3.6 Summary:

The Raspberry Pi is a small, powerful and lightweight ARM based computer which can do many of the things a desktop PC can do. The powerful graphics capabilities and HDMi video output make it ideal for multimedia applications such as media centres and narrowcasting solutions. The Raspberry Pi is based on a Broadcom BCM2835 chip. It does not feature a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for booting and long-term storage.

This makes Raspberry Pi an ideal master controller for our wheelchair. The Raspberry Pi with its varied features and GPIO capabilities give us an edge over the Arduino platform which was used earlier for the same purpose.

The digitized output of Raspberry Pi is compatible with the various modules that we look to integrate onto the wheelchair.

Figure 13: Connections to Raspberry Pi