Raspberry pi cluster Step 1: Shopping

So, A raspberry pi cluster. What is it and what does it do?

Well, a raspberry pi is a small $35 dollar Linux computer with an SD card as a hard drive and an USB cable as it’s power source. While they are only $35, they perform really well!

A cluster is basically a group of computers that work together to run a very intensive program. Say for example you needed to calculate 1000 things with a single raspberry pi and every calculation takes 1 second. That would be 1000 seconds! Now if you add a second raspberry pi and you have them share the load they will be twice as fast! Imagine running 4 of them, that would cut it down to 250 seconds! Well that’s exactly what I plan on doing

What software are you going to use?

I am going to use raspbian for the OS and I will be using python (and mpi4py) to program the cluster.

What did you need and how much did it cost

Below you will find a list of items you would need if you were to build a 4 pi cluster from scratch. Prices are in Euro’s because that’s what I pay with (I know, crazy right?)

• 4 raspberry pis ( €131.80 )
• 4 ethernet cables ( €3.40 )
• 4 USB power cables ( €7.20 )
• 4 sd cards ( €12.72 )
• 4 raspberry pi cases ( €11.72 )
• An Ethernet hub ( €10.95 )
• An USB hub ( €2.64 )

This all adds up to ( €180.43 which is $233.76 according to google)

I ordered some of the stuff from a shop in china called ”banggood”. Since they deliver all around the world I will add the links to those items below.

• The raspberry pi cases can be found here
• The 8gb SD cards can be found here
• The USB hub can be found here
• The USB power cables can be found here