Make (digital) book bundle starting at $1

[chicken 630]

I don't know how good those books by Make are, but if you're looking for some beginner books for Arduino and Raspberry Pi and don't mind that you only get a digital copy (PDF, ePUB or MOBI), this might be of interest:

 

Humble Book Bundles: Arduino & Raspberry Pi

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-arduino-and-raspberry-pi

 

$1 bundle:

Make: magazine, Volume 38: Everything you need to know about DIY consumer electronics
Make: Basic Arduino Projects
Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot
Make: Getting Started with the Internet of Things
Make: Getting Started with Netduino

 

$8 bundle adds:

Make a Mind-Controlled Arduino Robot
Make: A Raspberry Pi-Controlled Robot
Make: AVR Programming
Make: FPGAs
Make: Bluetooth

 

$15 bundle adds:

Make: Getting Started with Arduino, 3rd Edition
Make: Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, 3rd Edition
Make: Getting Started with Sensors: Measure the World with Electronics, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi
Make: Raspberry Pi and AVR Projects
Make: Arduino Bots and Gadgets
Make: Sensors
Make: Getting Started with the Photon: Making Things with the Affordable, Compact, Hackable WiFi Module

 

[Fmilburn 446]

Some of these are available for electronic checkout from the Seattle Public Library and I looked at a couple of them in the past. As you might expect they are introductions and cookbook in nature. The positive side is they are professionally edited and have the information logically presented in one place.

[yyrkoon 250]

I don't know how good those books by Make are, but if you're looking for some beginner books for Arduino and Raspberry Pi and don't mind that you only get a digital copy (PDF, ePUB or MOBI), this might be of interest:

 

The only Make book I've had hands on with was a beaglebone book that I got pre-print as I met the author online, and he sent me a copy to review.

 

I suppose from a beginners perspective it may have been useful, but it was all but useless to me. Nothing you could not figure out on your own, using google. Most of the book was an exercise in Linux commands. I suppose if you did not know Linux well, and did not know how, or want to use google. Then it may have been useful.

 

The problem I'm seeing with a lot of these book is that none of them really give you an idea of how an embedded system works. From the perspective of the beaglebone book. It did not teach me how to figure out things on my own. Such as a simple GPIO pin, how does the physical pin number relate to the kernel pins number, then how do those numbers relate to the actual GPIO pin value listed in the sysfs file system. Other periphery was neglected as well in depth.

 

So in the context of the beaglebone, and now RaspberryPI, I'd have to say Derrek Molloy's books are probably the best. But what I described above also applies to DR Molloy's books as well. His books are just better written, with a bit more detail covered. Again, he does cover a few "canned" examples in great detail, with a lot of source code on github to help with these examples. But I do not get the general feeling that I understand the hardware any better from reading his books. Plus, much of his material is now outdated, by 2-3 years.

 

Could I somehow do better myself ? You know, I do not know. First glance, I'd have to say no.