New Raspberry Pi Model B+

[rolycat]

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, the Raspberry Pi foundation announced a new version of their single board computer this week:



It has loads of improvements including more USB ports, lower power consumption and more GPIO pins.

Still made in the UK and still $35.

[bwat]

Still made in the UK and still $35.

Two of the most talked about products in this market are made(*) in Europe and both are quite affordable for those living in the countries of manufacture. I get the feeling that my perception of the economics of electronics manufacture doesn't quite match reality. I seem to believe that it just cannot be done unless it is manufactured in low cost countries. Obviously this isn't the case.


*)made/assembled/whatever.

[bwat]

I welcome the four mounting holes. I think I recall seeing it now uses microSD cards. I should confirm it but someone will correct me if necessary.

Try the link the OP gave.

[GeoffS]

+1 for four mounting holes.
No need for the hot glue gun any more

[firewalker]

It will be nice a 1 Gbyte RAM version.

Alexander.

[AndyC_772]

I wonder whether it'll end up like the BBC Micro model B+, from which it draws its name?

The B+ was supposed to be an improvement over the hugely popular Model B, but in practice the fact that it just wasn't quite the same as a Model B made it unpopular despite the technical improvements.

The software compatibility problems that came from its added memory and different floppy disc controller outweighed their usefulness, and it wasn't until the (much *more* different) Master series that these changes really became accepted by users are were properly supported by software. The poor old B+ never really got past the chicken-and-egg stage when it came to sales vs support.

[bwat]

I wonder whether it'll end up like the BBC Micro model B+, from which it draws its name?

I would take a beeb over a raspberry pi any day. Serious!

[rob77]

It will be nice a 1 Gbyte RAM version.

Alexander.

it's still 512Meg. a colleague of mine has ordered it from Farnell and he's got it already. it's a nice board with a much better layout than the original B.
it has a microSD slot . the microSD card is "sticking out" approx  2mm from the board - therefore the microSD can be completely hidden and still accessible through a gap in the wall of the case if you'll have a case with wall thickness of 2-3mm.

in general it's well designed for embedding into products (compared to the original B).

[tszaboo]

While it is an improvement, I still dont understand why the connectors are scattered on two sides, and why we didn't get back the I2S port.

[rob77]

While it is an improvement, I still dont understand why the connectors are scattered on two sides, and why we didn't get back the I2S port.

size is the limitation for 1 side but anyways - 2 sides with connectors is acceptable - if you want to place it into a bigger case, then you just place it to the corner and make the cut-outs for the connectors on 2 sides of the case (that was not possible with the original B with connectors on all 4 sides).

[Precipice]

Two of the most talked about products in this market are made(*) in Europe and both are quite affordable for those living in the countries of manufacture. I get the feeling that my perception of the economics of electronics manufacture doesn't quite match reality. I seem to believe that it just cannot be done unless it is manufactured in low cost countries. Obviously this isn't the case.

If you're manufacturing something like this in volume, you don't need many people to run the line - it's mainly the cost of the machines, which is roughly the same globally, and some factory space, which isn't too bad, especially in Wales. 
Inserting dozens of screws into a phone, lining up fiddly connectors, polishing shiny things - they all take huge amounts of effort, and go where the people are cheapest. Manufacturing operations that are un-green also tend to offshore to countries that worry less. SMT assembly is pretty green - energy in, packaging waste out, and there's decent recycling routes for most of that - although I don't know where the paper tape and cover tape from reels of passives ends up. Should burn well enough, I guess...
(UK manufacturing is still pretty healthy - it's less dominant than it used to be, because services have increased faster than it, rather than manufacturing declining, although headcount has fallen (continuously, I think?)).

[BloodyCactus]

i know the B models had issues with usb throughput with just 2 connections.. sure lets add 4! ugh. gpio  is like a shotgun, pins all over the place. it would have been nice when going from 26 to 40 pin connector they re-arranged all the pins into a logical order.

very nice to see mounting holes!

[rolycat]

i know the B models had issues with usb throughput with just 2 connections.. sure lets add 4!

Lots of people want to attach a keyboard and a mouse, which are low-bandwidth peripherals, plus a wireless dongle and maybe from time to time a memory stick. Throughput shouldn't be much of an issue in the most common use cases.

ugh. gpio  is like a shotgun, pins all over the place. it would have been nice when going from 26 to 40 pin connector they re-arranged all the pins into a logical order.

But that would have made all of the existing plates and other peripherals incompatible, instead of just a few.

Always choices to be made, but I think they made the right ones.

[GeoffS]

I run a couple of Model B's as weather cameras with a wifi dongle and a USB hard disk, makes trouble shooting a lot easier if you can plug a keyboard in.

[motocoder]

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, the Raspberry Pi foundation announced a new version of their single board computer this week:



It has loads of improvements including more USB ports, lower power consumption and more GPIO pins.

Still made in the UK and still $35.

It looks like a nice incremental improvement, although I've sort of soured on the Raspi since that bad experience with their camera board and the rabid attacks I was subjected to for pointing out low light issues and suggesting USB webcams were a good alternative... Will stick with BeagleBone Black for the foreseeable future.

[rolycat]

It looks like a nice incremental improvement, although I've sort of soured on the Raspi since that bad experience with their camera board and the rabid attacks I was subjected to for pointing out low light issues and suggesting USB webcams were a good alternative... Will stick with BeagleBone Black for the foreseeable future.

Not sure I understand this.

If by "rabid attacks" you mean this thread, then I would agree that 'jamesh' was inexcusably rude in his initial response to your post, but it seemed as though it was all resolved fairly amicably. A nasty response from one grumpy engineer doesn't seem like a good reason to abandon the platform altogether.

I don't frequent that forum however, so I may not have all the information. Were there other attacks?

[Richard Crowley]

I also wasn't terribly impressed by the RasPi website or the forum.
The website has nice eye-candy and flash, but organization and presentation of hard facts, specs, and data is in short supply.
And the forum just leaves me cold. It seems unwelcoming to newbies and also disorganized.  They have a great deal to learn from Arduino.
The chaotic nature of the website and forum seem surprising to me given the number of boards out there.

But the new B+ module has most of the things I thought were sorely absent in the original board.

[amyk]

The website has nice eye-candy and flash, but organization and presentation of hard facts, specs, and data is in short supply.

It's Broadcom, what'd you expect? Ask for more detailed information (e.g. GPIO rise times) and you'll be told in a very roundabout way, "no". (They'll try to play the "you don't need to know", "it's too complicated for you to know", etc. lines - these are people wanting to learn. ) Try asking harder and they'll just lock the thread. The forums are highly moderated to suppress any straying from the official line.

That camera thread is just... . He's basically advocating vendor lockdown. 'jamesh' is a total prick in many of his other posts on the forum too where people ask for more information.

All this, in a board designed for education, just disgusts me beyond belief and makes me think the whole thing is just marketing for Broadcom.

</rant>

Arduino is much better in that full documentation is available, you can use as much or as little of it as you want and won't be told otherwise. But the best computer for education is just a standard PC - tons of them are getting thrown away every day in fully working condition(!), many of them far more powerful than the Pi, and you can find far more information about programming PCs from low-level hardware and up, plus there's lots of software available. Even open-source BIOS replacements are available. Parallel ports (which are going to be common on old hardware, the type that's being discarded) make great GPIOs.

If you want a cheap ARM-based devboard, I'd say go for one of the Chinese SoCs - AllWinner make some pretty decent ones.

[motocoder]

It looks like a nice incremental improvement, although I've sort of soured on the Raspi since that bad experience with their camera board and the rabid attacks I was subjected to for pointing out low light issues and suggesting USB webcams were a good alternative... Will stick with BeagleBone Black for the foreseeable future.

Not sure I understand this.

If by "rabid attacks" you mean this thread, then I would agree that 'jamesh' was inexcusably rude in his initial response to your post, but it seemed as though it was all resolved fairly amicably. A nasty response from one grumpy engineer doesn't seem like a good reason to abandon the platform altogether.

I don't frequent that forum however, so I may not have all the information. Were there other attacks?

There was quite a bit more than the one post in the forum from Jamesh, but quite frankly I have no desire to go back over there and revisit it. 

The gist of it was, "you are hurting a charitable project by 'criticizing' one of its features". The whole thing was asinine, as my intentions were a) to point out the problem so they might fix it, and b) to point out that USB webcams work great with the Pi, so that others with similar requirements might be successful. I was as delicate and nice about it as humanly possible.

Jamesh, and to a lesser extent James, started out defensive, and then basically clammed up when I posted info showing the actual problem (including light meter readings, photos) and when others chimed in reporting the same issues. At no time did I detect any interest in following up with me or anyone to gather data to help determine the actual issue. Just a bunch of butthurt babies.

I wish them all the success in the world, but I'll send my business elsewhere. Plus, I really prefer TI products over Broadcom. I don't like that most of the data on the Broadcom part is not freely available.

[max-bit]

And they could add 1GB of RAM?

[rob77]

And they could add 1GB of RAM?

i think that would require a serious redesign - they're mounting chips one on a top of the other (CPU + RAM), so most probably a bigger RAM chip simply doesn't fit.

[Psi]

Lots of people want to attach a keyboard and a mouse, which are low-bandwidth peripherals, plus a wireless dongle and maybe from time to time a memory stick. Throughput shouldn't be much of an issue in the most common use cases.

You mean i cant connect 4 ezcaps and save four uncompressed video streams 

[bwat]

But the best computer for education is just a standard PC

Exactly! I've said similar things here myself -  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/advice-for-novice/msg468376/#msg468376. I apologise for hijacking the thread to boost a message I feel is quite important. 

[rob77]

But the best computer for education is just a standard PC

Exactly! I've said similar things here myself -  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/advice-for-novice/msg468376/#msg468376. I apologise for hijacking the thread to boost a message I feel is quite important.

and how the hell would you teach interfacing hardware with a standard PC ? RPi is ideal - it runs a widely known OS, has GPIO and has high-level language libraries/bindings for the IO.

[bwat]

and how the hell would you teach interfacing hardware with a standard PC ? RPi is ideal - it runs a widely known OS, has GPIO and has high-level language libraries/bindings for the IO.

I think this side discussion maybe needs a new thread.