New Raspberry Pi B+
TonyD
Posts: 210
A new version of the Pi model B has been announced:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus
Whilst the CPU is the same Broadcom 2835 as before, with the same memory configuration it looks like they've made significant changes to the board layout and tweaked the circuit.
4 USB's instead of 2.
Micro-SD instead of SD
40-pin expansion connector including, with 26x GPIO
I2C for Board ID EEPROM
TV out RCA connector removed, TVout moved to 3.5mm 4-pole A/V jack sitting next to HDMI connector
4x mounting holes placed near corners and board edges.
improved PSU circuit using SMPS
New Power OK LED
Seperate 5V Reg for HDMI
http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus
Whilst the CPU is the same Broadcom 2835 as before, with the same memory configuration it looks like they've made significant changes to the board layout and tweaked the circuit.
4 USB's instead of 2.
Micro-SD instead of SD
40-pin expansion connector including, with 26x GPIO
I2C for Board ID EEPROM
TV out RCA connector removed, TVout moved to 3.5mm 4-pole A/V jack sitting next to HDMI connector
4x mounting holes placed near corners and board edges.
improved PSU circuit using SMPS
New Power OK LED
Seperate 5V Reg for HDMI
Comments
Time to start redesigning all our Propeller add on boards for the Pi. Perhaps a pain but it's worth it. A "plate" sitting on that new 40 pin header and bolted down with the new mounting holes will be much more robust.
For a moment I was also thinking 'why no USB3.0 at this point?', but then I realised that the PI is nothing like e.g. an Odroid board where it makes sense with USB3.0.
I'm actually like the move to micro-sd. The SD card always stuck out from the board to far for my liking.
Perhaps some Ebay deals will start happening on 2 port units. I wouldn't mind a couple more sub $15 B units.
Being fully backwards compatible is a big thing when you have two million users and not much in the way of resources to support a whole different OS.
Changing the SoC would have been a whole new design, no doubt more expensive, and not being backward compatible would cripple it's take up. All in all it would just be another Cubie board or whatever. There is already intense competition in that area so it would be a total flop.
It's rather akin to the way Parallax promises to keep it's Propeller around for a long time. New things may come around that outperform it in some ways but that is not the total value proposition (Excuse the MBA speak).
I don't have much need for the extra USB ports but the over all rearrangement of everything is very elegant. Power consumption has been lowered a lot. The extra GPIO are a bonus. All in all I'm looking forward to getting some.
Also, the bulk and extra expense of a USB expander for every board was annoying.
Proper mounting holes...great!
RCA connector was wasted space, an homage I suppose to customers in Botswana and Bangladesh who may have nothing but an old TV...and an old cable.
You certainly can't fault the RaspberryPi Foundation for being unresponsive or impractical!
I don't know about the customers in Botswana or Bangladesh though. When the Pi was designed they were not in anyway the target market. I don't think the Pi was ever imagined outside of the UK initially. Where at the time kids still had old tube TV's in the bedrooms. A recreation of the BBC computer idea. Things have changed very rapidly with TV screens in a very short space of time.
I suspect that was because they had no true upgrade in the Broadcom choices available.
SoC design tends to ignore legacy compatibility totally whilst any upgrade needs to be exactly that - a true upgrade with total backward coverage.
They have managed to keep the expanded 40 pin header using the first 26 pins unchanged - they are a terrible layout but are now a standard for the Pi so they just had to be kept.
Aligning the connectors is great and another 2 usb are another welcome addition.
What I find unusual is the pinning arrangement of the AV connector. I know there are 2 variants (and Apple use both on different products). The tip and first ring are for audio (standard) but the next 2 can be either way depending on the product. They have chosen 3=GND and 4=Video. It seems the more common AV cable is 3=video and 4=gnd.
Anyway, it's a very welcome update. There are something like ~3M original B's out there!
And I forgot...
The microSD is also a welcome change. I use SD to microSD adapters when requiring SD cards.
That did seem a bit bass-ackwards, I wondered if they get less crosstalk (better audio) with GND between video and Audio, or if the spring-tine GND connection is better than the (usually) ground-ring ?
Hopefully they tried both, and chose this for a real reason.
I'm interested in how the power consumption compares. It is said to be a lot less than the original design.
You could be right. I though I heard early on that helping the Third World was the goal of the Foundation, hence the A and B models. I may have confused this with OLPC.
Aye, they have.
Farnell was out of stock, yesterday evening!
It doesn't run very hot, at any rate.
Keyboard and mouse are working OK.
Eben speculated that this was because in previous decades the new intake had already been programming on their C64's, Sinclair Spectrums, BBC computers etc since they were young kids. The new generation, growing up in the PC centric world had no such experience. As he said it used to be that a while ago kids came to uni already having used multiple assembler languages and high level languages but the new intake had no such experience.
Hence the Pi idea. Give the young kids something very cheap they can hack on. Recreate that era of the Sinclair Spectrums in a modern way.
So, the whole show is based on the idea of stimulating interest in computing and engineering in the UK. The whole "third world" thing was just a happy accident of all of this.
The OLPC thing puzzles me. They wanted to bring computing to kids around the world. How come they didn't just put the thing on sale to anyone and everyone? Thus stimulating mass production, lowering the cost and enabling the thing to get where it was intended to go.
Limited Supply. No corporate backing behind the scenes = Limited funding and very high risk.
And if I recall correctly, there was an option to "buy one, donate one" OLPC.
I like everything they changed, but what I like best are the mounting holes and improved connector placement. My number one annoyance with dev boards is designing them so they fit in a box. I have yet to find a decent enclosure for the pi A or B because of the horrible layout. It was simply not designed to go in a box without a fight.....
http://raspi.tv/2014/how-much-less-power-does-the-raspberry-pi-b-use-than-the-old-model-b
Please, what is the easiest way to add analoge pins to the raspberry pi ?
I wrote up a tutorial on setting the Pi up for it here
Cyntech has very good cases for the A and B.
They have an accessory cover for the SD card as well.
.
http://shop.cyntechgroup.com/collections/enclosures
Ray
Now I have to go out and purchase a class-10 uSD card, reload the system and the B+ should perform very nicely.
Forgot to mention when you plug in new modules into the USB port, the B+ does not reboot anymore, it continues to run normally, that was a problem with the model-B.
Ray