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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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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. :)
Name those boards, or didn't happen.
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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.
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.
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.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
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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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.
"One downside of the A+ is that it still has fewer features than the B+ version."
Ken
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.
I thought the Raspberry Pis were meant to be named after BBC Micro models. We got the Model B and Model A (the latter of which mimicked the Model A BBC Micro in being less popular than the Model B), then the Model B+, which mimicked the short-lived improvement to the original BBC B.
;-)
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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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.
"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).
Mostly random stuff.
It is garbage because a very closed CPU is used as an educational platform without datasheet availability.
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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Finally we know why Ebon and Co stomped on the Odroid-W.
@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.
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.
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 of detail requiring data sheets for the processor, one probable has a target processor in mind. Or at the very least an application which would drive the process of selecting the best hardware. In either case, it is probable the time to speed the money to buy products/tools for professionals not an educational item made for a child's budget.
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.
Could not agree more, rpi is fit for purpose. The company where I work has displays in their branches - before the rpi they were buying PC's with multiple display cards - with the rpi they glue it to the back of the TV, power it from the tv usb port and it costs a tenth of what the PC used to cost. They literally bought out the entire countries stock of rpi's.
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