Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a new Raspberry Pi, not a huge improvement over the Pi 3 but some nice improvements that make it definitely worth the extra $0.00 over the existing Pi 3.
Yup, the price is still $35 for this marvel!
Wtf is a Raspberry Pi?
There are no huge improvements with the Raspberry Pi 3B+. The Raspberry Pi Foundation isn't really focused on the consumer Raspberry Pi line anymore and more focused on embedded applications.
What's new?
CPU
The Raspberry Pi is cheap because almost all the functionality is contained in one chip. The CPU is basically the same as the Pi 3 but has been improved to allow for higher clock rates. The Pi 3B+ is a quad 1.4GHz CPU, a 200Mhz improvement over the Pi3. To do this they had to improve the cooling as the Pi 3 was significantly hotter than the Pi 2.
Wifi
The Pi 3B+ now supports 802.11ac wireless, which means it has 5GHz support. This results in higher speeds and less interference from microwaves and certain pieces of equipment. It also means it has shorter range and doesn't go through walls as well. 2.4GHz is still supported.
Ethernet
One of the biggest improvements is the Ethernet performance. As the Pi uses a single chip for the CPU, USB, Ethernet, and more, it can not support 1GBit Ethernet, it didn't even do 100 Mbit well (capped out around 60 MBit real life performance).
The Pi 3B+ now supports 1GBit Ethernet at a reduced rate, only 330MHz. Roughly 1/3rd 1Gbit potential speeds. This is a huge improvement over 60Mbit but still falls short of most systems these days. Still very usable for a $35 computer.
PoE
Finally!! Power over Ethernet, one thing that would really make the Pi amazing. Unfortunately, it isn't ready yet and is not included on the main board. BOO! Apparently, the PoE functionality will be an added module down the road.
Overall, it's a disappointing upgrade for those looking for a breakthrough improvement on the Pi. Likely why it is a Pi 3B+ and not a Pi 4. With the improvements of the Pi 3 (USD & Network Boot) and PoE, it makes a powerful device where you want to deploy many of these without outlets and hard disks. These two features are much bigger deal for some applications than most would assume.
Performance improvements are around 13% according to testers who got the device early.
While I plan on getting a few of these to replace my current Raspberry Pi's on my 3D printers, Home Theater System, and Game Consoles, I am disappointed it isn't a Pi 4. My biggest gripe about the Pi is the bus speed is so terribly slow even high-speed 95Mb/s SD cards run as slow as 0.50 MB/s during random writes. There are only two available cards I would ever recommend for a Pi as almost all of them perform very poorly with the underpowered SD bus. The small improvement of the Samsung EVO+ (first choice) and Sandisk Ultra Extreme results in a huge real-world performance improvement. Faster Ethernet is a really nice improvement and was much needed. I was really hoping for 4K but I know that's a pipe dream at this point as major improvements to the Raspberry Pi won't likely ever happen anytime soon.
The best part, true to their mission, the Raspberry Pi Foundation kept the price at $35. I highly recommend this device to anyone that has any interest in programming or electronics (or both!). It is an amazing device and makes fantastic gifts for children and even better bonding experiences for parents.
It will be a while before you can get your hands on the Pi 3B+ unless you live in the UK but it will be worth the wait. If this is your first Pi, you might want to try to snag a cheap Pi 3 that will likely be available cheap.
Image property of Raspberry Pi Foundation.
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great product good to know it's getting even better, raspberry PI is great i used it on my first miners :)
I have an engineering friend used a facial recognition system with some tweaks. Apparently you can download pre-existing code for the Raspberry Pi.
So what did my friend do with it? He painted a bad guy blue!!!! You see he, had a string of vandalisms that were specifically directed at him like wires and water lines cut. My friend decided to repurpose an air operated potato cannon to paint the perp blue. He was afraid that he would get into trouble if he painted a dog, cat, mailman, or child. So he used the raspberry Pi equipped with a camera and facial recognition software to prevent mistakes.
He set up a bait (cheap lawn ornament) that he rigged the ornament so it was difficult to remove and ran a trigger wire. The raspberry Pi prevented false firing. The potato cannon was filled with blue dye that you use in your washing machine to permanently dye clothes. The dye was mixed with shampoo and other ingredients. The cannon was hidden in a rosebush. One day he saw that he had a blue lawn and ran to check out the video record. He was definitely successful painting the bad guy blue. He also got video footage of the bad guy getting into the his car and driving away along with the license plate. The cops were called and the bad guy picked up.
Turns out that the reason was the bad guy had beef with the previous owner and didn't realize that they had moved and a very smart engineer moved in. Hahahahaha... He never pressed charges as the bad guy was a really bad guy that was wanted by the police and apparently discovered other things he was doing that put him away for a very long time.
@themarkymark, I Resteemed your article!
This is freaking legendary!! I love it.
I use a lot of Pi's, one project I always wanted to do is have a driveway camera that identifies when UPS/Fedex come and when certain friends show up. Training it on FedEx/UPS and different color vehicle types. Never had the time to work on it, but would be a fun project. Raspberry Pi's are really fun.
My friend also did something similar. He created license plate recognition. The software looks for motion, then looks for shapes that resembles license plates. After that, the software adjusts the plate image to correct for off angle image. Next he uses character recognition software to read the plate. The software finally draws a box around the plate and writes the plate number on the image of the vehicle.
My friend took it a step further and set his raspberry pi to text every time it detected a plate with the image of the vehicle and the plate number.
He had to shut the texting down because he was getting too many texts even though he lived on a cul de sac.
Speaking of blue, Bluetooth also got upped from 4.1 to 4.2:
IoT Capabilities:
Low-power IP (IPv6/6LoWPAN)
Bluetooth Smart Internet Gateways (GATT)
With BLE 4.2 Bluetooth Smart sensors can transmit data over the internet.
Security:
LE Privacy 1.2
LE Secure Connections
With new, more power efficient and highly secure features, BLE 4.2 provides additional benefits allowing only trusted owners to track device location and confidently pair devices.
Speed:
250% Faster
10x More Capacity
Compared to previous versions, BLE 4.2 enables 250% faster and more reliable over-the-air data transmission and 10x more packet capacity.
Source
Bus speed does kill it for the PI unfortunately I prefer spending a bit more on a mini pc as once you start including all the little things you need with the PI such as charger and SD card it's almost the same in price, and it packs a lot more punch and can natively support windows, although I do love the PI I need a bit more performance and less lag as I mainly use it as a media centre.
I find it puzzling that they haven't taken measures to improve the bus system.
After all - its clearly the weak link in this design - even without the added features.
Yep, eth and usb share the same bus... but it works for a slow(ish) NAS and ofc tons of other purposes.
The quintessential element of the "running a full node" starter pack.
I'm still loving that price point.
nice
Raspberry should create the own cryptocurrency that you can only mine on this device. :)
great information about computers. very interesting and helpful. thank you @themarkymark
Im waiting on more ram, the extra clock is nice but I think they can do more.
Oh, they can do much more, but I don't see anything changing. They are focused on embedded applications and will make very tiny tweaks to the consumer Pi and that's about it. The entire bus has to be gutted for something much faster as the SD bus causes the entire device to be insanely slow.
Wow. This out steemians
https://steemit.com/steemit/@braveit/fake-it-till-you-make-it-v1-1
It seems to be really distinctive disovery in field of technology,and it would be convenient too.......
Very good to know! Thanks for sharing, definitely know a few people who will love to hear about this! Love that way you put “worth the extra $0.00” lol
This is cool way better to code programs.
We need more information on pi. What's pi and its necessity? Please, we are eagerly waiting for your discussion. I think you have advanced knowledge on technology. I am just a learner and you are a learned about the topic.
I posted a link that talks a lot about what the Pi is.
Thanks a lot.
I have sent 1,000 SBD and link me to a @upmyvote but why not in upvote, thanks @themarkymark.
Thank for your upvote @upmyvote...
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Thanks for the information!
The Raspberry Pi is an amazing product, which got even better.
I was planning a home-project with the Pi 2, maybe now would be a good time to do it with the Pi 3
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Nice post
Great post love
Thanks for your post because I've been checking RapberryPi news for months and finally....nothing.
When I saw your post I was very happy to hear the news.
I'm just disappointed about the partially functional Gigabit but for 35$ it's already nice.
Thanks again for your article.
The ethernet will be the least of your problems, it's a huge upgrade from the existing Pi 3 which is a great device, the USB/SD bus speed is the real limitation on the device.
Greeeat ! :D
You got a 100.00% upvote from @bid4joy courtesy of @themarkymark!
Good job
😊 Thanks for sharing.
Raspberry Pi's. They are such a innovative little thing. I have a raspberry pi, but one of the older versions and this beats it by a lot. The Pi3B sounds really good, with lots of new and improved features. Thanks for announcing it to the steemit community, i know that lots of tech heads would love this product.
I've been looking forward to a new Raspberry Pi, and now we have one!