interface for
transferring uncompressed video data and
compressed or uncompressed digital audio data
from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a
display controller, to a compatible computer
monitor, video projector, digital television, ordigital
audio device. HDMI is a digital replacement for
existing analog video standards.
3) 3.5 mm

2 ) ETHERNET
In computer networking, Fast Ethernet is a
collective term for a number of Ethernet standards
that carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s,
against the original Ethernet speed of 10 Mbit/s. Of
the Fast Ethernet standards 100BASE-TX is by far
the most common and is supported by the vast
majority of Ethernet hardware currently produced.
Fast Ethernet was introduced in 1995 and remained
the fastest version of Ethernet for three years before
being superseded by gigabit Ethernet.

Personal computer sound cards use a 3.5

3) GPIO
mm phone connector as a mono microphone input,
General-purpose input/output ( GPIO) is a
and deliver a 5 V polarizing voltage on the ring to
generic
pin on an integrated circuit whose behavior,
power electret microphones. Compatibility between
including
whether it is an input or output pin, can
different manufacturers is unreliable.
be controlled by the user at run time.GPIO pins
have no special purpose defined, and go unused by
default. The idea is that sometimes the system
integrator building a full system that uses the chip
might find it useful to have a handful of additional
digital control lines, and having these available
from the chip can save the hassle of having to
arrange additional circuitry to provide them.

Fig 5: Audio/Video
Fig 6: Connectivity

CONNECTIVITY
INTERNALS
1) SOC
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry
A system on a chip or system on chip (SoC
standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines or SOC) is an integrated circuit(IC) that integrates
the cables, connectors and communications all components of a computer or other electronic
protocols used in a bus for connection, system into a single chip. It may contain digital,
communication, and power supply between analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency
computers and electronic devices.USB was functionsall on a single chip substrate. The
designed to standardize the connection of computer contrast with a microcontroller is one of degree.
peripherals (including keyboards, pointing devices, Microcontrollers typically have under 100 kB of
digital cameras, printers, portable media players, RAM (often just a few kilobytes) and often really
1) USB

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Engineering and Technology

are single-chip-systems, whereas the term SoC is

typically used for more powerful processors,
capable of running software such as the desktop
versions of Windows and Linux, which need
external memory chips (flash, RAM) to be useful,
and which are used with various external
peripherals.

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

5) DSI

The display serial interface, or DSI as I will

refer to it from now on, is a high speed serial
connector located between the power connector and
the GPIO header on the Raspberry Pi. The purpose
of the DSI connector is to give the end user a quick
and easy way to connect an LCD panel to the Pi. In
this case the chip being interfaced with is the
2) LAN
Broadcom BCM2835, which is at the heart of the
A wireless LAN controller is used in
Raspberry Pi.
combination with the Lightweight Access Point
Protocol (LWAPP) to manage light-weight access
points in large quantities by the network
administrator or network operations center. The
wireless LAN controller is part of the Data Plane
within the Cisco Wireless Model. The WLAN
controller automatically handles the configuration
of wireless access-points.
Fig 7: Internals

3) JTAG

The JTAG headers on the Raspberry Pi are STORAGE

Secure Digital (SD) is a non-volatile memory
located near the audio jack. They are labeled P2 and
card
format for use in portable devices, such as
P3. JTAG stands for Joint Test Action Group.
Headers or pins with the JTAG label are mainly mobile phones, digital cameras.
used for debugging during the development of
embedded software and hardware.JTAG header P2
is connected to the Broadcom BCM2835. As you
may suspect from what I said about the DSI, It is all
closed source and there is virtually no way to use
this header. It is not a JTAG interface for the ARM
CPU like so many people always assume.JTAG
header P3 is connected to the LAN9512 LAN and
USB Hub chip. It is only on the model B Pi since
Fig 8: Storage
the model A does not use the LAN9512. The
LAN9512 is a USB 2.0 bus and 10/100 ethernet
A CONFESSION
controller.
4) CSI

IV. USES OF RASPBERRY PI

The CAMIF, also the Camera Interface

block is the hardware block that interfaces with
different image sensor interfaces and provides a
standard output that can be used for subsequent
image processing.A typical Camera Interface would
support at least a parallel interface although these
days many camera interfaces are beginning to
support the MIPI CSI interface.The Raspberry Pi
Foundation has released their Pi compatible camera
module that connects to the CSI. It is a 5 megapixel
camera with a fixed focused lens.

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1. LIBRE OFFICE

Libre Office is a free and open source

office suite, developed by The Document
Foundation. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in
2010, which was an open-sourced version of the
earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises
programs to do word processing, spreadsheets,
slideshows, diagrams and drawings, maintain
databases, and compose math formulae.

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Engineering and Technology

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

LibreOffice uses the international ISO/IEC

standard OpenDocument file format as its native
format to save documents for all of its applications
(as do its OpenOffice.org cousins Apache
OpenOffice and NeoOffice).

Fig 10: Python

3. GAME CONSOLE

A video game console is a device that

outputs a video signal to display a video game. The
term "video game console" is used to distinguish a
Fig 9: LibreOffice
machine designed for consumers to use for playing
video games on a separate television in contrast to
2. PROGRAMMING
arcade machines, handheld game consoles, or home
Python is a widely used general-purpose,
computers.
high-level programming language. Its design
philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its
syntax allows programmers to express concepts in
fewer lines of code than would be possible in
languages such as C. The language provides
constructs intended to enable clear programs on
both a small and large scale.
Python supports multiple programming
paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative
and functional programming or procedural styles. It
features a dynamic type system and automatic
Fig 11: Game console
memory management and has a large and
comprehensive standard library.
4. MINE CRAFT

SCRATCH
Scratch is a multimedia authoring tool that
can be used by students, scholars, teachers, and
parents for a range of educational and entertainment
constructivist purposes from math and science
projects, including simulations and visualizations of
experiments, recording lectures with animated
presentations, to social sciences animated stories,
and interactive art and music. Simple games may be
made with it, as well. Viewing the existing projects
available on the Scratch website, or modifying and
testing any modification without saving it requires
no online registration.

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Mine craft is a sandbox indie game

originally created by Swedish programmer Markus
"Notch" Persson and later developed and published
by Mojang. It was publicly released for the PC on
May 17, 2009, as a developmental alpha version
and, after gradual updates, was published as a full
release version on November 18, 2011. A version
for Android was released a month earlier on
October 7, and an iOS version was released on
November 17, 2011. On May 9, 2012, the game
was released on Xbox 360 as an Xbox Live Arcade
game, as well as on the PlayStation 3 on December
17, 2013. Both console editions are being codeveloped by 4J Studios. All versions of Minecraft
receive periodic updates.

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ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

needed to add video programming or music to the

PC. Enthusiasts can also piece together a system out
of discrete components as part of a software-based
HTPC.

Fig 12: Mine craft

5. TOR ROUTER

Tor (previously an acronym for The Onion

Router) is free software for enabling online
anonymity and resisting censorship The term
"onion routing" refers to application layers of
encryption, nested like the layers of an onion, used
to anonymize communication
The NSA (National Security Agency) has a
technique that targets outdated Firefox browsers
codenamed EgotisticalGiraffe,and targets Tor users
in general for close monitoring under its XKeyscore
program.

Fig 14: HTPC

7. BARTENDER

A robotic drink-dispensing rig is aiming to

steal your customers while pouring cocktail
creations at the push of a touchscreen button. Its
creators call it Bartendro.
Operated through an iPad interface, the open
source, synthetic Al Swearengen holds up to 15
bottles of beverage plumbed into custom-designed,
Raspberry Pi-controlled pumps. Its capable of
mixing dozens of drinks, including black Russians,
Kahlua mudslides, or almost any other classy
beverage of your choosing.
A tiny Raspberry Pi serves as the brain,
operating up to 15 dispensers, which essentially
suck booze out of whatever bottles youve got
handy, then mix it to your specifications.

Fig 13: Tor Router

6. HTPC
A home theatre PC (HTPC) or media center
computer is a convergence device that combines
some or all the capabilities of a personal computer
with a software application that supports video,
photo, audio playback, and sometimes video
recording functionality. An HTPC system typically
has a remote control and the software interface
normally has a 10-foot user interface design so that
it can be comfortably viewed at typical television
viewing distances. An HTPC can be purchased preconfigured with the required hardware and software

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Fig 15: Bartender

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8. CAMERA

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

10. PIBOLT

The Raspberry Pi camera module can be

used to take high-definition video, as well as stills
photographs. Its easy to use for beginners, but has
plenty to offer advanced users if youre looking to
expand your knowledge. There are lots of examples
online of people using it for time-lapse, slowmotion and other video cleverness. You can also
use the libraries we bundle with the camera to
create effects.The camera module is very popular in
home security applications, and in wildlife camera
traps.You can also use it to take snapshots.

One of the coolest little developer boards

out there is the Raspberry Pi. That board can be
used for any project needing electronics for control
that you can dream up. A new robotics kit made for
use with the Raspberry Pi is getting ready to hit
Kickstarter.
That robotics kit is called the PiBot. PiBot
will have a range of features that electronics fans
will appreciate including voice recognition, face
recognition, and live HD streaming from the PiBot
camera. The robot will be controllable from a
smartphone and tablet.
PiBot will also be able to follow lines,
measure distance, and use GPS. The company
behind the PiBot also plans to have workshops that
will allow people to come in and play with the
robotics kit. There are a few things we don't know
at this time such as when the PiBot will hit market
and how much it will cost.

Fig 16: Camera

9. CLOCK

This simple project was to replace a radio

clock working from MSF with a clock based on
NTP. It just so happened that an older 10.2-inch
LCD TV became free, and I wanted to have a go at
programming the Raspberry Pi and learn just a little
(not too much) more about Linux.
The project involved setting up the
Raspberry Pi to display correctly on the TV (I
Fig 18: PiBot
converted a Windows Test card program to run on
Linux to check the display size), using the Free
V.ADVANTAGES OF THE PI
Pascal and Lazarus IDE to compile a suitable wallclock program, learning how to auto-login on the
1. Power consumption - The Pi draws about five
Raspberry Pi, and how to start a program to seven watts of electricity. This is about one tenth
automatically on the desktop (i.e. using the GUI).
of what a comparable full-size box can use. Since
servers are running constantly night and day, the
electrical savings can really add up.
2. No moving parts - The Pi uses an SD card for
storage, which is fast and has no moving parts.
There are also no fans and other things to worry
about.
3. Small form factor - The Pi (with a case) can be
held in your hand. A comparable full-size box
cannot. This means the Pi can be integrated inside
of devices, too.
Fig 17:Clock

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4. No noise - The Pi is completely silent.

5. Status lights - There are several status lights on
the Pi's motherboard. With a clear case you can see
NIC activity, disk I/O, power status, etc.
6. Expansion capabilities - There are numerous
devices available for the Pi, all at very affordable
prices. Everything from an I/O board (GPIO) to a
camera. The Pi has two USB ports; however by
hooking up a powered USB hub, more devices can
be added.
7. Built-in HDMI capable graphics - The display
port on the Pi is HDMI and can handle resolutions
up to 19201200, which is nice for making the Pi in
to a video player box for example. There are some
converters that can convert to VGA for backwards
compatibility
8. Affordable - compared to other similar
alternatives, the Pi (revision B) offers the best specs
for the price, at least that I've found. It is one of the
few devices in its class that offers 512 MB of RAM.
9. Huge community support - The Pi has
phenomenal community support. Support can be
obtained quite easily for the hardware and/or
GNU/Linux software that runs on the Pi mainly in
user forums, depending on the GNU/Linux
distribution used.
10. Over clocking capability - The Pi can be
overclocked if there are performance problems with
the application used, but it is at the user's risk to do
this.

ISBN : 978 - 1505606395

found the Pi uses about 100 MB of RAM while

running as a small server (this is without running
X11).
VII. CONCLUSION

Today virtualisation is very popular so some

may say that the cost of spinning up a virtual
machine is less than running a Raspberry Pi. But,
calculate the power consumption for your
hypervisor, and weigh out the differences to see
which method in fact costs less overall.
Sometimes, a physical box or physical
segmentation is needed, or avoiding high costs of
running a full hypervisor is a factor, and this is
where the Pi can step in.
REFERENCES
[1] Md. Kawser Jahan Raihan, Mohammad Saifur
Rahaman, Mohammad Kaium Sarkar & Sekh
Raspberry Pi Image Processing Based
Economical Automated Toll System, Global
Journals Inc. (USA), Volume 13 Issue 13
Version 1.0 - 2013
[2]Online-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
[3]Schneider Electric.( 132 Fairgrounds Road, West
Kingston, RI 02892 USA).
[4] Online -Preferred links from www.google.com
[5] Raspbian Technology Services

VI. DRAWBACKS OF THE PI

[6] Online -raspberrypibooks.net/

With all of the positive things about the Pi,
there are a couple of items that I feel are very minor
drawbacks:
1. ARM architecture - While ARM is a highly
efficient and low powered architecture, it is not x86
and therefore any binaries that are compiled to run
on x86 cannot run on the Pi. The good news is that
entire GNU/Linux distributions have been compiled
for the ARM architecture and new ones are
appearing all of the time.
2. RAM not upgradable - The main components
of the Pi is soldered to the motherboard, including
the RAM which is 512 MB. This is not a problem
though as GNU/Linux can easily run on this. I've

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[7] Online -raspberrypi.org

[8] Raspberry Pi User Guide (2nd Edition)
[9] Online - http://www.uncrd.or.jp/env/3rdregional-est-forum/doc/13_Bangladesh.pdf
[10] Raspberry Pi Manual: A practical guide to the
revolutionary small computer
[11] Raspberry Pi Projects

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