14 ms·

Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

605 points by benn_88 12y ago

stollercyrus 12y ago
I'm really glad they've added more USB ports.
ioseph 12y ago
Would be nice to have an audio input jack. Pretty low on space as it is though.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  You can probably do it via a USB dongle with the new ports added.
- matsur 12y ago
  I don't believe there is an ADC on the board -- adding an input would have added a bit of cost.
- edoceo 12y ago
  I have a Mic to USB for my audio-input needs.
- phunge 12y ago
  In theory you could use the I2S, but I went the easy route and hooked up a USB DAC (Behringer UCA-202 - good cheap DAC). Thanks to Pi's USB issues, you need to switch to USB low speed (dwc_otg.speed=1), but it's worked well.
kenrikm 12y ago
I hope the USB ports will now output enough voltage to actually power common peripherals without using a hub.
- mrmagooey 12y ago
  Given that it's a USB plug powering the device, I doubt it, although maybe the lower power usage by the Pi might provide some extra overhead.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Not sure if this is the case since they announced "reduced power consumption" ?
  - ibrahima 12y ago
    When they say reduced power consumption, they're really talking about overhead. Let's say to supply 5W at 5V, they needed to take in 7W at 120V. This means that voltage step down process results in some power being wasted as heat. By using a switching regulator they waste less power and thus there's less heat output, but the power delivered to the device remains the same. So, in this example, they might only need to take in 6W at 120V to output 5W at 5V. (Note, the numbers are complete BS because I haven't done hardware in a while, but that should give you an idea.)
    - pjc50 12y ago
      The numbers are referring to the wrong voltages entirely. It takes in 5V and down-converts that to 3.3V, 2.5V and 1.8V. https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus-plus-differences-vs-model-b?view=all#power-supply https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-mode...
- yzzxy 12y ago
  The question IIRC is if the new model will request high amperage from USB ports that can provide it, allowing more peripherals.
- ShaneCurran 12y ago
  It's nothing to do with the voltage, USB is always 5v. It's about the current these ports can draw, which is 1.2A for the 4 (i.e. 0.3A each if all 4 are under load)
- ShaneCurran 12y ago
  It's nothing to do with the voltage, USB is always 5v. It's about the current these ports can draw, which is 1.2A for the 4 (i.e. 0.3A each if all 4 are under load)
rebolek 12y ago
"moved composite video onto the 3.5mm jack" - can it output both composite video and sound at the same time?
- nwh 12y ago
  Yes. Same as the iPod can have composite video and two audio channels. Three ring / four section plugs.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    TRRS connectors. Tip Ring Ring Sleeve.
jedahan 12y ago
Much better port layout. Glad to hear audio is improved. Not sure what projects needed more pins but not complaining. Wish USB/Ethernet didn't share a bus, but I never actually ran into that being an issue yet.
- duskwuff 12y ago
  > Not sure what projects needed more pins but not complaining. The added pins include a couple of important ones from the SoC that were previously not available, or were only available on a secondary connector. You can now get JTAG over the expansion port, for instance.
tdicola 12y ago
Very cool, better mounting holes and microSD are nice improvements.
billpg 12y ago
Is the next one going to be called the Raspberry Pi Master System? Let me know when they introduce the Raspberry Pi Archimedes.
- pling 12y ago
  It already runs RISCOS ;)
- bencollier49 12y ago
  Well if that's the plan, then I'm looking forward to seeing how small they can make the Raspberry Pi Master Compact.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  Eventually there will be a Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi. Let's hope it handles tail recursion.
  - e12e 12y ago
    Raspberry Tau?
    - lytedev 12y ago
      This tickled my cleverness center.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Well, it is British, it's ARM, and it's sold by (among others) Element 14.
JamesBaxter 12y ago
Prepare for a tidal wave of new Kickstarter cases
hayksaakian 12y ago
Nice: - micro sd card support - more USB ports - better mounting
middleclick 12y ago
Is anyone running a webserver or mailserver over the Pi? Curious to know how it holds up.
- lelandbatey 12y ago
  I used it to serve files via http, and it was very poor at it. I would not recommend using it as an http file server. Light application use, or for things like hosting git repositories works well though.
- praeivis 12y ago
  If your site will serve only few static pages and you going to have less as 500 unique daily visitors RPi should be fine. But if you run some heavy framework like Wordpress and will have more as one visitor at once RPi cant handle.
- B0jan 12y ago
  Tried, but can't do any heavy stuff.
- codfrantic 12y ago
  I'm running my girlfriends portfolio page on a Pi, nginx + mysql + php / Wordpress with a caching plugin. Works quite well if the pages are cached (which most are), admin stuff is quite slow.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I am running a web server on mine using PipaOS and Lighttpd, but I rewrote my database system to SQLite instead of MySQL. Granted, this meant I had to reimplement some stored procedures that I had written in PHP instead (for parent/child page traversal and navigation building) but it returns pages much faster. I know that reading from a file all the time is likely to harm the attached USB drive's read count, but I'm not getting many hits! I intend to rewrite the system using C++ instead (using an old Mongoose C++ web server edition) and load the SQLite database into SQLite :memory: (without a disk backup) instead, which means that it'll return pages much faster; it'll only touch the "disk" database on program startup. I see from the others that they have put PHP and MySQL and a host of other things on theirs but for simple sites, that is probably somewhat overkill. I also use mine as an SSH gateway.
chj 12y ago
Using micro sdcard is much neater solution.
xorcist 12y ago
The Pi would be infititely more useful to me if the ethernet interface was attached to a "real" bus and not hung on USB. Here's to hoping that will be the next upgrade!
- egeozcan 12y ago
  I agree, and bet it would also reduce power consumption even further because of higher efficiency. Does anyone know if they use the USB bus because of the space constraints?
- copperx 12y ago
  Could you explain why would it be better for you?
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Bascially performance, one way or the other. Ethernet over USB is terribly CPU and power ineffective. I've also found the Ethernet to be a bit wonky (I suspect sleep mode issues) so I suspect reliability could be improved as a bonus.
- xiaomai 12y ago
  What's the implication of being on the same bus? More CPU usage for ethernet?
- TorKlingberg 12y ago
  Does the chipset support a "real" bus?
- pja 12y ago
  Which bus exactly? Reading the BCM2835 datasheet ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM283... ) the chip has a couple of UARTS, 2 SPI interfaces and a USB interface. The only interface that can do DMA is the USB one. All the others have relatively small FIFO buffers and require the CPU to do all the I/O work. So you could attach an ethernet interface to one of the SPI buses, or bit bang a few GPIOs but surely the CPU load is going to be painful? Edit: Oh wait, there's a main SPI bus that can do DMA as well. See page 148 on the doc linked above. If you can find a suitable chipset & driver then have at it :)
schappim 12y ago
What's the same: - Same Broadcom BCM2835 Chipset - Same 512MB RAM - Same full size HDMI port - Same 10/100 Ethernet port - Same CSI camera port and DSI display ports - Same micro USB power supply connection What has changed: - Now comes with 4 USB ports so you can now connect more devices than ever to your Raspberry Pi. - There is a 40pin extended GPIO so you can build even bigger and better projects than ever before. The first 26 pins are identical to the Model B to provide 100% backward compatibility for your projects. - Micro SD slot instead of the full size SD slot for storing information and loading your operating systems. - Advanced power management: -You can now provide up to 1.2 AMP to the 4 USB ports – enabling you to connect more power hungry USB devices without needing an external USB hub. (This feature requires a 2Amp micro USB Power Supply) - The B+ board now uses less power (600mA) than the Model B Board (750mA) when running - Combined 4-pole jack for connecting your stereo audio out and composite video out (Source: http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-mod...) [Edited for formatting]
- learc83 12y ago
  Right now it's possible to back feed power with a powered hub instead of using the micro USB connection. I'd like to see the schematic to find out if that's still possible, but I can't find one yet.
  - Already__Taken 12y ago
    This isn't a good idea though I've heard, don't you bypass some important components for power safety in the micro USB power circuit?
    - learc83 12y ago
      You're bypassing a fuse. If you have a crappy powered hub that isn't well regulated you could fry your pi. In reality, the chance of that happening is very small, and safety here is only in the context of the "safety" of a $35 board. Most hubs won't let you draw more than a couple of amps anyway.
frik 12y ago
+ micro SD card + 4 USB ports + more GPIO (now 40 pins) + better mounting + better audio controller + reduced power consumption ~ combined audio and video onto the 3.5mm jack - power connector position moved to the side (bad for small form factor projects)
praeivis 12y ago
I got surprised B+ cost same as B, and they even keep B in production. That, what I miss from other manufacturers in modern world.
- makomk 12y ago
  They'd probably piss off a lot of their developer community if they didn't keep the B in production. There's a huge number of third-party cases and projects that are built around the original connector arrangement.
  - SuddsMcDuff 12y ago
    http://www.kano.me/ http://www.kano.me/ is a prime example of this. It would have been the worst possible timing for them if the model B was discontinued.
notthetup 12y ago
Adafruit has a nice overview of what's changed. https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus-plus-differences-vs-model-b https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-mode...
hexleo 12y ago
I'm interested in Raspberry Pi. I bought one before. It's just a small PC, use one hand you can hold it. But when you want to Raspberry to do some complex works, it let you down. I want to know where does Raspberry Pi can work well?
- etherealG 12y ago
  The Pi makes a fantastic media center when combined with XBMC.
  - ern 12y ago
    "Fantastic" may be overstating it. I've been running Raspbmc for about 15 months now, and although the video rendering is very good, the XMBC UI is a bit laggy and unresponsive (although there seems to have been an improvement recently). I've also used it as an SFTP client and to run a few light cron jobs (rock solid there). Given the price, I am pleased with it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a media center for the non-tech savvy.
    - invmatt 12y ago
      If you're willing to spend quite a bit of time configuring XBMC it runs smoothly. I use openelec with the theme 'bello', any animation heavy themes will kill it straight away.
    - lmedinas 12y ago
      You should try Openelec[1] instead. It's much more lightweight and less bugs imho. 1 - http://openelec.tv/ http://openelec.tv/
    - ykykkyky 12y ago
      Agreed. I wish that RPi has some kind of cheap prebuild of a mediaplayer. If would be GREAT for non-techies if it just had a real power on/off switch, IR sensor & a basic remote that just works (probably asking for too much there). I reckon you could fix the lag of the GUI if someone implemented Raspbmc/OpenELEC with Wayland instead of X-server. Not much has to change for this to be possible. Only the power switch & IR sensor would have to be apart of it. Remote could potentially be third party and WBMC would a man hours issue.
copperx 12y ago
I still can't see why would anyone buy one except as one of those toys that you buy and then gets tossed in the closet. 10 years ago I could see the appeal, but now? The robotics, home automation, and weekend project use cases seem like would be better served by a $5 microcontroller. Some projects, such as the weather station, justify the use of a full-fledged OS, but with the cost of buying an existing, proven, weather station being so low ... why bother? And for a cheap webserver? A $1/month VPS is more powerful than this thing. Can anyone tell me what is the use case of this?
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  I can run python on it. Yes, I'm aware of http://www.pymcu.com/index.html http://www.pymcu.com/index.html , but they're cheap enough for projects and familiar enough for people vaguely familiar with Linux that it ends up being a good combination for lots of fun projects. It's probably overkill for >90% of things people use it for, but usability is the big advantage.
- vlad003 12y ago
  My understanding is that the Raspberry Pis are intended to be used in education. The front page says: "We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn how computers work, how to manipulate the electronic world around them, and how to program." That said, I use mine as a simple NAS for backups.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    The problem is that it's too slow to be used as an actual development computer, so you have to write your code on another computer and then copy it over to the pi.
    - tdicola 12y ago
      Check out sshfs or similar user-mode filesystems to make the Pi look like a drive. Cyberduck is another tool that has a decent file explorer UI around SSH/SFTP and is cross platform. If you're writing C/C++ you can set up a cross compilation tool chain to write and compile code on any Linux machine. It's a pain but there are lots of blogs posts and guides on it.
mrmondo 12y ago
$63AUD + Shipping - No thanks! http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/8111284/ http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-deve...
- WatchDog 12y ago
  This is a little cheaper, but not $35: http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-mod...
  - mrmondo 12y ago
    That's still $50 though, at that price I'm just not sure its worth it - especially since it only has a 10/100 NIC and USB 2.0 while those specs might be an acceptable for educational purposes, at $50+ hobbyists may not find it the most cost effective solution.
    - VLM 12y ago
      "especially since it only has a 10/100 NIC" I'm my experience I've found it hard to push the CPU/memory/"disk" enough to saturate the NIC, so don't worry about it. The limiter to streaming multiple high def video streams (one at a time is OK) or doing SDR/DSP work doesn't seem to be the NIC. I'm having trouble thinking of a real app that wouldn't be memory/SD card/CPU limited on my pi that would simultaneously be limited by the NIC. By real app, I don't mean sending ping floods or running weird benchmarks, or something that isn't an app, like transferring a file. My main pain point with the pi hardware at this time is there's some JVM stuff I'd like to fool around with where I'm totally patient with something that takes an imperceptible 5 ms on the desktop taking a still imperceptible 50 ms on the pi, but can't handle only having a half gig of ram.
Nux 12y ago
Oh man, I was really hoping for a better CPU. The current one is just so dang slow.
- lmedinas 12y ago
  "This isn’t a “Raspberry Pi 2″, but rather the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi. "[1] I think we can interpret this as RPI 2 will be released soon with a new processor. 1 - http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-mo...
  - ianwootten 12y ago
    Nope, he's stated publicly that any major overhaul isn't likely to see the light of day until 2017. Listen to an interview here: http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/
- paulrov 12y ago
  They said they would rather people optimise for the current hardware than cause rifts between users. The CPU really isn't that bad if you don't run that behemoth X11 on it.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Slow and proprietary, which is not a great combination... there's a lot of interesting new ARM SoCs from China that are coming out, like the Allwinner A3x series (quad A7s, >1GHz). It would be pretty unlikely for one of those to show up in the next Pi though; if anything, it'll probably be another Broadcom.
  - goldenkey 12y ago
    Ebon Upton [0], one of the main folk from the Raspberry Pi foundation works for Broadcom and does SoC. So odds are slim considering that connection probably enabled them to get extreme price arrangements otherwise not doable. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation
GutenYe 12y ago
Have them fixed the broken USB system? (USB and Ethernet share the same bus problem)
- jondot 12y ago
  No :(
christop 12y ago
Nice that they're continuing the convention of using BBC Micro model names!
jokoon 12y ago
I wonder how well it can emulate PSX games... I guess it would not do well because there's no 3D acceleration...
- pjc50 12y ago
  It has extremely good 3D acceleration, provided you're not unreasonably upset by using binary drivers. You can now get fairly good results with the open source ones too (30fps Quake3).
- SSilver2k2 12y ago
  I run the PiPlay (piplay.org) project. It can run PSX games VERY well. Most at full speed. -Shea
higherpurpose 12y ago
Please skip ARMv7 and jump straight to ARMv8 for Raspberry Pi 2. No need to force OS/app developers to support 3 different ISA's for years to come. Ideally it would also be dual core and have a clock speed of at least 1.2 Ghz, since that's what most operating systems need these days to run reasonably well, but I guess that depends on your target price. 1 GB of (LP)DDR3(L) RAM should also be the minimum for the next one.
- pjc50 12y ago
  That would make the http://www.broadcom.com/products/Applications-and-Multimedia-Processors/Tablet-Application-Processors/BCM11311 http://www.broadcom.com/products/Applications-and-Multimedia... the obvious choice.
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    That's ARMv7.
CalRobert 12y ago
For people saying they want a faster revision - do remember there are other computers in this form factor. I recently got an Odroid U3 and am very happy with it. Of course, it's $65, not $35. I tried setting up owncloud, nginx, a web server, etc. on a Pi and it couldn't handle it (everything ran, but terribly), the Odroid does well. I still like the Pi, though. There are some people for whom saving $30 really does make a big difference, and if the goal is learning how computers work, having lots of GPIO pins, etc, the Pi is still awesome.
- gnaffle 12y ago
  My biggest gripe with the Pi is a lack of proper USB power, so if you add all the stuff you need, especially for a wireless setup it's not so cheap and compact anymore. I'm happy that they've (hopefully) fixed the USB power problem, that makes it much nicer as a platform.
  - oasisbob 12y ago
    I've been providing power over the GPIO header directly, and have had great results. Combine a DC-DC supply with a few smoothing capacitors on a small daughter-board, add a barrel jack + 0.1" headers to interface and you get a lot more headroom and flexibility with how you power it. (Same-ish end result as the other fuse bypass methods, but with no soldering on the pi, and the caps seem to help with the inrush current required for hot-plugging USB devices. ) It's a tradeoff vs device safety, but is super cheap, and the operational reliability is worth it for me. Every time I stage a pi for a project that isn't powered this way, I'm surprised how much frustration is involved. Looking forward to this improvement with the B+ as much as anything else. [1] eg, the CUI V7805 (102-1715-ND at digikey)
    - mrb 12y ago
      The CUI V78xx is a really interesting part, thanks for the tip!
      - oasisbob 12y ago
pjc50 12y ago
While we're here, I'd like to call attention to the fact that the Pi foundation has hired someone to opensource the X display driver, addressing one of the common criticisms about openness: http://anholt.livejournal.com/44239.html http://anholt.livejournal.com/44239.html
- nodata 12y ago
  We need an "(up|down)vote but derail/off-topic" button. Upvoted anyway.
- Narishma 12y ago
  They hired him to create an open source driver, not to open source the current one.
thecrumb 12y ago
I wonder if this would run a Quake (3) server? Myself and a few of my friends still like to play the old classic... $35 seems ideal for something I could just leave on all the time for a quick game.
- kreddor 12y ago
  Sure, why not? It runs the Quake 3 client rather well actually.
mellisarob 12y ago
I'm still quite unclear about this
mellisarob 12y ago
I'm still quite unclear about this
dmmalam 12y ago
Looks like still no PoE?
- pjc50 12y ago
  Minority use with expensive requirements => very unlikely to happen.
andrewstuart 12y ago
It would be good if they were more active about upgrading the hardware performance....
VLM 12y ago
One funny social dynamic to watch with the pi is you give people a little computer with specs that would be pretty good five or so years ago and you get some responses like: "Humanity didn't use computers five years ago at all, for any purpose, being capable of doing anything that was done five years ago is inherently totally useless today and any thought of it should be abolished because I say so la la la I'm not listening to your real world examples la la la and that's somehow your problem not mine la la la". If you ram it past their self censorship to prove there exists a real world application for a five year old computer they get really angry. Its kind of funny to watch. Maybe its astroturfing from people selling more powerful computers.
tezza 12y ago
I went for a BeagleBone Black because I could communicate with the device over the same USB that powered it. It doesn't look as though they have made the RPI B+ communicate over the power line, are there plans for future versions to do so ?
- Ecco 12y ago
  "communicate with the device over the same USB that powered it." That's the biggest issue with the RPi and they still haven't fixed it…
ck2 12y ago
Out of curiosity have they gotten netflix to work on the Pi yet?
- foldor 12y ago
  I'd be surprised if they did. Netflix doesn't have a Linux client, and the only way to get it running on desktop Linux is using Wine with custom patches. Seeing as Wine depends on the CPU being x86, this method won't work.
  - ClashTheBunny 12y ago
    Netflix works fine on my ARM Linux phone. It's not about OS or processor, it's about middleware.
DCKing 12y ago
Curious they're explicitly naming this the "final evolution". First up, I'd be surprised if they continued with a "Raspberry Pi 2" soon. The RPi is still very adequate for its original goals in education and will likely remain so; it hasn't ever been quite enough for people wanting a cheap server or media center except for those with very modest needs. Given their announced goals, I doubt that the creators are going to cater to the second group with a hypothetical RPi 2. One thing that can be improved upon the original Pi is a more open SoC, but currently no SoC vendor will be able to provide a significantly more open one. Even if you pick an open source friendly SoC vendor like TI, there are currently no GPU designers for these SoCs that have open source drivers. It is unlikely improvemants can be made in that area that anytime soon. The second thing they could improve for their education goals in the inclusion of a dual core SoC to be able to teach about concurrency. That would probably be quite a bit more expensive than the current Pi, for a feature that would not present that much more value for education. So I'm wondering what they mean with this 'final' comment. Will they simply stay with supporting the current Raspberry Pi models? Or will they start developing a second Raspberry Pi? Or will they develop other computing devices for education?
- cpwright 12y ago
  I think that the fuller quote "the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi" is important. The word "original" in there doesn't lead me to believe they are at the end of the road overall, just end of the road for this one design. To clarify, I expect to see a more complete redesign in the not-too-distant future. If nothing else, you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components.
  - DCKing 12y ago
    > end of the road for this one design. Yeah, that's exactly the question I got from reading it. If they are implying the end of the road for this design, does that imply they have a next design? If so, why would they want to redesign? > you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components. Good point, didn't think of that. Is this a problem even on their scale?
nodata 12y ago
Really good technical review: http://www.linuxvoice.com/raspberry-pi-model-b/ http://www.linuxvoice.com/raspberry-pi-model-b/
X-Istence 12y ago
Have they fixed the stability issues when it is under high load with a lot of networking traffic? I have a RaspberryPi B and each time I start a large file transfer the entire board locks up. Doesn't matter what version OS I am running either!
- gnyman 12y ago
  Have you tried another power supply? I used a "high quality" one from RS (I think) and had odd problems with disk corruption and crashes when pushing the limits. I switched to a old iPad charger and the crashing problems went away.
  - oasisbob 12y ago
    There is a nasty bug with overclocking and filesystem corruption that is especially easy to hit under low-power conditions. Not sure if it's been fully fixed. eg: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=26633 http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=26633
    - gnyman 12y ago
      Thanks I did not know, I believe I had it overclocked at the time. Very useful to know about if it starts happening more often.
Nicholas_C 12y ago
Darn, I just bought one a few weeks ago, and the new one is the same price.
fndrplayer13 12y ago
I'd still buy a BeagleBoard Black instead. Better processor. Better GPIO options.
alkonaut 12y ago
A dedicated digital audio jack would be a useful addition, it could even take the place of the useless composite video RCA, so the port arrangement of the Model B would be kept. With a digital audio jack a pi could be a decent hifi music streamer, better and cheaper than the AirPort Express. Now you need a $30-50 splitter (or the hifiberry add on) to get the audio off the hdmi, which makes the total cost more than double.
- samirmenon 12y ago
  For many people, the "useless" composite video RCA is what allows them to use the Pi. It's a great way to repurpose an old TV you have laying around.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    It should be fairly simple to have a single rca jack serve both purposes and switch with a jumper. It would be interesting to hear how many actually use the rca video.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Looks like a nice upgrade, more USB ports. The additional I/O might be in response to the Beaglebone Black taking share but video has consistently been better with the Pi. I've got a number of both and they each have their uses. I've been whacking on a USB host driver for the Cortex M4 in my not very copius spare time and it amazes me how much the Pi manages to get done being handicapped like that. The difference between "old" computers where the system designer was making every effort to make I/O flow through the system as effectively as possible, and the Pi has a system where polling for I/O is part of the design spec. And not done well like the channel controllers of old, no done in a very inefficient way. Amazing what ubiquity will force upon folks :-)
kasperset 12y ago
I like my Rasberry Pi and yes it cannot be compared with Intel Galileo. But I am also pretty excited with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galileo-maker-quark-board.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galile...
- makomk 12y ago
  The Galileo has some interesting caveats, like a much slower CPU than even the Raspberry Pi and the GPIO, PWM, etc going through an IO expander chip on the really slow I2C bus. (Apparently there's a Rev2 with some native GPIO pins now, presumably not compatible with the Rev1 unless you use Intel's official abstraction layers.)
soundlab 12y ago
Does the new Compute Module share the same increased USB ports (with more power available)? Have had nagging issues prototyping Pi's with cell modems due to power consumption and was looking at the Compute for an embedded application
- fanf2 12y ago
  The compute module itself does not include a USB/Ethernet chip, so only has the BCM's single USB.
labianchin 12y ago
What about Humming Board? http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/ http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/ It has ARMv7 and has a reasonable price.
ianwootten 12y ago
For anyone who's interested - there's a podcast with Eben about the announcement here: http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ In this he states that a second version of the pi isn't likely to happen until 2017. http://www.raspi.today/raspberry-pi-2-expected-in-2017/ http://www.raspi.today/raspberry-pi-2-expected-in-2017/
tjaekel 12y ago
RPi B+ and I2S DACs will not work directly anymore: changed GPIOs and pinmux different now. I did the Rasbian Kernel Patch and with four jumper wires - it works: http://www.tjaekel.com/T-DAC/raspi_Bplus.html http://www.tjaekel.com/T-DAC/raspi_Bplus.html Even with latest Rasbian image (June 2014) - without Kernel Patch I2S does not work (and RPi B+ will hang). Change three bytes in a kernel module and all fine.

605 points by benn_88 12y ago

stollercyrus 12y ago

I'm really glad they've added more USB ports.

ioseph 12y ago

Would be nice to have an audio input jack. Pretty low on space as it is though.

ekianjo 12y ago
You can probably do it via a USB dongle with the new ports added.
matsur 12y ago
I don't believe there is an ADC on the board -- adding an input would have added a bit of cost.
edoceo 12y ago
I have a Mic to USB for my audio-input needs.
phunge 12y ago
In theory you could use the I2S, but I went the easy route and hooked up a USB DAC (Behringer UCA-202 - good cheap DAC). Thanks to Pi's USB issues, you need to switch to USB low speed (dwc_otg.speed=1), but it's worked well.

kenrikm 12y ago

I hope the USB ports will now output enough voltage to actually power common peripherals without using a hub.

mrmagooey 12y ago
Given that it's a USB plug powering the device, I doubt it, although maybe the lower power usage by the Pi might provide some extra overhead.
ekianjo 12y ago
Not sure if this is the case since they announced "reduced power consumption" ?
- ibrahima 12y ago
  When they say reduced power consumption, they're really talking about overhead. Let's say to supply 5W at 5V, they needed to take in 7W at 120V. This means that voltage step down process results in some power being wasted as heat. By using a switching regulator they waste less power and thus there's less heat output, but the power delivered to the device remains the same. So, in this example, they might only need to take in 6W at 120V to output 5W at 5V. (Note, the numbers are complete BS because I haven't done hardware in a while, but that should give you an idea.)
  - pjc50 12y ago
    The numbers are referring to the wrong voltages entirely. It takes in 5V and down-converts that to 3.3V, 2.5V and 1.8V. https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus-plus-differences-vs-model-b?view=all#power-supply https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-mode...
yzzxy 12y ago
The question IIRC is if the new model will request high amperage from USB ports that can provide it, allowing more peripherals.
ShaneCurran 12y ago
It's nothing to do with the voltage, USB is always 5v. It's about the current these ports can draw, which is 1.2A for the 4 (i.e. 0.3A each if all 4 are under load)
ShaneCurran 12y ago
It's nothing to do with the voltage, USB is always 5v. It's about the current these ports can draw, which is 1.2A for the 4 (i.e. 0.3A each if all 4 are under load)

rebolek 12y ago

"moved composite video onto the 3.5mm jack" - can it output both composite video and sound at the same time?

nwh 12y ago
Yes. Same as the iPod can have composite video and two audio channels. Three ring / four section plugs.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  TRRS connectors. Tip Ring Ring Sleeve.

jedahan 12y ago

Much better port layout. Glad to hear audio is improved. Not sure what projects needed more pins but not complaining. Wish USB/Ethernet didn't share a bus, but I never actually ran into that being an issue yet.

duskwuff 12y ago
> Not sure what projects needed more pins but not complaining. The added pins include a couple of important ones from the SoC that were previously not available, or were only available on a secondary connector. You can now get JTAG over the expansion port, for instance.

tdicola 12y ago

Very cool, better mounting holes and microSD are nice improvements.

billpg 12y ago

Is the next one going to be called the Raspberry Pi Master System? Let me know when they introduce the Raspberry Pi Archimedes.

pling 12y ago
It already runs RISCOS ;)
bencollier49 12y ago
Well if that's the plan, then I'm looking forward to seeing how small they can make the Raspberry Pi Master Compact.
TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
Eventually there will be a Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi. Let's hope it handles tail recursion.
- e12e 12y ago
  Raspberry Tau?
  - lytedev 12y ago
    This tickled my cleverness center.
freehunter 12y ago
Well, it is British, it's ARM, and it's sold by (among others) Element 14.

JamesBaxter 12y ago

Prepare for a tidal wave of new Kickstarter cases

hayksaakian 12y ago

Nice: - micro sd card support - more USB ports - better mounting

middleclick 12y ago

Is anyone running a webserver or mailserver over the Pi? Curious to know how it holds up.

lelandbatey 12y ago
I used it to serve files via http, and it was very poor at it. I would not recommend using it as an http file server. Light application use, or for things like hosting git repositories works well though.
praeivis 12y ago
If your site will serve only few static pages and you going to have less as 500 unique daily visitors RPi should be fine. But if you run some heavy framework like Wordpress and will have more as one visitor at once RPi cant handle.
B0jan 12y ago
Tried, but can't do any heavy stuff.
codfrantic 12y ago
I'm running my girlfriends portfolio page on a Pi, nginx + mysql + php / Wordpress with a caching plugin. Works quite well if the pages are cached (which most are), admin stuff is quite slow.
72deluxe 12y ago
I am running a web server on mine using PipaOS and Lighttpd, but I rewrote my database system to SQLite instead of MySQL. Granted, this meant I had to reimplement some stored procedures that I had written in PHP instead (for parent/child page traversal and navigation building) but it returns pages much faster. I know that reading from a file all the time is likely to harm the attached USB drive's read count, but I'm not getting many hits! I intend to rewrite the system using C++ instead (using an old Mongoose C++ web server edition) and load the SQLite database into SQLite :memory: (without a disk backup) instead, which means that it'll return pages much faster; it'll only touch the "disk" database on program startup. I see from the others that they have put PHP and MySQL and a host of other things on theirs but for simple sites, that is probably somewhat overkill. I also use mine as an SSH gateway.

chj 12y ago

Using micro sdcard is much neater solution.

xorcist 12y ago

The Pi would be infititely more useful to me if the ethernet interface was attached to a "real" bus and not hung on USB. Here's to hoping that will be the next upgrade!

egeozcan 12y ago
I agree, and bet it would also reduce power consumption even further because of higher efficiency. Does anyone know if they use the USB bus because of the space constraints?
copperx 12y ago
Could you explain why would it be better for you?
- xorcist 12y ago
  Bascially performance, one way or the other. Ethernet over USB is terribly CPU and power ineffective. I've also found the Ethernet to be a bit wonky (I suspect sleep mode issues) so I suspect reliability could be improved as a bonus.
xiaomai 12y ago
What's the implication of being on the same bus? More CPU usage for ethernet?
TorKlingberg 12y ago
Does the chipset support a "real" bus?
pja 12y ago
Which bus exactly? Reading the BCM2835 datasheet ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM283... ) the chip has a couple of UARTS, 2 SPI interfaces and a USB interface. The only interface that can do DMA is the USB one. All the others have relatively small FIFO buffers and require the CPU to do all the I/O work. So you could attach an ethernet interface to one of the SPI buses, or bit bang a few GPIOs but surely the CPU load is going to be painful? Edit: Oh wait, there's a main SPI bus that can do DMA as well. See page 148 on the doc linked above. If you can find a suitable chipset & driver then have at it :)

schappim 12y ago

What's the same: - Same Broadcom BCM2835 Chipset - Same 512MB RAM - Same full size HDMI port - Same 10/100 Ethernet port - Same CSI camera port and DSI display ports - Same micro USB power supply connection What has changed: - Now comes with 4 USB ports so you can now connect more devices than ever to your Raspberry Pi. - There is a 40pin extended GPIO so you can build even bigger and better projects than ever before. The first 26 pins are identical to the Model B to provide 100% backward compatibility for your projects. - Micro SD slot instead of the full size SD slot for storing information and loading your operating systems. - Advanced power management: -You can now provide up to 1.2 AMP to the 4 USB ports – enabling you to connect more power hungry USB devices without needing an external USB hub. (This feature requires a 2Amp micro USB Power Supply) - The B+ board now uses less power (600mA) than the Model B Board (750mA) when running - Combined 4-pole jack for connecting your stereo audio out and composite video out (Source: http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-mod...) [Edited for formatting]

learc83 12y ago
Right now it's possible to back feed power with a powered hub instead of using the micro USB connection. I'd like to see the schematic to find out if that's still possible, but I can't find one yet.
- Already__Taken 12y ago
  This isn't a good idea though I've heard, don't you bypass some important components for power safety in the micro USB power circuit?
  - learc83 12y ago
    You're bypassing a fuse. If you have a crappy powered hub that isn't well regulated you could fry your pi. In reality, the chance of that happening is very small, and safety here is only in the context of the "safety" of a $35 board. Most hubs won't let you draw more than a couple of amps anyway.

frik 12y ago

+ micro SD card + 4 USB ports + more GPIO (now 40 pins) + better mounting + better audio controller + reduced power consumption ~ combined audio and video onto the 3.5mm jack - power connector position moved to the side (bad for small form factor projects)

praeivis 12y ago

I got surprised B+ cost same as B, and they even keep B in production. That, what I miss from other manufacturers in modern world.

makomk 12y ago
They'd probably piss off a lot of their developer community if they didn't keep the B in production. There's a huge number of third-party cases and projects that are built around the original connector arrangement.
- SuddsMcDuff 12y ago
  http://www.kano.me/ http://www.kano.me/ is a prime example of this. It would have been the worst possible timing for them if the model B was discontinued.

notthetup 12y ago

Adafruit has a nice overview of what's changed. https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus-plus-differences-vs-model-b https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-mode...

hexleo 12y ago

I'm interested in Raspberry Pi. I bought one before. It's just a small PC, use one hand you can hold it. But when you want to Raspberry to do some complex works, it let you down. I want to know where does Raspberry Pi can work well?

etherealG 12y ago
The Pi makes a fantastic media center when combined with XBMC.
- ern 12y ago
  "Fantastic" may be overstating it. I've been running Raspbmc for about 15 months now, and although the video rendering is very good, the XMBC UI is a bit laggy and unresponsive (although there seems to have been an improvement recently). I've also used it as an SFTP client and to run a few light cron jobs (rock solid there). Given the price, I am pleased with it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a media center for the non-tech savvy.
  - invmatt 12y ago
    If you're willing to spend quite a bit of time configuring XBMC it runs smoothly. I use openelec with the theme 'bello', any animation heavy themes will kill it straight away.
  - lmedinas 12y ago
    You should try Openelec[1] instead. It's much more lightweight and less bugs imho. 1 - http://openelec.tv/ http://openelec.tv/
  - ykykkyky 12y ago
    Agreed. I wish that RPi has some kind of cheap prebuild of a mediaplayer. If would be GREAT for non-techies if it just had a real power on/off switch, IR sensor & a basic remote that just works (probably asking for too much there). I reckon you could fix the lag of the GUI if someone implemented Raspbmc/OpenELEC with Wayland instead of X-server. Not much has to change for this to be possible. Only the power switch & IR sensor would have to be apart of it. Remote could potentially be third party and WBMC would a man hours issue.

copperx 12y ago

I still can't see why would anyone buy one except as one of those toys that you buy and then gets tossed in the closet. 10 years ago I could see the appeal, but now? The robotics, home automation, and weekend project use cases seem like would be better served by a $5 microcontroller. Some projects, such as the weather station, justify the use of a full-fledged OS, but with the cost of buying an existing, proven, weather station being so low ... why bother? And for a cheap webserver? A $1/month VPS is more powerful than this thing. Can anyone tell me what is the use case of this?

seanp2k2 12y ago
I can run python on it. Yes, I'm aware of http://www.pymcu.com/index.html http://www.pymcu.com/index.html , but they're cheap enough for projects and familiar enough for people vaguely familiar with Linux that it ends up being a good combination for lots of fun projects. It's probably overkill for >90% of things people use it for, but usability is the big advantage.
vlad003 12y ago
My understanding is that the Raspberry Pis are intended to be used in education. The front page says: "We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn how computers work, how to manipulate the electronic world around them, and how to program." That said, I use mine as a simple NAS for backups.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  The problem is that it's too slow to be used as an actual development computer, so you have to write your code on another computer and then copy it over to the pi.
  - tdicola 12y ago
    Check out sshfs or similar user-mode filesystems to make the Pi look like a drive. Cyberduck is another tool that has a decent file explorer UI around SSH/SFTP and is cross platform. If you're writing C/C++ you can set up a cross compilation tool chain to write and compile code on any Linux machine. It's a pain but there are lots of blogs posts and guides on it.

mrmondo 12y ago

$63AUD + Shipping - No thanks! http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/8111284/ http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-deve...

WatchDog 12y ago
This is a little cheaper, but not $35: http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-mod...
- mrmondo 12y ago
  That's still $50 though, at that price I'm just not sure its worth it - especially since it only has a 10/100 NIC and USB 2.0 while those specs might be an acceptable for educational purposes, at $50+ hobbyists may not find it the most cost effective solution.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "especially since it only has a 10/100 NIC" I'm my experience I've found it hard to push the CPU/memory/"disk" enough to saturate the NIC, so don't worry about it. The limiter to streaming multiple high def video streams (one at a time is OK) or doing SDR/DSP work doesn't seem to be the NIC. I'm having trouble thinking of a real app that wouldn't be memory/SD card/CPU limited on my pi that would simultaneously be limited by the NIC. By real app, I don't mean sending ping floods or running weird benchmarks, or something that isn't an app, like transferring a file. My main pain point with the pi hardware at this time is there's some JVM stuff I'd like to fool around with where I'm totally patient with something that takes an imperceptible 5 ms on the desktop taking a still imperceptible 50 ms on the pi, but can't handle only having a half gig of ram.

Nux 12y ago

Oh man, I was really hoping for a better CPU. The current one is just so dang slow.

lmedinas 12y ago
"This isn’t a “Raspberry Pi 2″, but rather the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi. "[1] I think we can interpret this as RPI 2 will be released soon with a new processor. 1 - http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-mo...
- ianwootten 12y ago
  Nope, he's stated publicly that any major overhaul isn't likely to see the light of day until 2017. Listen to an interview here: http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/
paulrov 12y ago
They said they would rather people optimise for the current hardware than cause rifts between users. The CPU really isn't that bad if you don't run that behemoth X11 on it.
userbinator 12y ago
Slow and proprietary, which is not a great combination... there's a lot of interesting new ARM SoCs from China that are coming out, like the Allwinner A3x series (quad A7s, >1GHz). It would be pretty unlikely for one of those to show up in the next Pi though; if anything, it'll probably be another Broadcom.
- goldenkey 12y ago
  Ebon Upton [0], one of the main folk from the Raspberry Pi foundation works for Broadcom and does SoC. So odds are slim considering that connection probably enabled them to get extreme price arrangements otherwise not doable. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation

GutenYe 12y ago

Have them fixed the broken USB system? (USB and Ethernet share the same bus problem)

jondot 12y ago
No :(

christop 12y ago

Nice that they're continuing the convention of using BBC Micro model names!

jokoon 12y ago

I wonder how well it can emulate PSX games... I guess it would not do well because there's no 3D acceleration...

pjc50 12y ago
It has extremely good 3D acceleration, provided you're not unreasonably upset by using binary drivers. You can now get fairly good results with the open source ones too (30fps Quake3).
SSilver2k2 12y ago
I run the PiPlay (piplay.org) project. It can run PSX games VERY well. Most at full speed. -Shea

higherpurpose 12y ago

Please skip ARMv7 and jump straight to ARMv8 for Raspberry Pi 2. No need to force OS/app developers to support 3 different ISA's for years to come. Ideally it would also be dual core and have a clock speed of at least 1.2 Ghz, since that's what most operating systems need these days to run reasonably well, but I guess that depends on your target price. 1 GB of (LP)DDR3(L) RAM should also be the minimum for the next one.

pjc50 12y ago
That would make the http://www.broadcom.com/products/Applications-and-Multimedia-Processors/Tablet-Application-Processors/BCM11311 http://www.broadcom.com/products/Applications-and-Multimedia... the obvious choice.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  That's ARMv7.

CalRobert 12y ago

For people saying they want a faster revision - do remember there are other computers in this form factor. I recently got an Odroid U3 and am very happy with it. Of course, it's $65, not $35. I tried setting up owncloud, nginx, a web server, etc. on a Pi and it couldn't handle it (everything ran, but terribly), the Odroid does well. I still like the Pi, though. There are some people for whom saving $30 really does make a big difference, and if the goal is learning how computers work, having lots of GPIO pins, etc, the Pi is still awesome.

gnaffle 12y ago
My biggest gripe with the Pi is a lack of proper USB power, so if you add all the stuff you need, especially for a wireless setup it's not so cheap and compact anymore. I'm happy that they've (hopefully) fixed the USB power problem, that makes it much nicer as a platform.
- oasisbob 12y ago
  I've been providing power over the GPIO header directly, and have had great results. Combine a DC-DC supply with a few smoothing capacitors on a small daughter-board, add a barrel jack + 0.1" headers to interface and you get a lot more headroom and flexibility with how you power it. (Same-ish end result as the other fuse bypass methods, but with no soldering on the pi, and the caps seem to help with the inrush current required for hot-plugging USB devices. ) It's a tradeoff vs device safety, but is super cheap, and the operational reliability is worth it for me. Every time I stage a pi for a project that isn't powered this way, I'm surprised how much frustration is involved. Looking forward to this improvement with the B+ as much as anything else. [1] eg, the CUI V7805 (102-1715-ND at digikey)
  - mrb 12y ago
    The CUI V78xx is a really interesting part, thanks for the tip!
    - oasisbob 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago

While we're here, I'd like to call attention to the fact that the Pi foundation has hired someone to opensource the X display driver, addressing one of the common criticisms about openness: http://anholt.livejournal.com/44239.html http://anholt.livejournal.com/44239.html

nodata 12y ago
We need an "(up|down)vote but derail/off-topic" button. Upvoted anyway.
Narishma 12y ago
They hired him to create an open source driver, not to open source the current one.

thecrumb 12y ago

I wonder if this would run a Quake (3) server? Myself and a few of my friends still like to play the old classic... $35 seems ideal for something I could just leave on all the time for a quick game.

kreddor 12y ago
Sure, why not? It runs the Quake 3 client rather well actually.

mellisarob 12y ago

I'm still quite unclear about this

mellisarob 12y ago

I'm still quite unclear about this

dmmalam 12y ago

Looks like still no PoE?

pjc50 12y ago
Minority use with expensive requirements => very unlikely to happen.

andrewstuart 12y ago

It would be good if they were more active about upgrading the hardware performance....

VLM 12y ago

One funny social dynamic to watch with the pi is you give people a little computer with specs that would be pretty good five or so years ago and you get some responses like: "Humanity didn't use computers five years ago at all, for any purpose, being capable of doing anything that was done five years ago is inherently totally useless today and any thought of it should be abolished because I say so la la la I'm not listening to your real world examples la la la and that's somehow your problem not mine la la la". If you ram it past their self censorship to prove there exists a real world application for a five year old computer they get really angry. Its kind of funny to watch. Maybe its astroturfing from people selling more powerful computers.

tezza 12y ago

I went for a BeagleBone Black because I could communicate with the device over the same USB that powered it. It doesn't look as though they have made the RPI B+ communicate over the power line, are there plans for future versions to do so ?

Ecco 12y ago
"communicate with the device over the same USB that powered it." That's the biggest issue with the RPi and they still haven't fixed it…

ck2 12y ago

Out of curiosity have they gotten netflix to work on the Pi yet?

foldor 12y ago
I'd be surprised if they did. Netflix doesn't have a Linux client, and the only way to get it running on desktop Linux is using Wine with custom patches. Seeing as Wine depends on the CPU being x86, this method won't work.
- ClashTheBunny 12y ago
  Netflix works fine on my ARM Linux phone. It's not about OS or processor, it's about middleware.

DCKing 12y ago

Curious they're explicitly naming this the "final evolution". First up, I'd be surprised if they continued with a "Raspberry Pi 2" soon. The RPi is still very adequate for its original goals in education and will likely remain so; it hasn't ever been quite enough for people wanting a cheap server or media center except for those with very modest needs. Given their announced goals, I doubt that the creators are going to cater to the second group with a hypothetical RPi 2. One thing that can be improved upon the original Pi is a more open SoC, but currently no SoC vendor will be able to provide a significantly more open one. Even if you pick an open source friendly SoC vendor like TI, there are currently no GPU designers for these SoCs that have open source drivers. It is unlikely improvemants can be made in that area that anytime soon. The second thing they could improve for their education goals in the inclusion of a dual core SoC to be able to teach about concurrency. That would probably be quite a bit more expensive than the current Pi, for a feature that would not present that much more value for education. So I'm wondering what they mean with this 'final' comment. Will they simply stay with supporting the current Raspberry Pi models? Or will they start developing a second Raspberry Pi? Or will they develop other computing devices for education?

cpwright 12y ago
I think that the fuller quote "the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi" is important. The word "original" in there doesn't lead me to believe they are at the end of the road overall, just end of the road for this one design. To clarify, I expect to see a more complete redesign in the not-too-distant future. If nothing else, you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components.
- DCKing 12y ago
  > end of the road for this one design. Yeah, that's exactly the question I got from reading it. If they are implying the end of the road for this design, does that imply they have a next design? If so, why would they want to redesign? > you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components. Good point, didn't think of that. Is this a problem even on their scale?

nodata 12y ago

Really good technical review: http://www.linuxvoice.com/raspberry-pi-model-b/ http://www.linuxvoice.com/raspberry-pi-model-b/

X-Istence 12y ago

Have they fixed the stability issues when it is under high load with a lot of networking traffic? I have a RaspberryPi B and each time I start a large file transfer the entire board locks up. Doesn't matter what version OS I am running either!

gnyman 12y ago
Have you tried another power supply? I used a "high quality" one from RS (I think) and had odd problems with disk corruption and crashes when pushing the limits. I switched to a old iPad charger and the crashing problems went away.
- oasisbob 12y ago
  There is a nasty bug with overclocking and filesystem corruption that is especially easy to hit under low-power conditions. Not sure if it's been fully fixed. eg: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=26633 http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=26633
  - gnyman 12y ago
    Thanks I did not know, I believe I had it overclocked at the time. Very useful to know about if it starts happening more often.

Nicholas_C 12y ago

Darn, I just bought one a few weeks ago, and the new one is the same price.

fndrplayer13 12y ago

I'd still buy a BeagleBoard Black instead. Better processor. Better GPIO options.

alkonaut 12y ago

A dedicated digital audio jack would be a useful addition, it could even take the place of the useless composite video RCA, so the port arrangement of the Model B would be kept. With a digital audio jack a pi could be a decent hifi music streamer, better and cheaper than the AirPort Express. Now you need a $30-50 splitter (or the hifiberry add on) to get the audio off the hdmi, which makes the total cost more than double.

samirmenon 12y ago
For many people, the "useless" composite video RCA is what allows them to use the Pi. It's a great way to repurpose an old TV you have laying around.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  It should be fairly simple to have a single rca jack serve both purposes and switch with a jumper. It would be interesting to hear how many actually use the rca video.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Looks like a nice upgrade, more USB ports. The additional I/O might be in response to the Beaglebone Black taking share but video has consistently been better with the Pi. I've got a number of both and they each have their uses. I've been whacking on a USB host driver for the Cortex M4 in my not very copius spare time and it amazes me how much the Pi manages to get done being handicapped like that. The difference between "old" computers where the system designer was making every effort to make I/O flow through the system as effectively as possible, and the Pi has a system where polling for I/O is part of the design spec. And not done well like the channel controllers of old, no done in a very inefficient way. Amazing what ubiquity will force upon folks :-)

kasperset 12y ago

I like my Rasberry Pi and yes it cannot be compared with Intel Galileo. But I am also pretty excited with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galileo-maker-quark-board.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galile...

makomk 12y ago
The Galileo has some interesting caveats, like a much slower CPU than even the Raspberry Pi and the GPIO, PWM, etc going through an IO expander chip on the really slow I2C bus. (Apparently there's a Rev2 with some native GPIO pins now, presumably not compatible with the Rev1 unless you use Intel's official abstraction layers.)

soundlab 12y ago

Does the new Compute Module share the same increased USB ports (with more power available)? Have had nagging issues prototyping Pi's with cell modems due to power consumption and was looking at the Compute for an embedded application

fanf2 12y ago
The compute module itself does not include a USB/Ethernet chip, so only has the BCM's single USB.

labianchin 12y ago

What about Humming Board? http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/ http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/ It has ARMv7 and has a reasonable price.

ianwootten 12y ago

For anyone who's interested - there's a podcast with Eben about the announcement here: http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ http://www.raspi.today/podcast-episode-6/ In this he states that a second version of the pi isn't likely to happen until 2017. http://www.raspi.today/raspberry-pi-2-expected-in-2017/ http://www.raspi.today/raspberry-pi-2-expected-in-2017/

tjaekel 12y ago

RPi B+ and I2S DACs will not work directly anymore: changed GPIOs and pinmux different now. I did the Rasbian Kernel Patch and with four jumper wires - it works: http://www.tjaekel.com/T-DAC/raspi_Bplus.html http://www.tjaekel.com/T-DAC/raspi_Bplus.html Even with latest Rasbian image (June 2014) - without Kernel Patch I2S does not work (and RPi B+ will hang). Change three bytes in a kernel module and all fine.