Resources

Lab Instructions in PDF format

Here is a PDF for print.

Python Program for this week

Using Python GPIO to operate an LED: Starter Code

Additional Resources

Don’t worry, you are not expected to actually go through all of these, but these might be a helpful collection of resources to get you started working with the Raspberry Pi 4

Raspberry Pi Documentation

The Linux Terminal

Here is a handy cheat sheet for basic linux terminal commands.
Here is a decent video introduction to the terminal:

Python Programming

Python Basics is a beginners tutorial that covers all the basics (and much more that we will use in this course).

For this week’s activities, the following reference pages might come in handy:

File Management & Organization

File management and knowing where you saved your files or data is an important part of programming and measurements. Computer programs do not know how to search for files, you need to tell them where things are stored.

The location of a file on your hard disk is called a path. You might have seen this before (on Windows: C:\User\Documents\, on Mac or Linux: /home/User/Documents/).

According to Wilson et al. (2017)¹ it is recommended to organize the files that make up a project in a logical and consistent directory structure. This will help you and others keep track of them.

For ISAT 300, this means:

Put each lab in its own directory, which is named after the lab: For example, create a folder called ISAT 300 Labs and then create one additional folder for each lab (Lab 1, Lab 2, …).
Name all files to reflect their content or function: For example, use names such as bird_count_table.csv, manuscript.md, or sightings_analysis.py. Do not use sequential numbers (e.g., result1.csv, result2.csv) or a location in a final manuscript (e.g., fig_3_a.png), since those numbers will almost certainly change as the project evolves.

Footnotes

Wilson G, Bryan J, Cranston K, Kitzes J, Nederbragt L, Teal TK (2017) Good enough practices in scientific computing. PLoS Comput Biol 13(6): e1005510. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005510↩︎