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Raspberry Pi A+ Details Leaked
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.
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. :)
If I recall correctly, the USB issues have been fixed for quite a while now. Only the first-gen Pi's suffered from this, I think. I have a working wifi adapter on my Pi, and it never gives me issues.
Since the model B was upgraded to 512Mb, I think the Model A will upgraded too.
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
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...
http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-b...
http://www.raspberrypi.org/qua...
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.
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 wrong size. For requiring a pin header to do anything, it should be way smaller, and its too small to do anything directly on the board. They picked essentially the exact wrong size.
In its class, its not that cheap. Its average at best, a bit pricey if you have to wait for it since you can get cheaper ones on a slow boat from china for better prices. This comes up every time some fanboy tries to make out like the Raspberry Pi is worth a shit. Its not. Stop trying to pretend its got good value. Its not the cheapest and the hardware is fundamentally flawed from the start because apparently making a minor rev to the board takes 5 years or more.
There's nothing cheaper in it's speed class available from any electronics store. Importing something on a slow boat from China doesn't compare, especially if it lacks the features and support of this product. As for hardware being fundamentally flawed... the fact that it has remained a stable platform shows how good the hardware is save for the initial poly fuse issue which was fixed in the second batch.
Is it? After waiting several years for it to finally get to the point where it wasn't constantly out of stock everywhere, I moved on.
How's the ebola risk going in that 3rd world wasteland you live in? No seriously there were supply issues for the very first batch. Element14 then had them in stock all over the world within a month. I assume you gave up after a day or live on the moon. Either way that's not something anyone can help you with, save for maybe a slow boat from china.
well documented
Bullshit. The GPU is STILL locked down, and thats the part of the device thats actually useful. Broadcom released some specs a while back about the GPU that everyone went ape shit over ... but wasn't useful for actually doing anything and nothing at all actually came to fruition from it.
And the lack of an open source driver for the GPU means precisely dick when the entire world has a massive community developing for the platform. Every function of the device is well documented including how to use the GPU and access any and all I/O functions of the chip. Somehow the locked down GPU hasn't stopped the device being used in media centres to decode high-def video, or in arcade cabinets playing games at full speeds. But clearly this function must be important to you so why not buy something else and leave the rest of us alone.
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.
You didn't need to say this. We already realised you had absolutely no idea long before you spurted out this crap.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Many tasks,
http://hackaday.com/tag/raspbe...
http://makezine.com/category/e...
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.
@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 for those of a particularly masochistic bent, you have the full GPU documentation to play with. As for everything else, well, it's Linux - how much more documentation do you need? Raspberry specific stuff if fairly well dealt with ton the Pi site, but Google will almost always find you answers - its all out there, if you care to actually look.
It IS the cheapest device you can get with the spec. That's pretty clear. And I don't count devices that you find on some knock off Chinese supplier with no support whatsoever. That's not cheap, that's throwing money away.
You do the huge number of people who give time on Raspberry Pi forums, or YouTube, or Blog about the device ,by calling them all idiots. They clearly are not, and that's easy to discover. Of course, there clearly are idiots out there, and some of them try and answer questions they shouldn't - you for example - but hey, name me a product where that doesn't happen..
There are a number of OS's available on the device - Raspbian, Arch, RISCOS, PLan9 and some baremetal stuff going on. That's fairly good support. The Foundation is continually updating the kernel, there are various projects funded by the Foundation to make the experience better. That's better support than Beagle and the like. But then, after selling 4M devices compared to 150k BBB's I guess they have the money to spend...and they are spending it, on education and improvement.
The capabilities of the Pi and the breadth of projects that engenders are well known. Try looking past the end of your nose. No, it's not a panacea - it was never meant to be, but to say its only capable of basic tasks is so far wrong you clearly cannot use Google.
Basically, your entire post is complete bullshit.
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 software some of the USB functionality that is missing in the hardware. Unfortunately the CPU cannot provide the required 1ms realtime response to USB events when it is busy, and so USB events are occasionally lost. That wreaks havoc on mice and keyboards, producing stuck keys, dangling or missed mouse clicks, and on the B/B+ also contributing to Ethernet packet loss because Ethernet runs over USB.
That fundamental USB problem isn't really fixable except by using a different SoC.