Raspberry Pi's $25 Model A Hits Production Line 105
hypnosec writes "The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that the cheaper variant of the Raspberry Pi — the Model A — has entered production phase. Model A of the credit-card sized computer has been stripped of its Ethernet port and a USB port, leaving just one USB port. This model comes with 256MB RAM, but as it is less complex compared to its predecessor it will consume less power, thus opening up quite a few new usage scenarios. The Foundation has posted the first image of the $25 Model A on its site and noted 'We're anticipating that those of you who buy the Model A will be using it for different applications from Model B owners.'"
Too little too late? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm wondering if the model A will really have much of a market.
The end of the market that the A might have been useful in may well have been overtaken by the top-end of the M-series ARM processors, especially with companies like STM now pitching boards like the Discovery STM32F4 [st.com] for $20 or so.
Yes, it's got less RAM, less MIPS and so forth -- but it *is* 100% open and incredibly capable for what it is.
Cool but SLOOOOOOW (Score:5, Informative)
How a $35 computer cost me $90 bucks..
So a long time ago I signed up to order one of these cool little Raspberry PI $35 dollar card sized computers. After a month or 2 I finally was able to order it. After a .
week or two I finally was able to hold it. After a day or two I finally was able to actually use it..
I’ll explain. It’s JUST the little pc, nothing else.
SO I had to buy the following:
1x 1k 5v USB wall wart. $20 bucks.
1x 16 Gig Class 10 SD Card $20 bucks.
1x Micro USB to USB Cable $10 bucks.
Factor in the cost of the PC with shipping $43.79 + $20 + $20 + $10 and now that $35 dollar computer is actually almost $94 bucks..
That said, it’s actually kinda cool. Not as powerful as one might like but cool none the less..
As a test I set it up running the debian installer [this took about 6 hours], setup to compile XBMC [this took about 2.5 hours] and went about compiling it..
On my main rig the compile takes all of about 8 minutes [after a make clean], on the RPI it took over 12 hours. 12 HOURS to do what my main rig can do in 8 minutes!.
Now I understand it's "only" a 35 dollar PC so one cannot expect a whole lot out of it, but in reality it's NOT a 35 dollar pc. It's a 90 dollar phone guts without the phone parts.
Re:Too little too late? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes, I don't understand the Pi. (Score:4, Informative)
I think you are missing some points here.
1. The pi runs linux. You can use c/c++, python, perl, bash scripts, almost anything else you want
(1a). You have hundreds of libraries to go with that. Also thousands of programs to pipe info.
2. You can connect a 3g, wifi stick or anything USB instantly
3. You lose absolutely no time on hardware design. It might just be me but I like have my hardware done and just worry about software
4. The community will point out almost all the hardware/software limitations or bugs of the pi and you know in advance what you are getting yourself into
5. You have portable code. If you program for linux, it runs on most hardware that runs linux (some recompilation required)
6. The community has started building addons (see arduino shields) which can achieve much more
As a software developer who used embedded linux and arduino class hardware, I love the pi because it solves all the problems I don't want to worry about. I also love that I don't have to test it on different hardware/software configurations. My target will always be raspberry/debian. I undestand that this is not what some people want/like but for "rapid" embedded development the pi is number one and because of its community I think it will be for a long time to come.
It's been done with the model B. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Even more useless! (Score:5, Informative)
They fixed it in the latest release... I have tried it with the new ISO... works great. :)
No they didn't. Isochronous transfers are still broken.