Raspberry Pi A+ Details Leaked 141
mikejuk writes Despite trying to keep it secret, a major Raspberry Pi retailer has published some details of the upcoming model A+ Raspberry Pi thanks to a product page that went live early. The board layout looks different and is much smaller than the model A or B+. Judging from the photograph, the A+ board encompasses the four standard mounting holes, which makes it approximately 56x65mm — the model B+ is 56x85mm.
The key improvement is the new 40-pin GPIO socket, which makes the model A+ fully compatible with the HAT expansion standard. This means that any new HAT expansion cards should now work with the A+. It also has what's likely a connector for the yet-unreleased Raspberry Pi touchscreen. Another welcome change is the micro SD slot. One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
The key improvement is the new 40-pin GPIO socket, which makes the model A+ fully compatible with the HAT expansion standard. This means that any new HAT expansion cards should now work with the A+. It also has what's likely a connector for the yet-unreleased Raspberry Pi touchscreen. Another welcome change is the micro SD slot. One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
A great family of products (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, the Raspberry Pis are not truly powerful, but because of their low price and easy expandability, they are useful for so many creative projects.
For my own use, I was thinking of turning mine into an airplay-compatible receiver (I found that there is software for for that) and built it together with (wifi dongle and a little amp) into a very old radio cabinet. Nice to put in the kitchen.
Re:A great family of products (Score:5, Interesting)
If your radio is still in semi-working condition, it might be possible to inject the audio signal from the Pi into the radio's existing amplifier [hylobatidae.org]. I almost certainly broke all kinds of audio design rules, but in my instance it sounds brilliant. I (briefly) got it working as an Airplay receiver, but for nearly two years it's been doing sterling stuff as a time-delayed BBC Radio 4 device.
(I would definitely recommend against blindly doing this with stuff that's directly mains-powered - I know that a lot of old radios, especially in the USA, did scary things with mains voltages [hackaday.com]. For a battery-powered transistor radio? Certainly worth a try.)
Mains (Score:2)
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There was. It wasn't at all uncommon to have things like door bells (and servant's bells - I've excavated the wiring from the walls in the former servant's level) to be powered from a battery system.
Also, with the analogue telephone system, that has a low DC voltage on it, from batteries/ UPS in the exchange. So that was another powered wiring system in some houses. Actually, you should still be able to run a ringer off the telephone line,
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Damned socialist chipmakers. You just know those bastards are going to take our pi's away from us.
Down side (Score:5, Interesting)
One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
There are two down sides worth noting. That's one of them; have they got USB figured out yet? Just one port is bad enough but if they bugger the polyfuses again... But the real problem is the RAM. 512MB is cramped. 256MB is unacceptable.
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The Linux that runs on it by default? Want to run something other than Linux such as your own OS? CAN'T! Proprietary GPU Boot blob that requires you to essentially be a Broadcom employee to know anything about it.
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There's nothing stopping you from running other operating systems on the Pi. There are plenty of them around and you can write your own if you want, all the necessary documentation is available, or you can just look at the Linux source code if it's not clear enough for you.
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They released the docs http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-b... [raspberrypi.org]
You can run several non-linux OSs on it RISC OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Plan 9. Or you could write your own http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projec... [cam.ac.uk]
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Really, why would anyone ever need more than 640K?
Re:Down side (Score:4, Informative)
Since the model B was upgraded to 512Mb, I think the Model A will upgraded too.
Main USB fault remains (Score:2, Informative)
There were several kinds of USB issue. Those related to USB power and polyfuses have been remedied. The B+ (and now A+) power circuitry is now done properly, not a cheap hack like on the models B and A.
But the biggest USB issue of all remains and will probably never be solved, because it is a hardware problem deep within the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC. This SoC contains just a partial USB controller which requires the CPU to handle in
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"Unfortunately the CPU cannot provide the required 1ms realtime response to USB events when it is busy" That's a kernel issue, not a SOC issue.
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One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
There are two down sides worth noting. That's one of them; have they got USB figured out yet? Just one port is bad enough but if they bugger the polyfuses again... But the real problem is the RAM. 512MB is cramped. 256MB is unacceptable.
A modern standard ARMv7 instead of the odd ARMv6 would be greatly appreciated too.
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A modern standard ARMv7 instead of the odd ARMv6 would be greatly appreciated too.
Connecting up the performance counter interrupt line would, but ARMv7 wouldn't. Having to have different OS images for different models of RPi makes them a lot less interesting. If you want an ARMv7 board, then go and buy one - there are loads of them.
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The problem is not the SoC - the SoC was designed like that on purpose. It has a powerful GPU coupled with a relatively weak CPU because the CPU's job was just to get the GPU fed.
As in, the chip was designed for media players - where the CPU is only managing how to get the media and feeding said media to the GPU (and the CPU is more than fast enough to do basic audio decoding at the same time).
In fact, if you look around, you
Re:Down side (Score:4, Interesting)
Arduino has 2k of RAM and people do all sorts of interesting things with it. rpi is definitely not suitable for everything, but is already overkill for many tasks people use it for.
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the Arduino doesn't run Linux, support video, or networking.
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And the RPi does, and supports all of the above within the 256MB of RAM quite comfortably leaving space for running games, decoding high def movies, acting as a file server etc.
What's your point?
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comfortably? Well until you run out of ram that is. You can never really have too much ram on a system.
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If the bounds of your system are known then you most definitely can have too much RAM. It's not a general purpose computer, the goal is not to run multiple workloads of unknown size, the goal is to develop an application that fits within the bounds of the hardware.
A lot of the PC types here on Slashdot don't get this and think it's underpowered.
A lot of the engineering types who realise that the Raspberry Pi is the same cost as the Arduinos they have been using but has 15x the clock speed and 100x the RAM
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" It's not a general purpose computer"
Yes it really is. HDMI, USB for keyboard and mouse, and boots Linux with a GUI.
I can see your point if you treat it as an embedded system but just as people can use an x86 itx in an embedded system you can use a Pi.
As to having too much ram? Well I would see the pi as more of prototyping tool than a cost optimized solution for a production product. On a prototyping tool you can never have too much ram because debug code always takes up more space than production.
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I should clarify what I mean by general purpose computer is more akin to it being a PC. Yes it does do things we expect of normal general purpose computers, but you should not expect to use it as such.
Forget multitasking, fancy graphics, and hardcore processing. It seems that many of the comments here seem to want the RPi to do just those things, as if you can never run a GUI program on a 700MHz processor with 256MB of RAM. But really I think the real problem is that most of the complainers have no idea wha
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The Pi was supposed to be a cheap educational computer and was supposed to do things like surf the net and allow people to develop software for them.
The funny thing is that I am sitting here with an Cortex M4 on and ST-Link JTAG right next to me. But others have Bones, RasPis, and even a few Arduinos that we use for prototyping stuff.
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The Arduino Yún runs Linux, albeit on a core separate from the Arduino ATMega device. As others have mentioned, networking can be done with shields. If you really want video and hardcore networking, you probably want a Pi. But the Pi is overkill if you have a task that can be automated with a microcontroller, and the Pi doesn't handle raw pin I/O as nimble as a microcontroller.
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the Pi doesn't handle raw pin I/O as nimble as a microcontroller.
You can fix that with a kernel module.
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I was referring more to the hardware limitations. The Pi has only 8 digital I/O pins, and I think one serial port and an I2C port? Microcontrollers like the ATMega 2560 (and Arduino Mega board) have 50 some I/O lines (with some analog ones in there) and four serial ports. The 8 pins on a Pi you can eat up pretty quick on a project. Of course you can use the I2C port to add peripheral chips to get more I/O, but microcontrollers in general do this a lot better.
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The Arduino Yun is an Arduino that uses a separate Linux WiFi router that is in fact a lot more powerful than the Arduino. The network shields are much the same.
Saying that the Pi doesn't need more than 256mb because the Arduino only needs 2k just does not make any sense.
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The network shields have a processor that handles the TCP/IP stack for them.
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I've been running the original B version with 256MB with XBMC as a media player and it's worked well for that. As a general computing platform though that does cause big slow downs if you multitask the machine as you run out of ram pretty quickly. I'm about to order some B+ models for a surveillance setup but I think now I may wait to see what the A+ looks like.
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I've been running the original B version with 256MB with XBMC as a media player and it's worked well for that.
It doesn't even support 1080p (at least in the GUI) in the 256MB version. So that's really a failure in my book. Also, XBMC is slow. as. fuck. on the Pi. The GUI is actually less responsive than the last version of XBMC which runs on the Xbox. No idea what that's about, but it's unacceptable.
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I have run 1080p content okay. The UI is sluggish but the movie played fine which is really my main concern. It's pretty workable but I'm sure more ram would improve it.
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There are two down sides worth noting. That's one of them; have they got USB figured out yet? Just one port is bad enough but if they bugger the polyfuses again... But the real problem is the RAM. 512MB is cramped. 256MB is unacceptable.
The USB hasn't been an issue in a long time. RAM isn't too much of an issue either. If you want a general purpose computer then this is not it. It's not for multitasking or anything fancy at all, but there are plenty of other products on the market to cater to your needs.
On the other hand I find a lot of the projects for the RPi appear to be more CPU constrained. But given it's 256MB of RAM it has had absolutely no problem performing as a media centre, or a mame arcade, or the many far simpler and less reso
Re:Down side (Score:4, Informative)
512MB is massive. It's the same as an XBOX 360. Even 256MB is more than enough for XBMC and a full desktop environment.
It's a £25 computer and it does an incredible amount, at extremely low power. There are other ARM boards out there with more RAM and better CPUs, but they cost more too. Take your pick.
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512MB is massive
I think you and I have fairly different definitions of "massive". I don't actually expect massive, which for a device of this class would be 4 or 8 GB IMO. But 1GB would be welcome, and 2GB would not go amiss. Remember, typical el-cheapo Android tablets (which have a lot more hardware) are now coming with RAM like that. The R-Pi had pretty decent specs when it was released, and if you had been permitted to use the full potential of the GPU at the time, it would have been actually kind of powerful.
So here's
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One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
There are two down sides worth noting. That's one of them
That's not a downside.
The onboard USB hub of model B is one of the main perpetrators responsible for the high power consumption. It would defeat the point of model A if it was present.
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I am sure it's great for lots of things, but if I were buying something to plug a screen and keyboard into, I would go the route of a used Core 2 duo laptop next time. YMMV.
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You know plenty of XP boxes which represent up to % 15 of us Internet users work just fine with 512 megs.
People everyday use word, excel, video editing, and a few tabs in IE 8 just fine with it. I think it's plenty for a hobbyist board. Also Intel makes $200 atom based pie based devices too with USB 3 and hdmi and more ram if you want power. Folks these are $49! That is the appeal for a cheap hacking board. $200 is a little much to goof with in comparison
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For a streaming video display or a full-screen terminal, it's peanuts. I've seen one application of the A model that was brilliantly executed and saved gobs of money over legacy Wyse boxes. There's a business somewhere that runs about 200 A's and all they do is pretend to be 3270 terminals. At boot you get the mainframe login screen. Works a treat. Sure, if you were a masochist, you could probably squeeze that functionality into a low-end 8 bit Atmel, but why bother. It would never pay off unless you had a
Arietta G25 (Score:1)
Raspberry Pi A+ is too late. There is much better alternative for DIY embedded purposes - Arietta G25 (http://www.acmesystems.it/arietta). No kernel blobs needed, much smaller (53mm x 25mm) and comparable price.
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Interesting board if you don't need all the features and performance of the pi. Though it says "Since this is early stage of development, no documentation is available".
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The reason the Pi is so much bigger than this is because of all the things the G25 is missing. The USB ports, the ethernet connector, HDMI port and such take up a lot of room. I'm sure omitting all those things helped keep costs down.
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On the plus side multiple accessible USBs (one of which can be used for a wifi module if desired). On the downside much weaker CPU, no evidence of a GPU or video output at all
HAT? (Score:2)
The HAT sounds very much like it would become very, very useful. Automatically installed avanced I/O cards under Linux.
Easier than Groove or similar under Arduino.
I can't complain.
(I currently use two Raspberry - one Razberry and one Raspbmc. One for controlling LED strips would be great.)
Really? (Score:2)
They still spread the ports along two sides sides of the board! Put then on one side people and make the cases a lot easer to to make.
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Raspberry Pi compute module is already available and it has all the connections on a single side of the board.
Go wild with your case.
Disappointment on the info and product. (Score:2)
There is also no word on what the device's power consumption is, but it has to be lower than the model B+ because it is basically the same design minus the Ethernet chip.
These no denying, the A+ is cute. RPI fans will stock up on them for more interesting projects that are slightly smaller than before (little sarcasm).
My only gripe, CPU is still the same, no USB3. Its as if the Raspberry Foundation made a great product a few years ago and are scared to try something new.
Just wish they would move on to another project with current/next gen tech, instead of rehashing the same old tech that doesnt really benefit anyone.
However, my Model B 256mb still runs great, so no reason t
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Stable hardware choices mean stable development platform.
Really if you want anything go buy it. It's all out there. There are faster boards, more memory, more I/O (not sure about USB3 though, and I'm not sure that would even be relevant or possible given the slow SD card interface and small memory / poor CPU speed).
But think of the RPi like a console. These changes are cosmetic so that a "design once run anywhere" type development community is built around it.
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There's no point to USB3 with that CPU. None whatosever.
FTFY (Score:4, Insightful)
"One downside of the A+ is that it still has fewer features than the B+ version."
Can't call it that... (Score:4, Funny)
There was never a BBC Micro Model A+, though. The next one in the series should be a Raspberry Pi Master Series, with numeric keypad.
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Hrmmm... where have I seen this idea before? (Score:3)
Finally we know why Ebon and Co stomped on the Odroid-W.
Still missing an audio-in jack (Score:2)
Since the beginning of the Pi, a big problem has been its lack of an audio-in jack. Instead tinkering about with that has required us to fiddle around with USB-based audio interfaces. Ick.
I like them (Score:1)
I've never had any problems with either; the older one runs as a web and VoIP server, the second is my used by my 7 year old to play with Scratch. I have never regretted either purchase, although I will admit running Scratch can tax the Pi, but it
Raspberry Pi Calculator (Score:2)
I was thinking that the Raspberry Pi would make a great calculator (with the inclusion of Mathematica and GNU tools), but there are no good cases to achieve this.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Interesting)
The popularity of the arduino shows that CPU performance is not everything. rpi is fast enough to do many tasks, it is small, cheap, widely available, well documented and well supported. That's why its popular.
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Sounds like you need this [zdnet.com] if you want to blow $200 for a real desktop like system. Sure some emedded uses would call for an atom.
For building robots and doing simple things an ARM is fine and most importantly cheap! Folks still use XP machines with 512 megs of ram and cpus not much faster to this day. Postgresql, php, image recognition, and other clients tools ran fine on a pentium III. He'll Debian demoed a 1000 users with apache on a 75 mhz pentium back in the day!
These are not made to run VMware and vi
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well supported? What? Seriously, what are you talking about? A bunch of random idiots on some forum that don't know jack shit about the hardware or the software does not make it well supported.
Just stop trying to pretend the Pi is awesome. It was an awesome idea before it came out, everything since then has been horrible. Production delays, lack of supply (Seriously, how the fuck can you not meet demand for years on end), bad hardware design, closed source GPU blobs that only work on specific linux distros and NOTHING ELSE.
Its crap. Wake up and smell the shit on your nose.
So cus' the thing doesn't do exactly what you want, it's bad?
It's not the holy grail of anything, but it's available and it does its just just fine.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
This Broadcom SOC is great for mass-produced routers, bad for sharing with people trying to learn how Linux boots, learning assembly and possibly advancing to their own RTOS. I'm aware of the measly peripheral datasheet sections that are available online, but for Atmel and NXP chips one has to read a LOT more to make basic hardware level programs (how are the VICs nested, timing and boot issues/settings, other exceptions made by Broadcom i their ARM11 implementation etc).
Consistency is unimportant if youre giving people a board with the OS pre-installed, the kernel can handle different CPUs while users use different programs. But if you want to learn a bit more and go lower level (for example from Arduino), you're screwed by Broadcom SOC's severe lack of documentation. And forget about learning to code for the GPU.
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You know what? Datasheet availability for education make no fucking difference. If you are trying to teach how linux boots, use a different platform (and try GPU programming on your desktop if its so important - which it isn't). This strawman argument comes up all the time, and its pathetic. You really DONT NEED THE FUCKING DATASHEETS to teach children because children ARE NOT FUCKING INTERESTING IN THAT SHIT. Even grad level stuff ISNT INTERESTING IN THAT SHIT.
It's completely irrelevant. The number of peop
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It's a trade off that you have hit there. Cost vs everything. Is is better to have full docs, most of which would never be used, or a cheaper device? Or is community support more important?
School always need cheaper. They also need hand holding.
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It is garbage because a very closed CPU is used as an educational platform without datasheet availability.
That would depend on what the education is about. If it's about teaching kids to program in Python, then the lack of datasheets is a non-issue. Even if you wanted to hack the Linux kernel, 90% of the code is architecture independent.
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I was under the impression that the Pi is aimed at introductory learners. That is people who will be writing their first "hello world" program and new to the concept of variables. It is cheap as possible so children can buy and play with them.
Even when I kid and learned programming on the Apple II E one did not start with assemble as one's first language and write an operating system as ones first program.
By the time one is advanced enough to want to learn some assemble langue and alter Linux at the level
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"lack of supply" LOL
You can buy the Pi by the pallet load if you want. I've just picked a random idiot. It's you! Congrats.
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A few basic tasks. Saying many is pushing the definition of many.
I invite you to actually go and see what people have used the device for. You're talking about a full Linux computer with GPIO, SPI, UART, Network, USB, HDMI, Audio, and composite out, not to mention the many optional addon cards. If you think it's capable of only a few basic tasks then you are showing an incredible lack of creativity.
it is small
Compared to what? Its not really that small, there are certainly smaller in the same class and for less money. Realistically though, for experimentation its exactly the wron
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there were supply issues for the very first batch. Element14 then had them in stock all over the world within a month
and the second batch. And element14 reports them as "in stock" when what actually happens (or did back then) is the order was actually forwarded along to another warehouse. so in actuality they had 0 in stock, but were reporting having them in stock to capture sales. If I'd waited a month, I'd have bought something else. element14 can DIAF.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Informative)
Many tasks,
http://hackaday.com/tag/raspbe... [hackaday.com]
http://makezine.com/category/e... [makezine.com]
Seems to me like thousands of people are finding interesting things to do. Of course it is not fast enough for everything, but nor is my i7 laptop, or the 48core server box I use at work.
Small. Ok, that's relative. Its been fine for my uses, smaller than the beagleboard and mini-itx boards I used before. The A+ is even smaller. Interested to know what project you are doing where the pi is too big and too slow, what do you use instead?
Cheap. sorry if $25/$35 is too expensive. Its a quarter the price of the beaglebaord that I used before. Maybe you can find something cheaper for your specific task.
Widely available. In the UK there are several high street shops with it in stock, and lots of online retailers.
Documentation. Personally GPU docs don't interest me (though they are now released, so its the most open arm SoC). When I have wanted to use the pi in a project I have found lots of documentation and tutorials to help me.
Well supported. 2.5 years after release they are still doing regular software updates, including big things like wayland support. Compared to lots of hardware that is released with some old distro image that never gets any updates.
So yes the raspberrypi is awesome. It lets lots of people do interesting things at a good price. Sure for certain things an atmega, beaglebaord, banana pi, gumstix, galileo, an old pc or something else might be better.
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Beaglebone Black does not cost 4 times more (anymore?), last time I've checked it was about 2 times more expensive.(about 60 Euro for BB vs 30 Euro for RPI)
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I had a beagleboard http://beagleboard.org/beagleb... [beagleboard.org] , $125, though about £120 GBP to order in the UK. So switching to the pi gave me something smaller, cheaper, more reliable (I had various issues with the USB on the BB), with ethernet and accessible GPIOs.
Beaglebone Black is quite nice, and closer in price to Pi, but I have not personally made any projects where it would be an advantage over a Pi. I for the Pi that I use as a desktop (mostly with just a bunch of terminals SSHed to big machines), it
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@BitZtream
Your post has a number of glaring inaccuracies, ones that could easily have been corrected with minimal Googling, or had you known any thing about what you are attempting to write about.
It is widely available, and has been for well over a year. If you have a product that isn't meeting demand, you don't sell 4M devices - in 2 years. You can buy one next day delivery from dozens of different suppliers around the world.
Documentation. For 99.999% of people, there is perfectly good documentation, and
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A couple of nitpicks on your post.
Documentation. For 99.999% of people, there is perfectly good documentation,
The docs are pretty poor though, for example there is no proper documentation on the electrical characteristics of the IO pins.
and for those of a particularly masochistic bent, you have the full GPU documentation to play with.
Depends how you define "GPU", theres docuementation for the 3D core but not for many other blocks.
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Ok you hate it, we get it. What would you suggest then?
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It has been sitting on the shelves of a local MicroCenter for years now. Get over yourself. I never had any trouble getting one.
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What the fuck is wrong with people who think that difference in clock speed over a couple of years is worth anything? The earth is millions of years old. If your imagination fails to think of something interesting to do with well-documented, well-supported technology because it's not precisely what the latest fashion demands, your contribution will be worthless.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually they have made pretty good progress in this area. Ahead of most (maybe all) other arm boards and most PCs.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/ope... [raspberrypi.org]
http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-b... [raspberrypi.org]
http://www.raspberrypi.org/qua... [raspberrypi.org]
Though i suspect when most people say well documented they mean that pretty much whatever you want to do with a pi you can easily find good tutorials. Want to hook up some electronics to so you can read/control them over a network, raspberrypi is probably the easiest (and cheapest) option.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Informative)
The processor in the existing rpi is so slow compared to other (even similarly clocked) modern arm cores that one might seriously wonder if Intel isn't paying these folks to sabotage arm in the minds of developers.
Raspberry Pi is not a product that follows the latest computing advancements but it is about keeping a stable platform. A program written for C64 works on another C64. A program written for Raspberry Pi works on another Raspberry Pi.
It would make cooperative education and hobby projects more difficult if people had to continuously negotiate about "is this the 700MHz or 1000MHz version we are talking about". It's more straightforward to have a common ground.
Of course there's plenty of other ARM boards with the latest hot chips if that's what your project requires. :)
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also about being cheap. The Pi was expressly designed for use as an educational platform for use in schools. Children break everything, so the pi needs to be cheap enough that a school can keep replacing all the ones that get snapped/squished/thrown/scratched/smashed.
Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of overlap between those constraints. Cheap doesn't just mean cheap to buy, it means cheap to replace. And that means that when you break one, if the exact model doesn't exist anymore then you need to be able to run everything that was working on the old one on a newer model. The advantage of the RPi over more powerful ARM boards is that it comes with that guarantee - the A+ will run everything (including the same OS image) as the A and B.
The hypothetical 700MHz vs 1GHz issue that the grandparent talks about isn't that much of a problem. More importantly, a new SoC would likely be dual (or quad or octo) core and would be ARMv7, not ARMv6. That's a big change. I expect that the RPi will skip ARMv7 entirely and that eventually there will be an ARMv8 model (possible ARMv8.1 / ARMv8.2), but the jump to 64-bit gives a good excuse for needing a new OS image.
Disclaimer: I work a couple of floors below several of the RPi Foundation, but the only thing that they've told me about their future plans is that they have some. Everything in this post is uninformed guesswork.
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I think he was being metaphorical. It's more like "Is it the one with a shitachi KZ415 chipset or the one with a bogocorp 3712A, which both have exactly the same PLU/SKU, unless it was shipped from Hungary on a Friday in which case..."
WiFI & TV cards seem very prone to this.
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I don't think they will jump directly to ARMv8 because of the price point. Unless they wait 3 or 4 years for their next update, I don't see ARMv8 SoCs being cheap enough to use.
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"A program written for C64 works on another C64"
Not always. There were enough differences between the revisions to make some programs break. Then you add the C128 and it also added some differences.
The various C64s had different CPUs with different undocumented opcodes, and there were two revisions of the video chip and two of the sound chip (if not more).
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The payoff of the A+ board is not the price. Its supposed to use significantly less power, which would make it more desirable if you needed to leave a remote device alone for a longer period of time, or place it on a drone, where the battery would need to be lighter, or needed to solar power the device on a small cell, and have it run overnight on the rechargeable battery. Still can't beat the power consumption of an arduino, but there's probably applications (drive a webcam) which the arduino can't meet
Re: Will it have the same garbage CPU? (Score:1)
Banana Pi is a much better choice, dual core CPU, 1g Ram, 1g Ethernet , Sata, power button, reset button, same gpio , same price level:
http://www.bananapi.com
I switched to banana pi from RPi
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I've mistreated the hell out of mine and they both live. One is now missing the big capacitor, C6 I believe, and it still works fine. I suppose if you step on it then it might fail.
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Yes that's what I read too. Apparently it's there in case there are problems with poor power supplies. Mine has worked fine in the weeks since I broke the cap off.