

Raspberry Pi Model A+ Arrives – The Cheapest and Smallest Pi Yet - funkyy
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/pi-model-a-plus/

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Someone1234
The B+ still remains a better "buy" for most people/projects. The A+ is a
great board if you want to run something using the GPIO or single USB, but
most people who buy a Pi are running small Linux servers or even emulator
stations which the B+ is substantially better suited for.

Can you daisy chain a bunch of USB peripherals off of the A+'s single USB
port? Yes. But after you buy the hub, buy the USB ethernet "card," and so on
you would have spent much more than $15. Plus you've now lost the size
advantage anyway.

I see the B+ as being the "development board" and A+ as being the "production
board."

~~~
Igglyboo
IMO the only reason to buy an A+ is if you are going to be using these
commercially at scale, where the minimal price and power consumption
differences are going to add up.

~~~
jbhatab
Is it even reasonable to use a raspberry pi for production? Wouldn't you want
to go custom with an electronics manufacturer at some point?

~~~
Someone1234
Depends on scale of your product.

For example, let's say you have a company which does school scoreboards, you
might install 3x a month, 36/year. You can do a custom Pi solution for $35
(+software), or buy the commercial solution for $150+/board.

For that type of operation you likely wouldn't make your money back having
someone else produce a bespoke board for your 36/year installations. Even at
three times that number it likely wouldn't be cost effective.

You see this a lot in niche installations. Up until somewhat recently many POS
terminals in small stores were just standard desktop PCs wrapped in a custom
case and with some custom software (sometimes written in VB6(!)).

~~~
lucaspiller
> Up until somewhat recently many POS terminals in small stores were just
> standard desktop PCs wrapped in a custom case and with some custom software

Even in larger stores they ran Windows. I used to work for a large supermarket
in the UK and the checkouts even now run on Windows NT and Windows XP with a
custom UI. There are special versions of Windows for this sort of thing:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Industry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Industry)

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mike_ivanov
It seems like A+ is aimed squarely at Arduino. Especially with this HAT thing
- [http://www.raspberrypi.org/introducing-raspberry-pi-
hats/](http://www.raspberrypi.org/introducing-raspberry-pi-hats/). Which is
kinda cool, because healthy competition is exactly what Arduino ecosystem
needs.

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davidholmesnyc
The pi is wonderful for tinkering. But i'm finding it too slow to do most
things I want it to do. The beaglebone black is good but I just hate the micro
hdmi port.. I wish they put a reg HDMI port on it.

~~~
milsorgen
I've had fun running a Terraria server for 2 people on it. TShock server via
Mono and some optimizations and overclocking. Runs fairly well to be honest
but looking beyond that I agree it is just too slow to do most things I want
to do.

I've had my eye on something along the lines of:
[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275)

Quadcore, 2gb of RAM for 65, seems like a nice step up from the Pi.

~~~
rcarmo
I have a U2 (basically the same as the U3 with less ports), and the thing is
so good I used it as a desktop for a couple of weeks
([http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2013/02/10/1230](http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2013/02/10/1230))
- running NetBeans at a fair clip, to boot. The only thing stopping me from
getting a couple of U3s is lack of cash, and I heartily recommend it.

The Pi is... Sort of mediocre as a desktop (even as a thin client) and too
complex for most hardware projects. We ran a number of them as digital signage
clients for a while ([https://github.com/sapo/digital-signage-
client](https://github.com/sapo/digital-signage-client)) and eventually moved
to Android boxes ([https://github.com/sapo/android-signage-
client](https://github.com/sapo/android-signage-client)) because even with the
recent improvements to WebKit and X the browser simply wasn't up to par.

Worked reasonably nicely with videos, but I keep wondering how much more
useful the Pi would have been (for signage, mind you) if they had released
their internal Android build.

Edit: forgot to mention I have five Model Bs in a cluster
([http://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster](http://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-
cluster)) where I run distcc and toy with Java/Clojure/Hazelcast. It's fun,
but requires a fair bit of patience.

You can check the load here:
[http://rcarmo.sl.pt:8888](http://rcarmo.sl.pt:8888)

~~~
agumonkey
If only they didn't ask a hard 25$ for shipping.

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joezydeco
Zero mentions of "education" in this press release or any of the tech blogs
following it. Oh well. Have we given up on that whole thing?

~~~
Alupis
not at all. this isn't a "press release", it's an article by a 3rd party
(techcrunch) which focuses on whatever they want.

If you check out the official website (www.raspberrypi.org), you will see it's
covered in education related things such as classroom experiments, new
computer for schools, etc. However it's not all just about schools -- anyone
who learns something about Linux, computing, hardware, the internet, etc...
from a RPi, well... it's mission accomplished for the foundation.

~~~
joezydeco
Right, this is the press release/announcement:

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-model-a-plus-on-
sale...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-model-a-plus-on-sale/)

Aside from the price drop, what's the educational benefit? Were kids asking
for more GPIO and other uSD options?

(Not trying to be a wet blanket, I love dev/eval boards and have been using
them for a long time. But my teeth still grind when we all brag about the
educational benefits of the RPi but the only results we see in the real world
are robots and XBMC clients)

~~~
Alupis
There's more to the "education" thing than you are realizing.

Even if kids only use them for XBMC clients -- they have to learn how to write
the image to the SD card and then boot it, etc. Might not be much -- but
that's time better spent than just killing more bad guys in CoD.

There have been plenty of blog posts by the foundation detailing how students
are using RPi's in schools. There's been a few times someone has written into
one of the Podcasts I listen to and talked about using RPi's in education
right here in the US. Playing with GPIO pins is a great way to get kids
excited in circuits, computing, tinkering, etc.

There have also been some good examples of taking RPi out to remote areas in
Africa and what-not and building a basic computer lounge where people can come
and get online, some for the first time in their lives. Now that's
inspirational, _and_ educational.

There's a lot of copy-cats of the RPi out now -- most of which are slightly
more expensive but offer higher performance. It's important to recall that
before the RPi, small form factor SoC boards existed -- but usually were
twice, three time, or more the price. The relatively cheap cost of the RPi
started all this.

~~~
dingaling
> There have also been some good examples of taking RPi out to remote areas in
> Africa

The people subjected to that probably wondered why the silly Westerner had
such a primitive computer...

Mobile phones pioneered Internet connectivity through most of Africa, and are
probably more useful ( being self-powered and self-contained ) than a room
full of RPis + monitors + PSUs + keyboards + cabling etc etc

A user can shove a Nokia 109 into their pocket and pull it out to check the
weather forecast and local market prices for crops. Can be charged from a
solar panel, too. That sort of phone can last > 1 month on a charge, with
light use, and can withstand a light rain shower or drop onto the ground.

GPRS ( and even 3G! ) connectivity is also more widespread and reliable in
most parts than fixed-line.

RPis don't really have any role in that sort of environment.

 _Source: personal experience, I did some work for Bank of Nigeria a few years
ago._

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chj
Really need upgrade to armv7.

~~~
Narishma
The fact that they haven't upgraded the SoC is a huge advantage.

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Tepix
It now enters price regions where it starts to compete with Arduinos. Nice.

