New Raspberry Pi looks interesting...

[JamesF]

A couple of the niggles I have with the current RPi for astro use are that it only has two USB ports and that it can't power much itself.  Looks like both of those may have been addressed with the new B+ model.  It apparently has four USB ports rather than the current two, and thanks to better power management is able to power more USB devices.  I might have to have a look at one, though there do appear to be quite a number of potential competitors now.

James

[JamesF]

Other changes are a switch to microSD from SD card for storage, and more GPIO pins.  Sadly the USB ports are still only USB2.  It would be nice if all machines with USB ports used USB3 now.

James

[Dubhar]

I've found that the competitors have outdid the raspberry pi for a while (beagleboard and olimex for example), the B+ seams to be an improvement and the 4xUSB is probably the most attractive improvement. Im surprised its still a sup 1GHz processor.

[bobmoss]

I think the biggest upgrade fro me on the B+ is the new upgraded power circuitry. They have moved to switching rather than linear regulators. They have also added brownout protection so you can now plug in/out USB devices (like WiFi dongles) without it resetting the Pi.

[JamesF]

They have also added brownout protection so you can now plug in/out USB devices (like WiFi dongles) without it resetting the Pi.

Ah, yes, I've had a few problems with that sort of thing when plugging in cameras or even keyboards.

James

[bobmoss]

It's one of the reasons I stopped using my Pi. That and it's "feature" of corrupting stuff on the SD card if you (accidentally) pulled the power out.

[pete_l]

I've found that the competitors have outdid the raspberry pi for a while (beagleboard and olimex for example), the B+ seams to be an improvement and the 4xUSB is probably the most attractive improvement. Im surprised its still a sup 1GHz processor.

The reason is that the Pi is a computational dead-end.

While it was innovative at the time, a mere 2 years ago, the developers took 6 years to get the thing from concept to working. During that time, the world changed and their design was pretty much obsolete before the first unit was sold. So while the Pi is definitely successful, it doesn't really have anywhere it can go.

The designers can't add more RAM, they can't upgrade the graphics, they can't get a faster processor.

So while it will remain very popular, over time the Pi-ers will find that it's capabillities are falling further and further behind. Now, for most applications that doesn't matter. If you want something that will play some games, or act as a basic, silent, media centre then it's great. But unless the designers decide to break a lot of compatibility (which might not be such a big deal, if the software layer remains the same) we won't see 1GHz++++ or octo-cores or 4K video on it.

But for most jobs it's still very usable and beats most other SBCs due to its very large base of user code and projects.

[JamesF]

It's one of the reasons I stopped using my Pi. That and it's "feature" of corrupting stuff on the SD card if you (accidentally) pulled the power out.

I guess that's down to the use of the SD card as a hard disk, effectively.  Pull the power out of a normal PC and you'd not really expect it to come back without some disk corruption.  It might be possible to mount the filesystems in synchronous write mode to prevent that, but it would impact performance quite hideously.

James

[riklaunim]

Raspberry can't have USB3 as that SoC doesn't support it - and they quite likely are forced to use it for some time. Also if you want to use some ARM for astrophotography then RK3188 dongles are getting cheaper than RPi (while offering newer and quad core RK3188 CPU and 2 GB of RAM). They can run Linux (Linuxium, Picuntu). But still... x86 laptops are getting cheaper and cheaper

[bobmoss]

I guess that's down to the use of the SD card as a hard disk, effectively. Pull the power out of a normal PC and you'd not really expect it to come back without some disk corruption. It might be possible to mount the filesystems in synchronous write mode to prevent that, but it would impact performance quite hideously.

James

[bobmoss]

I guess that's down to the use of the SD card as a hard disk, effectively. Pull the power out of a normal PC and you'd not really expect it to come back without some disk corruption. It might be possible to mount the filesystems in synchronous write mode to prevent that, but it would impact performance quite hideously.

James

I think the problem is that I'm used to working with arduinos and I forget that the Pi is in fact an embedded computer.

[orly_andico]

i also like this new pi.

do i wish there were a quad core version? of course.  but the single-core pi is surprisingly competent for stuff like mount and CCD control.

heck, i do lots of stuff with an Arduino which has 1/50 the compute power.