A pack of perfect projects
to get your Pi 4 journey off
the ground. By Alex Cox
The Raspberry Pi 4, the latest iteration of the
world’s most popular single-board computer,
has dropped with a big impact, sporting a huge
uptick in specifications that doesn’t affect its
credit-card-sized footprint. But once you’ve invested
your $35, what are you going to do with that cut-price,
cut-sized hardware? How do you exploit its abilities?
We have a few ideas that use those new features—the
gigabit Ethernet, upgraded CPU and GPU, 4K-capable
dual HDMI ports—and make the Pi 4 shine.
It actually arrived a few months ago, but we’ve held
off on taking a dive into the Pi 4’s potential abilities
because it hasn’t been ready—the hardware leap from
the previous generation hasn’t been easy for software
creators to catch up with, and its firmware has lagged
behind a little. While things have improved, you need
to go into this adventure knowing you might not yet be
creating anything that’s production-ready.
That said, there’s still plenty to play with and a lot
of benefit to be eked out of the miniature marvel. The
Pi 4 is a feasible compact desktop computer at last.
Its architecture—which includes USB 3 ports that no
longer share a bus—lends itself to running as a custom
NAS controller, a network appliance, or a TV media box.
And as software support improves and that firmware
firms up, as the key distros bring their full functionality
to the Pi, there’s a world of potential to explore.MASTER THE
RASPBERRY Pi 4
Raspberry Pi 4
34 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2020 maximumpc.com