14 DAY TRIAL // The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced that an upgraded version of their Raspberry Pi single-board computer is now available for purchase.
The Raspberry Pi mini PC has been out for a couple of years now and its makers, The Raspberry Pi Foundation, have already made some improvements in all that time, including a revision. From what the developers are saying, this will be the last revision before the next Raspberry Pi is released.
“Meet your new favorite piece of hardware. In the two years since we launched the current Raspberry Pi Model B, we’ve often talked about our intention to do one more hardware revision to incorporate the numerous small improvements people have been asking for.”
“This isn’t a ‘Raspberry Pi 2’, but rather the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi. Today, I’m very pleased to be able to announce the immediate availability, at $35 (€26) – it’s still the same price, of what we’re calling the Raspberry Pi Model B+,” said Eben Upton, the Raspberry Pi Founder and CEO of the Raspberry Pi's engineering team.
A lot of people have been waiting for the second generation of Raspberry Pi to show up, but it looks like we're going to have to wait a little more. What's interesting about this release is the fact that the hardware has remained the same, with the BCM2835 application processor and 512 MB of RAM.
The previous revision of Raspberry Pi increased the amount of RAM memory, but the changes in the new release are actually a lot more exciting than you would imagine.
The developers from The Raspberry Pi Foundation have explained that the GPIO header now has 40 pins, but has the same pinout for the first 26 pins as the Model B. Also, the new model now features 4 USB ports, the old friction-fit SD card socket has been replaced with a push-push micro SD version, the power consumption has been reduced by as much as 1W, the audio circuit now incorporates a dedicated low-noise power supply, and the form factor is now much cleaner and it even comes with mounting holes.
The new Raspberry Pi Model B+ is already available for purchase, but the foundation will keep making the old model, as long as there is a demand for it.
The founder of The Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben Upton, also said that a new, more powerful version of the mini PC would probably arrive in 2017, although that date is not set in stone.