Concept Taxonomy¶
Twelve categories organize the 531 concepts in the Learning STEM with Raspberry Pi Hardware learning graph. Categories align with the course description's 16 topics (several closely related topics are merged into one category to keep the taxonomy at a manageable ~12 groups). No category exceeds 13% of the total concept count, so the legend stays readable in the graph viewer.
| Category | TaxonomyID | Concept IDs | Count | % of Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundations and Product Selection | FOUND | 1–48 | 48 | 9.0% |
| Circuits and GPIO | CIRC | 49–92 | 44 | 8.3% |
| LED Art and Analog Sensors | LEDSN | 93–152 | 60 | 11.3% |
| STEM Robot Kits | ROBOT | 153–220 | 68 | 12.8% |
| Clocks, Watches, and Wearables | CLOCK | 221–254 | 34 | 6.4% |
| Wireless Communication | WIFI | 255–290 | 36 | 6.8% |
| Linux and the Pi 500+ Desktop | LINUX | 291–335 | 45 | 8.5% |
| RGB Keyboard Lighting | RGBKB | 336–363 | 28 | 5.3% |
| Raspberry Pi 5 Hardware | PIHW | 364–402 | 39 | 7.3% |
| Real-Time Image Recognition | VISN | 403–442 | 40 | 7.5% |
| Real-Time Sound Recognition | AUDIO | 443–476 | 34 | 6.4% |
| Budgeting, Logistics, and Capstone | LOGIS | 477–531 | 55 | 10.4% |
Category Descriptions¶
Foundations and Product Selection (FOUND)¶
Computational thinking vocabulary (decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, debugging) plus the decision framework for choosing among Raspberry Pi Foundation products (Pico, Pico W, Pico 2, Pi 500+, Pi 5) by budget and task.
Circuits and GPIO (CIRC)¶
Breadboard mechanics, electrical fundamentals (voltage, current, resistance, Ohm's Law), GPIO pin behavior, and the MicroPython/Thonny workflow that every Pico-based project in the book builds on.
LED Art and Analog Sensors (LEDSN)¶
NeoPixel/WS2812B programming, RGB color theory and animation, plus breadboard-level analog and digital input: buttons, photoresistors, temperature/sound sensors, and buzzers.
STEM Robot Kits (ROBOT)¶
Building and programming the $19 no-display and $35 OLED-display robot kits: motors, motor drivers, distance/line sensors, autonomous behaviors, and OLED-driven facial expressions and robot personality.
Clocks, Watches, and Wearables (CLOCK)¶
Real-time clock modules, the display driver families used to build custom clocks and watches (seven-segment, LCD, TFT, round), time formatting, and wearable enclosure/power design.
Wireless Communication (WIFI)¶
Wi-Fi networking, HTTP/web servers, MQTT, and Bluetooth Low Energy on the Pico W, including swarm-robotics peer-to-peer communication.
Linux and the Pi 500+ Desktop (LINUX)¶
Booting Raspberry Pi OS, the terminal and shell, file system navigation, package management, remote access (SSH/VNC), and general-purpose desktop computing on the Pi 500+.
RGB Keyboard Lighting (RGBKB)¶
Programming the Pi 500+'s per-key RGB backlight: lighting effects, event- driven reactive lighting, and classroom-relevant use cases like typing-speed indicators and notification cues.
Raspberry Pi 5 Hardware (PIHW)¶
Pi 5-specific hardware: PCIe/NVMe storage, camera modules, cooling, power delivery, GPIO at scale, and the software setup (Git, virtual environments, headless configuration) used across the AI tiers.
Real-Time Image Recognition (VISN)¶
The AI HAT+ (Hailo accelerator), neural network and model vocabulary, object detection and image classification pipelines, and the accuracy/ latency tradeoffs of running inference at the edge.
Real-Time Sound Recognition (AUDIO)¶
Microphones and audio sampling, signal processing (FFT, spectrograms), sound/keyword classification, and speech-to-text/text-to-speech on Raspberry Pi 5.
Budgeting, Logistics, and Capstone (LOGIS)¶
Classroom budgeting and sourcing in a constrained-supply market, safety and classroom-management practices, and the engineering-design-process vocabulary used in cross-tier capstone projects.