Basics, basics, basics! (you can't build a glass-castle on clay footings...)
How is you basic understanding of electronics? Current Limiting Resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, opamps, timers, comm-protocols (i2c, spi), etc..? The fastest way to ruin you day is kill a GPIO port, or heaven forbid short the 5V or 3.3V pins. You can interact with your Pi a number of ways, through your shell (e.g. bash) and the /dev and /sys filesystems, or you can use a programming language like Python or C/C++, or pick your favorite (the bulk of the tutorials will demonstrate Python or C/C++).
If you could use a bit of shoring up of the basics, then there is no better place to start than with the proverbial "Hello World!" equivalent of blinking an LED attached to a GPIO pin. Familiarize yourself with the pinout and the schematic of the major components, e.g. the power-chain, GPIO and ADC ports -- and the voltage and current limitations. A basic understanding will keep your PI safe.
You can probably search "basic Raspberry Pi project gpio" and turn up many, many tutorials out there. Thinking back, the shift-register tutorials were fairly in-depth and gave an overview of most of the basic systems you will use with your ultimate home security project. The 74HC595 tutorials with 8-LEDs are good (SIPO, serial-in parallel-out). For nuance, you can add a 74HC165 chip as well and display the results of the (PISO, parallel-in serial-out) value through the 595 LEDs. Also don't forget your basic NPN and PNP transistor tutorials and the MOSFET tutorials. (and don't forget the flywheel/fly-back diode tutorial for keeping your electronics safe when powering larger loads, [lamps, motors, etc...])
When you are comfortable you understand the basics, understand voltage and current limitations of both the PI and whatever you are hooking to it, then take on your big project. There are no shortcuts, and there are piles of "permanently modified" PIs in drawers or boxes of people that decided to take one.
Most of all, have fun, and remember learning all this stuff isn't a race, it's a journey and it will take time. So, enjoy the journey and good luck with your coding and electronics -- the PI can do it all.
(then toss the OS and pick up a PICO and duplicate your smart-home project on a microcontroller)
How is you basic understanding of electronics? Current Limiting Resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, opamps, timers, comm-protocols (i2c, spi), etc..? The fastest way to ruin you day is kill a GPIO port, or heaven forbid short the 5V or 3.3V pins. You can interact with your Pi a number of ways, through your shell (e.g. bash) and the /dev and /sys filesystems, or you can use a programming language like Python or C/C++, or pick your favorite (the bulk of the tutorials will demonstrate Python or C/C++).
If you could use a bit of shoring up of the basics, then there is no better place to start than with the proverbial "Hello World!" equivalent of blinking an LED attached to a GPIO pin. Familiarize yourself with the pinout and the schematic of the major components, e.g. the power-chain, GPIO and ADC ports -- and the voltage and current limitations. A basic understanding will keep your PI safe.
You can probably search "basic Raspberry Pi project gpio" and turn up many, many tutorials out there. Thinking back, the shift-register tutorials were fairly in-depth and gave an overview of most of the basic systems you will use with your ultimate home security project. The 74HC595 tutorials with 8-LEDs are good (SIPO, serial-in parallel-out). For nuance, you can add a 74HC165 chip as well and display the results of the (PISO, parallel-in serial-out) value through the 595 LEDs. Also don't forget your basic NPN and PNP transistor tutorials and the MOSFET tutorials. (and don't forget the flywheel/fly-back diode tutorial for keeping your electronics safe when powering larger loads, [lamps, motors, etc...])
When you are comfortable you understand the basics, understand voltage and current limitations of both the PI and whatever you are hooking to it, then take on your big project. There are no shortcuts, and there are piles of "permanently modified" PIs in drawers or boxes of people that decided to take one.
Most of all, have fun, and remember learning all this stuff isn't a race, it's a journey and it will take time. So, enjoy the journey and good luck with your coding and electronics -- the PI can do it all.
(then toss the OS and pick up a PICO and duplicate your smart-home project on a microcontroller)
Statistics: Posted by drankinatty — Tue Aug 19, 2025 11:52 pm