The Raspberry Pi Foundation has unveiled a smaller, cheaper, lower-powered Pi 3, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+. The new model will sell for $25 USD and has lower power requirements with less RAM than the 3B+ (512 MB DDR2), only a single USB port, and no Ethernet port. However, it has the same BCM2837B0 quad core processor running at 1.4 GHz, a dual band WIFI networking, Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy connectivity, the normal 40-pin GPIO header, and audio and video output.
OpenSource.com : New Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ unveiled
TechRepublic : Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+: A closer look at the new $25 board
CNX Software : Compact Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Launched for $25
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The Japanese company MechaTracks has announced a 4G LTE add-on board (commonly called a HAT) for the Raspberry Pi called 4GPi. The 4GPi is the first commercially produced add-on board which offers CAT4 LTE connectivity for the Raspberry Pi, with 150 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload speeds. Other existing solutions are bandwidth limited, or are adapters for LTE modems used in laptops, with smaller antenna connectors.
MechaTracks notes that driver support for the 4GPi add-on board is available for Raspbian, the Raspberry Pi specific variant of Debian. Additionally, the 4GPi includes extension pins for the Raspberry Pi GPIO connector, making it possible to use in conjunction with other HATs. The add-on is compatible with any Raspberry Pi model which has a 40-pin GPIO header. Presently, this includes the Pi 1 A+ and B+, Pi 2 Model B, Pi 3 Model B and B+, as well as the Pi Zero and Zero W.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 15 2018, @05:49PM (8 children)
The RasPi 3B+ only cost $10 more and has 2X the RAM a much more usable 1GB of RAM as opposed to a mere 512MB of RAM. At that point, you should seriously consider a RapPi Zero W instead, which only has a single-core 1GHZ processor, but the same 512MB RAM in an even smaller form factor. The Rasberry Pi Zero W also only costs $10. Great for headless applications, but those cost savings get eaten up with adapters for the miniaturized connectors.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:10PM (3 children)
Even with NoScript and uBlock, my 4-yr old Android tablet with 512M of RAM can barely keep 4 mostly-text tabs open.
It's pretty amazing how wasteful modern browsers and websites are, when I see how much processing we can achieve with half that much RAM in our embedded systems.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:27PM (2 children)
Bout time to go to 16 GB minimum. Too bad prices are 200% inflated or whatever it is.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
while i agree its small, if you need 16gb on what is in reality an embedded board, you got some code bloat going on.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday November 16 2018, @12:35AM
Not necessarily. There are numerous tasks that deal with very large amounts of data; having it in RAM makes a huge difference in how fast it can be processed. Some of the areas that do this include signal processing, statistical processing, various kinds of machine learning approaches, etc.
Then there are ramdisks; sort of an intermediate means to improve efficiency.
Small systems like the PI, given just more ram, would suddenly become very attractive for a larger set of applications.
Doesn't hurt if you're running a desktop on them either.
I bet we see them eventually. I'd love to have a few.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:56PM (1 child)
While $10 doesn't sound a lot, it has a lot of value in 3rd world countries.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 19 2018, @04:08PM
I do get that and at $5 the Raspberry Pi Zero is a great single board computer. Given the cost of accessories it may be better to choose one of the larger models, but I've not priced it out. Assuming one is comparing use as a desktop, the built-in 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB of RAM is likely the single best improvement you could get. Yes, certain things throttle at the CPU level, but generally more RAM means you're less likely to experience system destabilizing RAM shortages.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by theluggage on Thursday November 15 2018, @09:25PM
That's 40% more! If you're just buying one that may not a big deal - if you're buying in bulk (say, for a school/college, or building a commercial product around them) that's a very significant difference.
For individuals, part of the appeal of the Pi is that you can tinker with it and, if you screw up and let the magic smoke out, no big deal. Or if you've built something and want to start a new project, no need to rip the old one apart to extract the expensive computer. Or, you may want to run one on batteries in a drone or something - less components generally means low power. One of the appeals of the Pi is that they have stuck to the low cost principle and haven't let the price creep up.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 15 2018, @10:19PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @05:56PM (5 children)
Sure, these are embedded deices and are not meant as desktops ( hear me, rerto pi? ) but still, for about the same price you can get far better hardware.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martyb on Thursday November 15 2018, @11:03PM (4 children)
Never mind that there is a huge, supportive community of people who have been using RasPi's for years, I'm curious as to what you would suggest in its stead?
What "far better hardware" can you get for the same price? Links would be appreciated.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @02:58AM (3 children)
Different AC here.
Raspi community = untouchable by competitors.
Raspi power consumption was (maybe still is) pretty terrible. They used linear voltage regulators on (at least) the first few models they came out with. I had an original Panda board that was a couple years older than the raspi Bs that I got. The Panda used 1/4 the power at full load than the raspi used when idle. And, the Panda was at least twice as fast as the Raspi.
Raspi GPU requires a proprietary driver. Yes, even after Broadcom supposedly freed it; everything is in a proprietary blob with a zero function "free" shim (see https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?px=MTIxNDk&page=news_item [phoronix.com] ). The iMX6, iMX7 and iMX8 use the Vivaldi GPU, and there is a completely free (and working) driver available. You can have a proprietary blob free system based on the iMX series.
Lots of Chinese boards are cheaper and more powerful than the Raspi (too many to list, just think of just about every SBC you have heard of named something!=raspberry + pie.
Lots of boards that are more expensive (but not prohibitively), and still reasonably well supported with a reasonable sized community like everything from the odroid line (hardkernel).
The raspi boards that I have used suffered stability issues (sdcard / usb), while none of the other boards I have (representatives from most of the categories above) have had any such issues.
So, better SBCs exist, where "better" is defined as, more free (freedom), more powerful at near same price point, cheaper, use less power, are more stable, and many combinations of these attributes that make them better.
Depends on what is important to you, but with one exception, community, you can find better. But, props to raspi foundation for starting the trend of affordable dev boards / SBCs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @06:01PM (1 child)
https://www.pine64.org/?product=rock64-media-board-computer [pine64.org]
1GB at $25
2GB at $35
4GB at $45
The Mali GPU has a blob driver, but the open source Lima driver is available. The Rock64Pro comes in at a higher price point ($60/2GB $80/4GB), but has a PCIe x4 slot, better CPUs and GPU (the panfrost driver is also looking like it will be useable soon https://rosenzweig.io/blog/a-panfrostian-october.html), [rosenzweig.io] and also has mainline support on linux and the BSDs.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:30PM
Sorry for the late reply. I followed the link and am much impressed with the offerings they have there. Don't have time atm to investigate further, but am very much interested! Thanks so much!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:10PM
I apologize for the late reply. Thanks a bunch for the info!
I had heard that there were issues with the sd card support, but was not aware of the power requirements being that high. Very much appreciate the confirmation and information!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:21PM (5 children)
I'm interested on what the RasPi foundation is going to do next. Looking for another SoC they say? Interesting.
How about no proprietary blobs.
I wish there were some kind of "mother" board into which you could plug a bunch of Pi zeros.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:23PM
There are a couple of 'cluster boards' for zeros out there. Non proprietary blobs in the future? Don't hold your breath.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:30PM (2 children)
RaspberryPi ClusterHat, here [clusterhat.com]. Four PiZeros on a Pi. Sweet for playing with openmpi, libgaul, repast, docker swarms, ansible etc.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 15 2018, @10:46PM (1 child)
Thanks. I was thinking of more than four Pi Zeros. Maybe a dozen or sixteen.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @06:08PM
How about https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-mc1-my-cluster-one-with-32-cpu-cores-and-8gb-dram/ [hardkernel.com] or https://www.pine64.org/?product=clusterboard-with-7-sopine-compute-module-slots [pine64.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @12:37AM
If you don't want proprietary blobs, EOMA68 is worth looking into. Hopefully it actually succeeds.