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A New Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Has Arrived With Bluetooth 4.2 and Dual-Band Wi-Fi For $25 (pcworld.com)
Raspberry Pi has introduced a new version of one of its most popular models just in time to stuff your stocking: the Model A+. And this time around, it's even more attractive. From a report: The Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ costs $25, $5 more than the previous generation, but has a lot more going for it. Just like the top-of-the-line Model B+, the new Model A+ has a 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core processor, and you'll also get dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz + 5 GHz), a feature that was missing from the previous A+. And you'll have to use it, since the A+ doesn't have an Ethernet port. It does, however, have Bluetooth 4.2 on board. For $10 less than the $35 Model B+, you'll also only get a single USB port (versus four on the B+) as well as 512MB of RAM (versus 1GB on the B+). But otherwise, the devices are identical, with a full-size HDMI port, CSI camera port, DSI display port, stereo output and composite video port, and a micro SD port. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ isn't the cheapest Pi model available -- the Zero costs $5 and the Zero W costs just $10 -- but it rounds out the options nicely. The new model is available now through Raspberry Pi retailers.
I had been using the A+ form factor for my robotics projects, as they pulled about 0.230 amps peak, or 0.115 amps during normal operation. If you could smooth out that brief 0.230 spike at boot, you could run an A+ off of a 250ma solar panel (a little larger than the size of a playing card) in direct sunlight.
The A+ has been discontinued for years - probably since at least mid-2015, maybe even late 2014.
It's good to see it back, I never had use for the extra 3 USB ports that the B+ provided, especially now that bluetooth and wifi are built in, solves most of the reason to own the B+. The square formfactor is both smaller on the X axis, and because it doesn't have that 4xUSB-A riser, is quite a bit more flat on the Y axis, which makes it ideal for homebrew embedded projects.
Curious to see how the power usage is on the new A+, I doubt it will chill out at 0.115 like the old single core device did, but it's probably still lower than the B+ by at least 15%, which is a big plus for robotics projects.
moox. for a new generation.
I was very excited by this, until I saw the RAM reduction. I guess this particular board is intended for embedded applications more so than the B+ being designed as a tiny desktop? I'm having trouble seeing where this fits in, considering a single USB port, but still full HDMI? Maybe just for a wall display that is wireless networked only? That RAM reduction seriously hinders a lot of graphical applications that would use the HDMI port in the first place.