It’s a gloomy Sunday morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I believe it will stop raining mid morning. Have a three hour on-line class to attend at 10:00 AM CDT. While I wait for the start of the class I decided to check out my CanaKit™ Raspberry Pi B+ Ultimate Starter Kit (Black Case) RSP-BP-C2-BLK which I purchase from Amazon.com about a year ago (have been experimenting with Arduino). I have noticed that the price of the kit has almost doubled since I purchased mine.
The following list contains contents of the CanaKit:
Raspberry Pi 2 (RPi2) Model B Quad-Core 900 MHz 1 GB RAM
8 GB MicroSD Card (Class 10) – Raspberry Pi Recommended MicroSD Card with NOOBS
CanaKit WiFi Adapter / Dongle (RT5370 chipset)
CanaKit 2.5A Micro USB Power Supply with Noise Filter (UL Listed) specially designed for the Raspberry Pi 2 (5 feet cable)
High Quality Raspberry Pi 2 Case
Premium Quality HDMI Cable with CEC support (6.5 feet cable)
Heat Sink
GPIO and Resistor Colors Quick Reference Cards
CanaKit Full Color Quick-Start Guide
CanaKit GPIO to Breadboard Interface Board
GPIO Ribbon Cable
Breadboard
32 x Jumper Wires
RGB LED
2 x Red LEDs
2 x Green LEDs
2 x Yellow LEDs
– 2 x Blue LEDs
– 2 x Push Button Switches
– 10 x 220 Ohm Resistors
– 5 x 10K Ohm Resistors
– CanaKit General Guide for Beginners to Electronic Components
The “Raspberry Pi for Dummies” by Sean Manus & Mike Cook 
book in Chapter One contains a list “Deciding What Else You Need”. The list follows indicating which items I have and which items I am missing:
Computer monitor (have spare HDMI monitors at home)
USB hub (on Amazon.com wish list)
USB keyboard and mouse (ordered at Amazon.com)
SD card (part of the CanaKit and I ordered a 32GB MicroSD Card with Raspbian loaded from Amazon.com)
SD card writer for your PC (in my wish list at Amazon.com)
USB keys (have a few at home)
External hard drive (in my wish list at Amazon.com)
Speakers (have a few at home)
Power supply (in the CanaKit)
Case (part of the CanaKit)
Cables (part of the CanaKit)
So far, with the book, the kit, the stuff at home and what I have already ordered from Amazon.com I believe that any 12-year old or adult with no experience in computer hardware and basic user computer skills should be able to get ready to put together and experiment with the Raspberry Pi.
I should be ready to put together the Raspberry Pi and start experimenting with it next weekend. In the meantime, I will continue to read the “Raspberry for Dummies” book. It is very easy to read and seems to be quite accurate.
If you have comments or questions, please send me a message.
John
john.canessa@gmail.com