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About the Book

When I first managed to blink an LED connected to a Raspberry Pi with Java, I was super excited! Controlling physical things with some lines of code is magic! This book includes a lot of info and history about Java itself and how to install it on the Raspberry Pi. Also, there are a lot of tips and tricks to become or be a better developer. But, above all, there are many simple examples of these and even more other topics:

• The magic of Bits and Bytes and solving the confusion of Java signed values with the help of an LED number display.
• Beautiful user interfaces made with JavaFX so you can interact with the hardware.
• Pi4J applications to be able to control different types of hardware like LEDs, buttons, displays, LED strips, relais boards, and more. This chapter was further extended in 2023 to illustrate how easy it is to control electronics with Pi4J V.2 in combination with single-file applications with JBang.
• Spring applications so you can interact with your Pi via web interfaces.
• How to set up a queue to send and receive messages to and from Arduino boards or other Pi's.
• Interviews with some of my heroes: Karen Mouws (STEM and diversity), Alexander Belokrylov (BellSoft Liberica JDK), Trisha Gee (IntelliJ IDEA), Xiaokai He (Visual Studio Code), Jakob Jenkov (tutorials.jenkov.com), Johan Vos (OpenJFX, JavaFX, and GluonHQ), Robert Savage (Pi4J), Gerrit Grunwald (JavaFX, TilesFX), Mark Heckler (Spring), Vlad Mihalcea (JPA, Hibernate), Simon Ritter (Azul), Geertjan Wielenga (Azul and Foojay), Max Rydahl Andersen (JBang), Almas Baim (FXGL).
• And a lot of other inspirational ideas and getting-started examples to be able to build your dream do-it-yourself project.

My goal was to collect all the information that would have been bundled when I started my experiments with Java on the Raspberry Pi. If you are new to Java, you will learn the language bit by bit by following the examples. As an experienced Java programmer, you will learn how to extend your knowledge and control the world with simple and inexpensive components.

About the Author

Frank Delporte

@FrankDelporte

Software developer and Java Champion with over 30 years of experience in video, multimedia, technical project management, digital signage, and (web) programming.

At work focusing on Java, but also used or using ASP.NET, C#, JavaScript, SQL Server, Flex, CSS, HTML5, Java, Eclipse, Qt...

I love to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and try to do this in everything I do.

Once a month lead coach of the CoderDojo Belgium club in Ieper, where we teach children (7-18) the fun of programming with Scratch, Arduino, Lego Mindstorms, and Minecraft...