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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.
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.