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Raspberry Pi A+ Details Leaked

Posted by Soulskill on from the A+-would-pi-again dept.

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.

5 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. A great family of products by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    1. Re:A great family of products by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      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. 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. For a battery-powered transistor radio? Certainly worth a try.)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  2. Re:Will it have the same garbage CPU? by ssam · · 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.

  3. Down side by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Down side by ssam · · Score: 3, 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.