Raspberry Pi 3 Rolls Out With Faster CPU, On-Board Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth

An anonymous reader writes: The original Raspberry Pi went on sale four years ago, and more than 8,000,000 units have shipped since then. Raspberry Pi computers are used in schools and universities, in factories and other industrial applications, in home automation and hobby projects, and much more. Today the Raspberry Pi 3 was announced, featuring a 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz, making it roughly 10x the speed of the original Pi 1. Many people will be pleased to hear that the Raspberry Pi 3 also features on-board Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, greatly improving the device's connectivity. The new device goes on sale today at the usual price of US $35. (Here's the official announcement itself.)

Comments

Awesome

[jason777]

The price is right. Its game over now to get literally anything online. I'm building an interface for my garage doors. Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.

Try Coke Zero. Available at any grocery store.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

Try an ESP 8266 for interfacing a garage door you need what a few inputs and a handful of outputs?

Re:Awesome

[Thanshin]

Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.

Check your retailer. You can get a zero for every two PI.

R.

Re:Awesome

[110010001000]

Actually I have found better boards for around $22 that have dual-ethernet and a better networking architecture that are better for "online" applications. Plus you don't need 1.2Ghz for garage doors.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

comma (noun)
1. a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence or separating items in a list.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

But you couldn't be bothered to tell us what they are? I don't buy it...

Re: Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically the GL-inet 6416 has dual ethernet, 2.4GHz wifi, one USB socket, a MIPS processor (Atheros AR9330) with 64 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of flash, and 5 easily accessible GPIOs. It's not much, but it's good cheap fun.

Re:Awesome

[ThosLives]

You don't need a computer at all for garage doors. And technically you don't even need electricity either, although I do admit that automatic garage door openers do make life easier.

As an added bonus, if you have a manual garage door, you don't have weird failure modes or resetting the manual release if there is a power outage.

Re:Awesome

[shortscruffydave]

Check your retailer. You can get a zero for every two PI.

YMMV - for two Pi I get 6.283185307179586476925286766559

Re:Awesome

[LWATCDR]

For a basic door opener yes but maybe they want it to include a BLE interface to the cell phone or even using the camera and Open CV to have it identify the car and automatically close the door.
It really depends on the feature set you want but the ESP 8266 could do a simple open the door when you use an app on your smartphone.

Re:Awesome

[Richard Dick Head]

Ugh...you meatspace engineers and your radians, butchering the beauty and purity of geometry. Clearly you've never enjoyed a spherical hamburger of uniform density in a vaccum.

Re:Awesome

[spire3661]

If you are going the ESP8266 route, go to Adafruit, they have it mounted on some interesting breakout boards that make life easy.

Re:Awesome

[jason777]

Looks like that only has 1 gpio. I need a io to activate the garage door switch, and then another to hook some kind of sensor to check the door state. Then times 2, because there are 2 doors. Then, i want to build a web interface to it. And I need wifi because the garage is separate. I think a PI zero would fit the bill nicely.

Re:Awesome

[KingBozo]

Really you put your garage door on the internet, well it is now open, better check it and shut it.

Re:Awesome

[110010001000]

The glinet one I was talking about. Works great for small projects and has proper ethernet.

Re:Awesome

[110010001000]

I don't know of any good lists. The problem is that the number of boards changes regularly and features are added and deleted. If you browse chinese sites they literally have hundreds of diffrerent models.

Re:Awesome

[hawguy]

The price is right. Its game over now to get literally anything online. I'm building an interface for my garage doors. Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.

Sparkfun has it for pre-order ($39.95) and says they'll have 1800 units for sale on March 15th. Though they don't say how many pre-orders they already have.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

The ESP 8266 is more than capable of integrating with higher level controllers. BTLE is not realy in it's bag of tricks, wifi obviously is. In my case higher level app is tracking phones to open up when I am about to pull into the driveway. Though I use a off the shelf bit to interface with the garage door (myq gateway) to keep my insurance guy happy.

Re:Awesome

[mspohr]

If you have a Chamberlain or Liftmaster garage door opener, you can buy this gateway for $37 which tells if the door is open or closed and can move the door plus other functions on Android and iPhone... probably easier than DIY (unless you like tinkering).
http://www.amazon.com/Chamberl...

Re:Awesome

[Gaygirlie]

No, where did you read that the ESP8266 only has 1 GPIO? That's totally incorrect, it has 11 GPIO and you can have 2 more if you get one of the modules where two of the pins going to the flash - chip are cut or you cut them yourself for a total of 13 GPIO - pins. There is also one analog input pin. Also, you can run a web-interface on them, if you want to.

I have several ESP8266's myself and they are fabulous little devices and perfect for uses like this because they are so small, they use very little power and the built-in WiFi means you don't need any dongles or anything like that to make network-connected sensors and controllers. I have a small 2.8" colour LCD with touchscreen connected to an ESP with temperature/humidity - sensor, a PIR motion - sensor and a few more sensors in my use, and it works great.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

There are a lot of breakouts for the chip, Something like an adafruit hazzah gets you 9 gpio's, flexible power input (though not like a usb wall wart is hard). As to positioning standard security system magnetic reeds for garage doors work well.

If you have a chamberlain or any of the the other brand names that uses the same kit the myq gateway gets you all that and integrates well with full home automation bits has a stand alone phone app as well. For me that coupled with openhab got me what I wanted. Garage door opens, lights come on if appropriate etc when I turn into my driveway and the opposite when I leave.

Re:Awesome

[c]

Looks like that only has 1 gpio.

The ESP-01 board does. It's mostly intended as a wireless extension board for devices which talk serial protocols so GPIO's aren't really a big deal.

The ESP-12, on the other hand, has a whole lot more. I think the ESP-201 has a few extras.

Re:Awesome

[kamaaina]

Will it to https or some other secure type of encryption over the Internet? I mean we all been talking about how IoT stuff is insecure.

Re:Awesome

[fyngyrz]

What's your angle, buddy?

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

There's like a dozen variations of the ESP8266. Yes, the ESP-01 has 1 gpio, there are other versions with more.

Checkout the NodeMCU for an easy to use ESP8266 module in a protoboard friendly format, lots of I/O, USB interface and programmable in Lua.

Re:Awesome

[NoImNotNineVolt]

"What's the square root of this apartment?" - Dave Chappelle

Re:Awesome

[TomGreenhaw]

The ESP 8266 is a great low cost choice, but if you want to implement SSL and other strong security measures I think the new Pi would be a better choice.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

Depending on the firmware used it will do SSL/TLS. Would suggest never having something like this accessable from the internet directly.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

It will do ssl just fine. I'll take an embedded micro over a rpi running linux for security for the simple fact that it's running one bit of firmware not a multitasking OS. Mind you would not connect it to the internet either.

Re:Awesome

[godefroi]

Well, there isn't really the Chip, not yet, anyway.

Re: Awesome

[mspohr]

I have two of them on my desk.
Do you have a Pi Zero yet?

Re:Awesome

[TomGreenhaw]

I'd be much obliged if you could point me in the right direction of a working example because I totally agree that a Raspberry Pi running a full Linux stack is not trivial to secure.

Are you sure the ESP 8266 does SSL just fine? I tried and gave up in frustration last year after seeing that nobody else could get it to work either except in very limited use cases.

What I found is that it only supported small key sizes which are easy to compromise. Even when using that that, SSL took up all the device's memory and could do nothing else except make a connection. Is there a new variant of the ESP 8266 that does a better job?

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

Try the nodemcu firmware generic tls was fixed a couple weeks back.

Re: Awesome

[godefroi]

They're equally unavailable to me.

Re: Awesome

[mspohr]

Here's another one (probably not available to you either).
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/02...

The article has this insight:
Of course, we’ve seen so many boards touted as Pi-killers, and like all those also-ran tablets touted as iPad killers a few years ago we’ve never heard of most of them again after a brief moment of chatter. They look so good on paper but the price always lets them down.
The C2 could just escape that fate though, its $40 price point is very close to that of the Pi 3. Setting aside for a moment how much shipping and customs might cost for a package from Korea, that sounds interesting to us.
Why might you buy a C2 then, and why might you buy a Pi 3? That the C2 has a much faster processor is beyond doubt. This and its faster wired networking would make it a much more interesting prospect for anyone whose work involves network-attached data processing. But even though a USB wireless network adaptor can be had for only a few dollars the Pi 3’s onboard wi-fi and Bluetooth makes it much more attractive to a home user or someone using a computer on a platform unfettered by wires.
However impressive the C2 may be it is overwhelmingly likely that the Pi 3 will outsell it many times over. This will not just be due to the massive publicity advantage achieved by the Pi Foundation, but the huge ecosystem of hardware and software developers that have made the Pi boards perform to the limit of their abilities in all directions. If you don’t mind forgoing that support though, you could just find that the board from Korea gives you enough extra bang for your buck to make having it on your bench worthwhile.

Re:Awesome

[LWATCDR]

"The ESP 8266 is more than capable of integrating with higher level controllers."
Yes but if you are going to use BLE, OpenCV, WiFi, and wired ethernet then a Pi would be a better choice in case. Both could do the job but the pi offers a richer feature set than the EPS 8266.

Re:Awesome

[silas_moeckel]

If you're going to do BLE, OpenCV, wired network etc a VM might be a better choice. Overall a higher level controller is a better choice for whats a HA task. HA as a bunch of one offs is a very poor solution, integration is the main usefulness of HA. If you going to use opencv your probably better off with some sort of CCTV camera to integrate with or start a home CCTV system, with opencv running on a vm, hell running on a modern wifi AP, or rpi. But would put the rpi as the least prefered option.

Ethernet

[arth1]

But still the same ethernet that goes over the USB bus?

Re:Ethernet

[Christian Smith]

But still the same ethernet that goes over the USB bus?

And? A 100Mbps ethernet interface is fine over the 480 Mbps USB2 bus. You're not going to be running an enterprise NAS on this thing now, are you?

The original USB ethernet had problems with the poly-fuses blowing out under load. That's not a problem now with later Pis.

Re:Ethernet

[fisted]

The original USB ethernet had problems with the poly-fuses blowing out under load. That's not a problem now with later Pis.

Different problem. That was about the raspi resetting.

The throughput is still shit, a theoretical maximum of 480Mbps notwithstanding.

Re:Ethernet

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that USB is pretty inefficient CPU-wise. A ton of CPU cycles to max it out.

Why not run a NAS on it? The Pi3 is more than fast enough. Not sure why you'd bring Enterprise into it.

No excuse for it not to ship with USB3 at least.

Re:Ethernet

[Shatrat]

Not sure why you'd bring Enterprise into it.

Because the amount of shit that impacts the fan when your NAS stops working in an enterprise environment is much higher than when you can't get to your anime collection until you reboot the rpi.

Re:Ethernet

[wonkey_monkey]

And still no moon-on-a-stick, either!

Re:Ethernet

[SScorpio]

It was on the first two. And while those models had multiple USB connectors, internally there was a USB hub so everything was running off a single shared port.

Re: Ethernet

[techabuse]

I am imagining! No firmware update signing, open ports out the wazoo, HELLO packets streaming out on every interface at boot to request config, and highly specific strings in the network traffic for the local LEO to look for. Might as well call the cops on yourself.

Re: Ethernet

[techabuse]

Disclaimer, lest anyone think I'm hatin' on the pi: I'm talking IoT in general. I just ordered my Pi 3 and I can't wait. What makes the couple Pi 2s I have already kick so much ass is that they're capable of running OpenVPN, so you can make an Internet of Thing without going full retard on the c&c side.

Re:Ethernet

[G00F]

I'm thinking the same. If all they had changed was USB 3 and Gig Ethernet I would be buying to replace the old. Even with it still being limited to 1 root USB port would be 10x improvement. (480MPs vs 640MBbs)

Even better would have been Ethernet not going through the usb, more multiple usb root ports. (or the ability to add on higher speed devices like SATA/eSATA/Firewire/More USB 3.x ports )

*sigh* Maybe there will be another revision with it, or next release . . . .

Re:Ethernet

[arth1]

A 100Mbps ethernet interface is fine over the 480 Mbps USB2 bus.

Only if you don't use the CPU for anything else. The problem with the Pi as it is, is that using the CPU severely limits the network throughput and especially latency, and using the network limits the CPU.
Using an encrypted VPN connection or doing stateful packet inspection or running https based services from a Pi is downright painful, and it isn't because the CPU is slow, but because CPU and USB competes, for everything. I'd much rather not have built-in WiFi and bluetooth, but instead get a real ethernet port. Or two.

Re:Ethernet

[fisted]

I just clarified that the GP was conflating two distinct problems.
However, since you asked, you need to take into account that the NIC might not even have the entire USB for itself. For instance, I use one raspi as a wifi access point (hostapd on NetBSD), bridged to my wired network. So everything going through it effectively visits the USB twice. I don't think I have ever seen higher throughputs than around 5Mbps for any traffic going through it.

But even if the USB is passed only once, as in the following test that doesn't involve any wifi/sd card access/cpu load:

# rsync rather than scp to avoid CPU load due to compression/encryption
# destination is /tmp, which is a ramdisk to avoid sd card accesses
$ rsync -v 16M pi:/tmp/
16M

sent 16,781,387 bytes received 35 bytes 1,459,254.09 bytes/sec
total size is 16,777,216 speedup is 1.00

That is 11.6 Mbps, on an 100Mbps wired link with only one otherwise idle 100Mbps switch inbetween, with cat.6 cabling

Re:Ethernet

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks, that's some useful data.

Re:Ethernet

[Christian Smith]

I'm thinking the same. If all they had changed was USB 3 and Gig Ethernet I would be buying to replace the old. Even with it still being limited to 1 root USB port would be 10x improvement. (480MPs vs 640MBbs)

Even better would have been Ethernet not going through the usb, more multiple usb root ports. (or the ability to add on higher speed devices like SATA/eSATA/Firewire/More USB 3.x ports )

*sigh* Maybe there will be another revision with it, or next release . . . .

The SoC used pretty much outputs only USB, HDMI and GPIO. There is no PCIe controller built in, the memory accesses (used for CPU and GPU) go straight to memory mounted on the SoC. The SoC is just not designed for other IO options, and why should it? It's basically a set top box SoC by design, and that's pretty much how most people use it.

Moving to another fundamentally different SoC would probably have compatibility issues.

Re:Ethernet

[hankwang]

rsync rather than scp to avoid CPU load due to compression/encryption

Unless you're using a customized ssh server and client with a "null" cipher, rsync will run over an encrypted ssh connection. If you want to see raw network throughput, you should use netcat:

pi@pi$ nc -k -l 12345 > /dev/null

john@laptop$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/stdout bs=1M count=16 | nc ip.address.of.raspberry 12345

Re:Ethernet

[fisted]

Ouch, of course you're right, I forgot rsync goes via ssh by default.

With no encryption, I get around 60 Mbps, so that's not all too bad after all.
I guess i'll switch it to rsh :)
 

of=/dev/stdout

huh?

Re:Ethernet

[Baloroth]

The Linux based SoCs that cost < $5 (which you find in just about everything) already have 1gbps and USB3.

Sure. And that just adds a few dollars to the overall price. But since you're going with 1Gbps Ethernet, and USB3, you'll want SATA support to take advantage of it. That's a couple of more bucks. And with all that extra stuff, now you're definitely gonna want more than 1GB of RAM ('cause that's just not enough to run that new ethernet at full speeds). Sure, RAM's cheap, only a couple of extra dollars for that. Of course, now you need a bigger board, which is a few more bucks (and no backwards compatibility, naturally). So new you're looking at a $70USD device instead of a $35 one, and congratulations: you didn't actually want a Raspberry Pi, you wanted one of the dozens of other devices with the features you really wanted.

If those that believe using a Pi for electronic needs is "da biz," then you're bloody crap at electronics. Learning FGPA tech is far more beneficial when it comes to education and real world usage.

If you think the target audience for the Raspberry Pi is the same as the target audience for FPGA's... you don't know who the actual target audience of for the Raspberry Pi is (which is honestly pretty obvious from your comment). The two things are in completely different classes. Cost and usage wise.

Re:Ethernet

[G00F]

True, and I do rsync via rsyncd to increase speeds, but getting data from the network and then back onto a USB drive(or two) results in double dipping of that USB pool. And 100mbs has been slow for LAN since 2000. USB Gig will exceed that with out double dipping.

Which is why many was really hoping to that limitation address, by USB 3 or other means. I don't know anyone needing the wifi or bluetooth to be onboard. But I know plenty of people that hit limits of CPU, RAM, or the single USB 2 hub. (oh and quite a few wanting flash w/ hardware support)

Re:Ethernet

[hankwang]

of=/dev/stdout makes dd dump its output to standard output. It's easier than looking up in the man page what option you need for dd to do that. (now I did: next time I'll leave out the of= entirely :-) ).

Re:Worth it for Mathematica

[Computershack]

The Pi has had the power of a desktop computer for some time. Even the first Pi was certainly more powerful than the desktop computers I owned in the first decade of having a PC and we had no problem surfing the web, editing photos/videos and gaming on those.

in bed with satan

[nimbius]

BCM43438 wireless âoecomboâ chip.

Kill yourself. As a veteran Linux sysadmin seeing BCM in the lsmod or lspci for ANY machine is enough to make me dive out a window and head for the hills. Broadcom wireless --christ even broadcom wired -- is a whole other level of shit-tier performance in Linux. enjoy your frozen interfaces and unsupported modes.

To the Pi team: Why god why couldnt you have chosen something like an Intel or atheros?

Re:in bed with satan

[bigdady92]

The founder of Pi worked at Broadcom, Broadcom gave them buttloads of code and chips for next to nothing, therefore it made 100% sense to build a board that is simple and easy to use based on this type of cheap and well known tech. Broadcom is using the Pi as a springboard into other projects using the whole Razor vs. Razor Blade methodology of sales. Broadcom may be making very thin margins but they are still making some profit on the chips and boards.

Intel already tried build a Pi type board, it doesn't have anywhere near the amount of applications the Pi does so why bother using it?

Re:in bed with satan

[AmiMoJo]

To the Pi team: Why god why couldnt you have chosen something like an Intel or atheros?

Cost, and extra work to integrate with the Broadcom SoC they use. Broadcom give you everything you need to plug their chips together for free, where as if you want to mix and match you are on your own design wide. If you look at the RPi schematic it's basically the Broadcom minimal example from the datasheet, with a voltage regulator and some ports.

Re:in bed with satan

[HannethCom]

The Raspberry Pi team were going for cheap platform that could be affordable to schools, hobby projects and used in developing nations.
When the Raspberry Pi first rolled out the processor was about $5, that left $30 for everything else.
At that time Intel SOC were going for $35 in bulk, which would have made the Raspberry Pi at least $65. The original Intel chips used during development would have been even more expensive.

Other people have pointed out that the founder worked at Broadcom.

I can't comment on the atheros as I do not know much about it, what the cost was when the first Pi came out, or even if it existed when the first Pi came out.

Re:in bed with satan

[Improv]

You make compromises when you make a device like this. The Pi is great for a lot of projects, but it won't be great for everybody. I might care about networking performance for other devices, but for my Pis (I normally tend to buy about 10-20), I won't care one bit about this unless it can't even effectively do 10 megabit.

Re:in bed with satan

[A. Craig West]

BCM43438 wireless âoecomboâ chip.

To the Pi team: Why god why couldnt you have chosen something like an Intel or atheros?

I've had no end of troubles with Atheros WiFi drivers, they seem to have long term stability issues. Intel, on the other hand, are rock solid...

Video core

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously the video core is much the same and still no decent driver that actually either boots the system or enables accelerated OpenGL ( which means no open android or accelerated CAD Etc )
How about Broadcom sort that out ?

Maybe we should use beaglebone instead...

John

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Eloking]

Glad to hear that the RasPi Zero wasn't the only product on development from Rasp Foundation.

I had a lot of fun with tinkering with the Raspberry Pi 2 so far and that new Raspberry Pi 3 seem to be a step in the good direction.

More power and, finally, integrated Wifi and bluetooth. Something that seem more important and cheaper than many other hardware.

Still, there still a lot to be desired, both hardware and software. Analog IO, more power (USB 3.0?), better Python development tool and IDE (yeah, idle or idlex need a serious overhaul), and other stuff. Raspbian (or other Linux/ARM distribution) are a mess and I'm starting to put my hope on Win10 IoT.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[RabidReindeer]

IDE?

Even the last couple of desktop motherboards I've bought don't do IDE anymore. Strictly SATA.

Realistically, the Pi is OK for casual computing and as a mount-anywhere smart controller/interface, but if you need serious storage, network that sucker into a SAN.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's talking about an Integrated Development Environment for Python.

How is this related to the Pi? Well, it's not... it's a confused post made to hype Windows 10.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Analog I/O might be nice but it's not something that generally comes with an ARM SoC designed for mobile phones. Besides you can get analog I/O with the simple addition of a 10 cent chip.

Why anyone needs an IDE for Python is beyond me. Even vim has syntax highlighting for Python. What else do you need ?

Raspbian is not a mess. Raspbian is basically Debian which has been working fine for me since years ago. On the desk top and on the server.

It's less of a mess than Ubuntu. Or Win 10.

Why anyone would want to give up a perfectly good Free and Open Source operating system for a single vendor closed source Win IoT is really beyond me.

   

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Eloking]

No, he's talking about an Integrated Development Environment for Python.

How is this related to the Pi? Well, it's not... it's a confused post made to hype Windows 10.

So I mention Win10 IoT and I'm immediately flagged as a Win10 fanboy? And are you seriously asking me how the OS is related to the product? Errr, maybe because it's part of the product even if Raspberry Pi Foundation doesn't develop the OS?

While the RaspPi have been one of the most pleasant embedded experience so far (I've learned Python and I'm impressed how well it work), it's not perfect. First of all, unlike many 6 digit of /., I've nearly no experience with linux mostly because I've a short temper for bug without a quick "google search" solution. And I've already had a couple of them already (So if I understand correctly, the desktop environment doesn't have administrator right but I need it to use GPIO so if I start Idle with a program to light a LED without admin right I'll have a "OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error"). Even working on the Pi over the network have been complex (well, for me).

So yeah, excuse me if I'm hoping to get a more pleasant OS to work with and I don't see how Win10 IoT is a bad contender.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Eloking]

IDE?

Even the last couple of desktop motherboards I've bought don't do IDE anymore. Strictly SATA.

Realistically, the Pi is OK for casual computing and as a mount-anywhere smart controller/interface, but if you need serious storage, network that sucker into a SAN.

For 21th century people, IDE mean "Integrated development environment" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[RabidReindeer]

Don't blame me. Parent shouldn't be mixing hardware whinges with software whinges in the same paragraph. The hardware is what the manufacturer made it to be. software can come from anywhere.

For me, a software development IDE is either a specific product or plural. Lots of IDEs work just fine on the Pi. I've used IDEs on machines a lot feebler than even the most basic Raspberry Pi, especially if you include Emacs and Vim with plugins. Re-reading carefully, I'm thinking the parent complaint was about a supposed lack of a Python IDE, but Python doesn't come with an IDE anyway. But, as I recall, stock Emacs distros know how to keep the space/tab paradox straight for ".py" files even on the Pi.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Eloking]

Go away to kindergarten, it is there you can play with Fisher Price...

Typical Linux fanboy attitude. No patience with people that like things simple.

About time you understand that it's one of the main reason Linux never reached the Personal Computer market (that was voluntary to put the emphasis on "Personal" here).

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[dbIII]

So I mention Win10 IoT and I'm immediately flagged as a Win10 fanboy?

Yes, because the concepts do not got together so it takes a special motive to cram them together with brute force.
Hardware requirements and license costs render Win10 and IoT in completely different realms. Your fifty little hardware widgets not doing much individually and requiring very little in terms of cpu now suddenly need a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and software each instead of tens of dollars.
Who would consider that at all apart from someone who wants Win10 first and then wants other results second? It's in the territory of handing out multiple expensive chainsaws to open cans instead of $1 can openers.

Notice that I did not actually say anything bad about Win10 or Microsoft, it's just a right tool for the job situation and this is a job that is not remotely on Microsoft's radar - they sell tools for other tasks.

Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[Eloking]

Analog I/O might be nice but it's not something that generally comes with an ARM SoC designed for mobile phones. Besides you can get analog I/O with the simple addition of a 10 cent chip.

Well, you can say the same for many feature of the Raspberry Pi. Analog IO are needed for a lot of project and it would be nice to have then build in. Furthermore, as you said it yourself, those chip are cheap so why not adding them to the RaspPi?

Why anyone needs an IDE for Python is beyond me. Even vim has syntax highlighting for Python. What else do you need ?

As someone that made a lot of VB.NET project on VBA for one of my job, I can tell you that a IDE for a scripted language can help drastically. Autocorrection, debugging (hell, while you are debugging, you write the code in the watch and look if the result is what you are expecting, you can execute a line of code again and again until you get what you want etc.) and a lot of other stuff that make me cringe every time I think about them while using IdleX (Pressing "End" key to reach the end of the line, Pressing and holding "Shift" then sending the cursor to the beginning of the line with "Home" to highlight the whole line instead highlight a random number of lines before wtf?).

Raspbian is not a mess. Raspbian is basically Debian which has been working fine for me since years ago. On the desk top and on the server.

It's less of a mess than Ubuntu. Or Win 10.

Why anyone would want to give up a perfectly good Free and Open Source operating system for a single vendor closed source Win IoT is really beyond me.

It's easy to said when you have a lot of experience with Linux and reached a state where you find the solution of all the little annoyance of Debian before they happen. Well, a huge portion of the new generation of coder use Windows and MacOS now. I don't say that I want a Win10 user experience, but I want a solution where I have the less annoyance possible. And so far on Raspbian, I had a ton (while I had nearly none on Win10).

Re:Hype?

[TheRealQuestor]

I got my pi2 a few weeks ago for 37.99 including shipping.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/261834...
took about 4 days to get here and have been having a blast with it. So yah it was worth the extra 2.99.

Re:Hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

These two sentences alone make me chose any of the innumerable competitor products, rather than R-Pi.

It's funny how people go on about "competitor products" but never bother naming them.

Probably because whenever they do, it turns out that they're either not comparable on price or on specs.

Banana Pi or Raspberry Pi?

[Midnight Thunder]

With the new Raspberry Pi out, what are the benefits of going with the Raspberry Pi over the Banana Pi and vice Vesra?

Re:Banana Pi or Raspberry Pi?

[Cpt_Kirks]

Banana Pi has SATA built in, and is faster.

Though, it is a bit trickier to code for.

Re:Banana Pi or Raspberry Pi?

[Midnight Thunder]

Banana Pi has SATA built in, and is faster.

Though, it is a bit trickier to code for.

In what way is it trickier to code for?

Re:BCM43438 datasheet?

[Midnight Thunder]

Is this likely to be lower in power demand than the USB equivalent connected to a Pi 2?

Re:Imagine playing Halo in HD on Raspberry Pi 3

[Crowd Computing]

With the Raspberry Pi 3 and Windows 10, you can play all Windows games in full HD for only $35!

Feeding the troll: theoretically this will only work for Windows games that have been ported to the ARM architecture. So in theory you could play some WinPhone apps.

Re:Hype?

[Crowd Computing]

These two sentences alone make me chose any of the innumerable competitor products, rather than R-Pi.

It's funny how people go on about "competitor products" but never bother naming them.

Probably because whenever they do, it turns out that they're either not comparable on price or on specs.

Actually there are many Chinese ARM-based development boards and "mini PCs" with much, much better specs. The problem is that they tend to use SoCs designed by some mainland Chinese semiconductor company which refuse, or at least ignore requests, to release even the GPL'ed kernel sources for the chip. Compared to these companies, Broadcom is almost saintly.

Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[m.alessandrini]

They say they are investigating if it's worth porting raspbian to 64 bits. I'd say: YES! What's the point in having a 64-bit CPU if you cannot exploit it fully?

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[Anonymous Coward]

with 1GB of ram 64 bit is pretty much pointless

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[UnknownSoldier]

^ exactly this.

Where isn't there a 4 GB RAM or 8 GB RAM option ??

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[m.alessandrini]

I think a 64-bit cpu has more horse power than just extending memory address.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[Anonymous Coward]

^ exactly this.

Where isn't there a 4 GB RAM or 8 GB RAM option ??

One of the RasPi Foundation staff on the official website comments said that there is some sort of architectural limitation with Videocore 4 which Broadcom builds into the SoC that prevents them from moving past 1GB. They can't get around that without swapping SoC supplier, which they seem very reluctant to do.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[Mysticalfruit]

I'd just be happy with a SO-DIMM option and a esata port...

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[armanox]

That's exactly what SGI used to recommended on IRIX (SGI Hardware (MIPS) and OS (IRIX, a real UNIX) was 64-bit back in the 90s, but they told people to compile everything 32-bit unless they had an actual need to be 64-bit).

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[psergiu]

VideoCore4 cannot access more than 1Gb of RAM
And on the RPi, VC4 acts like a Northbridge - the ARM cores will do all RAM and IO access trough the VC4.
So unless Boradcom updates VideoCore with more address lines, All RPis will have max 1Gb or RAM.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[UnknownSoldier]

> and the PS3 were 64-bit chips run in 32-bit mode (they only had 512MB of RAM).

That's incorrect for the PS3. Rockstar bitched at SCEA for years about why the PS3 is running in 64-bit mod -- which I agree is absolutely idiotic. Compiling in pure 32-bit mode showed a performance increase between ~5% .. ~10% due to not needing all the unnecessary sign extensions for pointer addressing.

> No, 64-bit really doesn't make sense until you have > 4GB of RAM,

Mostly that's true, however there is an additional benefit of 64-bit. With a with 64-bit address space it makes it trivial to assign each app it's own virtual memory space.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Larger address space is nice thing to have. You know, address space of 32 bit processor is limited and fragments really quickly. If you want to map a 4.7 GB .iso file, you cannot do that on 32 bit system unless you map a small window that you slide around like you used to do with segment:offset memory model of the 16 bit era. We got rid of that eventually when programs become "32 bit", this was with RAM sides of 64 MB and even smaller. The advantage is obvious in hindsight. History is repeating itself once again.. we have large data and working with it is more efficient and simple if we have enough address space to utilise the modern hardware. If I get a dime every time someone says.. "oh but with less than 4 GB of RAM 64 bit CPU is useless" I would have a whole extra dollar by now. *sigh*

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[m.alessandrini]

So are you all implying that ARM spent billions to develop a new architecture that's useless, if not harmful, with respect to the old one? I've some concerns with this thesis. Talking about better known Intel, in that case running 32-bit or 64-bit sw on the same machine DOES make some difference. And Intel solved the 4 GB limit on 32-bit cpus already.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[ChunderDownunder]

Yeah it seems like they've made the architectural leap to ARMv8, which offers performance benefits over Cortex A7.

But I would expect them to 'downgrade' to the Cortex A32 when it is available. It's basically the same as the A53 but without the 64bit capability - smaller, cheaper and more power efficient perhaps.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[ChunderDownunder]

Yes, there's probably a small market for a $75 ARM PC.

I have a NUC and think I'd hit the rPi's 1GB ceiling running Firefox/Chrome pretty quickly.

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[ChunderDownunder]

So why can't Broadcom release a VideoCore 5 that doesn't suck but is driver compatible with version 4? :)

Re:Please give us 64-bit OS, too

[Alioth]

It makes a big difference on x86 to amd64 because x86 is pretty register starved (and half of your registers aren't truly general purpose). The amd64 architecture we've moved to on a PC adds 8 more general purpose registers and also changes the ABI. On 32 bit function call parameters are passed by pushing the values onto the stack, the ABI on amd64 now passes parameters in registers instead so it makes things like function calls significantly more efficient.

ARM however was never register starved and its ABI has always passed parameters in registers (ARM when it was released in 1985 had as many general purpose registers as the amd64 architecture).

Re:Raspberry Pi is my steam machine

[Dr_Barnowl]

Probably, I think the GPU part of the SOC is running at a higher clock now.

Under new management, dupes don't change...

[Bearhouse]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

Posted last Saturday by....Timothy...Huzza!

I've nothing against the Pi but this relentless boosting of it is getting tedious.

So?

[goombah99]

But still the same ethernet that goes over the USB bus?

You complain about this like it's a show stopping defect. For the few people who care about this, then there's alternatives to rasp PI. But for the vast majority of people, empirically, this is not a problem. Given the Raspi only has a gigbyte of memory or half that, where the heck are you going to put your data after 10 seconds at a gigabit?

Next you will complain your toaster having only 10Mb/set wifi is a major lifestyle issue.

Re:So?

[KingBozo]

Hey when the whole family is watching the toaster from their phones to see who is first to get the eggo waffle, 10Mb/sec is just to slow. I could completely miss the eggo popping up and my kids get it first.

Sold Out Already

[boley1]

Once again demand outstrips supply.

Re:Sold Out Already

[hamster_nz]

Still plenty here: https://shop.pimoroni.com/prod...

I had no problems ordering my Zero from them on release day too.

Re:Sold Out Already

[boley1]

Thanks. I do see that. I was hoping for a US distributor, and put myself on a couple of waiting lists. I may need to see if the shipping from the Pimorini is reasonable.

Re:Hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't buy it. While the people who buy the Pi do find the price appealing, most of them seem to be far more interested in the community that surrounds the Pi. Chances are reasonably good that someone else is doing, or has done, what you want to do so you can learn from other people. Chances are also reasonably good that there are other people in your area who also have a Pi. With most of those other platforms, you are probably going to be on your own (well, unless you enjoy the company of datasheets).

Why price?

[goombah99]

You don't need dual Ethernet for garage doors. Will your better board take less than 20 minutes extra time to program for than the raspi? Or even read watch pre purchase? Unless your time has no value the cost is not an issue. But if in 2 years there's no support for the drivers or other software you use your better board isn't. Yet you'll almost certainly be able to port anything from your raspi 3 to the new raspi 5.

Re:Hype?

[tohoward]

Yeah, "estimated shipping June 2016" doesn't compare to a product that's already out.

Re:Hype?

[AmiMoJo]

Actually Allwinner, the Chinese supplier of many of those low cost SoCs, is pretty good with open source support. Their hardware needs minimal binary blobs and they do publish GPL code where required. Allwinner parts are well supported by open source operating systems because of this.

The reason why they are not more popular is support. With a RPi there is a huge amount of support material, pre-made SD card images and active forums to help you out. Like Arduino, there are more powerful and cheaper alternatives, but the community and the support documentation are what draw people to the platform.

Re:Hype?

[SScorpio]

Not really, it's not even available yet.

The 4GB of memory is storage while the Pi just used an SD card. The Chip only has 512MB of RAM.

It's a 1Ghz, single core processor, no on board Ethernet. Video out is composite with adapters for VGA and HDMI. But the HDMI adapter doesn't include audio output.

I'm sure there are some uses for this, but the RPi3 does a lot more.

Re:First project for the new Pi 3

[armanox]

Why? If you don't want it, don't buy one, or simply don't use it. It's not like you're being forced into anything.

Re:Imagine playing Halo in HD on Raspberry Pi 3

[omtinez]

Unless he was referring to games that are "universal apps". Those should work just on the Raspberry Pi 3.

Re:Imagine playing Halo in HD on Raspberry Pi 3

[omtinez]

Typo:

Unless he was referring to games that are "universal apps". Those should work just fine on the Raspberry Pi 3.

Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[fyngyrz]

I'm looking for something like the pi, basically a fully populated board requiring power supply, but with a real ethernet subsystem (not a USB-hub mediated mechanism) and a SATA (III, II, I in that order of preference) interface. I've seen multiple failures with the little memory cards, and would like to use actual drives instead from boot on up - without USB or memory cards being involved.

Faster, more cores, and more RAM is better, and price anywhere up to $100 would be fine. I do need the HDMI, USB for keyboard and mouse, and very much appreciate any other I/O, which is why I describe what I'm looking for as "like the pi."

Thanks for any ideas along these lines.

Re:Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[bitingduck]

for $100 that's not easy. less than $200 and it starts to be reasonable. Logicsupply.com has some compact boards that are inexpensive and capable.

Re:Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[fyngyrz]

okay, I'll take a look over there. Thank you.

Re:Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[spire3661]

Try an Intel NUC. I use the latest 14nm version with OpenElec/XBMC installed as my everyday HTPC. I even used a 2 GB stick of ram to keep costs low. I boot mine off the SD card slot, because i dont have a lot of card access beside boot up. You have sata and m.2 inside if you want it.

This particular NUC
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-NU...
is the dividing line between x86-64 and ARM at the low power end. Compared to the Pi, its expensive, but its robust feature set makes up for it. I use and recommend both NUCs and Pis. The NUC5 series even has GPIO.

http://www.intel.com/content/w...

Re:Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[fyngyrz]

Just what I was looking for. Thank you. Nice little computers! There are i5 and even i7 versions; lots and lots of horsepower (for a small system.)

Re: Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[KenHansen]

You are describing a typical Atom MB.

Re:Anyone have a pointer to a device...

[bitingduck]

somebody just pointed me at ODROID systems, too (Ameridroid in the US). The XU-4 has Gig-E and is less than $100.

Re:Ethernet - Practical Applications

[ytene]

I would love to be able to use a couple of Pi's with PiCams to deliver some CCTV where I live, primarily to identify the person[s] responsible for driving into parked cars and then disappearing... Unfortunately, irrespective of whether we're talking about a closed loop of stills or streaming video, getting this content to storage is going to require some decent network bandwidth. I've tried this at 100Mb/s and using the basic Pi software just doesn't hack it... The issue is not the performance of the camera or the "grabbing" software, it is the time taken to write data to external storage. For basic practical reasons I don't want to put the storage with the Pi... So... although no, I'm not trying to run a NAS from my Pi, I *am* trying to send sustained, moderately high bandwidth to a NAS from my PI. Gigabit would, I suspect, make this feasible. 100Mb/s does not. Let's be fair, though. If we all added our "2 cents" as to what we'd like to see added to the Pi, the resultant computer would cost waaay [sic] more than $35... Here's hoping for the Pi4 though!

Re:Hype?

[rochrist]

Cheaper? When you're now talking about $35 for quad core 1.2ghz with onboard wifi and bluetooth, who gives a shit? That's literally half the price of a new AAA video game.

Palm Treo

[jfdavis668]

I guess I will finally have to upgrade from my Palm Treo.

Re:Palm Treo

[DamonHD]

Don't hurry now; some tech matures with age! B^>

Maybe I could swap it for a Pilot I may stil have lurking...

Running a JVM on a Pilot was a challenge, on an RPI rather less so.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Hype?

[mspohr]

So... the two regular production Chip computers I have sitting here on my desk don't exist?
BTW, when do you think you will actually be able to buy the new Pi model? Can you even buy the Pi Zero which was announced months ago?

Re:Hype?

[mspohr]

I got two of the regular production models shipped to me months ago. (BTW, can you actually buy a Pi Zero anywhere today?)

4GB on board memory is better than an empty memory slot.

Pi doesn't do composite VGA at all.

It's comparable, not exactly the same as the Pi range. Better in some ways. Costs less.

Re: Hype?

[bigtomrodney]

The big thing is critical mass. The RPi has that and it's a hub for community projects.

Re: Imagine playing Halo in HD on Raspberry Pi 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you're on the right website? Once upon a time commentors on Slashdot actually knew something about computers.

ESP8266 = NodeMCU

[slincolne]

Look at the NodeMCU boards - basically an ESP8266 with the I/o broken out, and all the bits and pieces you need to program one up.

They have more than one I/O (you might be thinking of the real cheap version of the ESP8266 that is billed as a serial Wi-Fi adapter). You can pickup a NodeMCU board for under $10, and if you are really smart buy a copy of Neil Kolban's eBook on the ESP8266 - includes helpful hints on getting it up and running with the Arduino IDE.

Much cheaper than getting a Pi Zero and the bits you need (as if you can actually buy a Pi Zero anyway)

Re:Sold Out Already - UK to US Price Update

[boley1]

I checked on the full cost with the current currency conversion and it works out to be about $45 (32.17GBP) including shipping. (4-7 days Airmail). Not bad.