I have been traveling about the Faire catching what talks and panels I can that I think will offer useful tips and tricks for the Adafruit community. Right after the Ebon Upton‘s Make: Live talk, I stumbled on this Raspberry Pi 101 in the MakerShed, taught by O’Reilly author and editor Shawn Wallace.

He shared a few protips I appreciated, including using the Chicken of the VNC app to connect via VNC into his Raspberry Pi. That way, he can patch his Raspberry Pi via ethernet to his macbook pro (creating a local network), making his laptop’s monitor, keyboard, and trackpad available to the Pi so that he can do work on it out in the field without additional outboard gear. (There are solid Linux and PC VNC and RDP tools as well for those not able to use Chicken of the VNC, mac only.)

Other things to watch for: check to make sure you take the effort to get a compatible sd card and keyboard/mouse, as you can damage your Pi. Also, as the  Pi is more physically fragile than an Arduino — given the density of its layers of routing and sensitive components —  getting a case is a good idea for decoration for more than decoration. (Might I suggest our lovely and functional Pibows?)