Raspberry Pi 4 is a very popular microcomputer that can serve many different functions from a desktop computer and to an intelligent equipment controller to a robot STEM kit. The small board includes USB-C power input, dual video output that can run 4K monitors, a high speed Gigabit ethernet connection, 2 to 8 GB of memory, multiple USB connection ports and a micro SDK card slot for disk storage. The computer processor is a 1.5 GHz Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 processing. It support multiple Codecs including OpenGL ES 3.0, H.265 and H.264 and supports 1080 at 60 fps. For an in depth review of the the computer, see the PC Magazine review here.
The Raspberry Pi has been produced by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They are constantly designing and improving new computer boards for both the hobbyist and industrial market places. The boards are so popular that the availability and price of the boards has been erratic and difficult. What was once $75 for a board has been in the hundreds of dollars if you could one.
The computer runs both Raspberry Pi OS (a form of Linux) and a number of other Linux flavors as listed here. We are partial to desktop and server Ubuntu since we use it on a number of other types of computer systems.
Currently, we have purchased and are using them in Adeept’s PiCar Pro kit and will also be using one in Freenove’s Big Hexabod kit.
To help locate a Raspberry Pi 4 at a reasonable price, we use an online service which tracks their availability by vendor worldwide (click here).