The Raspberry Pi is turning four today, and in celebration of this, they’ve now released the Raspberry Pi 3 – which packs a serious performance punch, at the same low price point.
In celebration of our fourth birthday, we thought it would be fun to release something new. Accordingly, Raspberry Pi 3 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Raspberry Pi 2), featuring:
- A 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU (~10x the performance of Raspberry Pi 1)
- Integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1
- Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1 and 2
All the previous Raspberry Pi boards will remain available, as long as the demand for them remains. In addition, over the course of the coming months, the userland of Raspbian will be moved to 64 bit.
I’m glad they added wifi. The $35 price point is good, but having to add an sd card and wifi dongle negates that a lot.
Why would you buy a WiFi dongle when it has WiFi included on board?
From my experience with my Pi3, the WiFi is a tad on the weedy side. Works well in reasonably close proximity to the router but pretty much dies once going upstairs etc. To be expected with the lack of an aerial. The small WiFi dongles were no better.
All I can come up with is:
* Lego MindStorms “Brick” replacement
* ChromeCast replacement
* MediaPlayer
All of these things currently cost 35 dollar or significantly more and could easily be replaced by this little beast.
We are using them for digital signage. They are great for that – cheap and reliable.
Another possibility: Advanced networked terminals (“thin clients”) able to inter-operate with several operating systems using different means of connection, and with the Pi 3, even wirelessly, with multimedia support and USB local (barcode or image) scanner or printer, attached to high-res flatscreen monitor or TV. 🙂
POS, kiosk, public access terminals. If i could use one to act like a chromecast I would, especially as a displa.y controller in a conference room.
I see it as finally, truly usable as a simple daily Linux workstation. Apart from the hard 1GB limit (due to the VideoCore IV architecture), spec-wise it’s actually on par with very capable ARM-based mini PCs that cost twice as much. Once they finally release accelerated X drivers for the GPU it will give Atom and even some Celeron based mini PCs a run for their money (again, as a Linux workstation).
I’m basing this on currently using the Pi 2 as just such a workstation with Ubuntu Mate, Slackware, Arch, and Rasbian, which is actually not an awful experience all around.
My climate control is run by a Raspberry Pi 2 using a ZWave dongle, several multi-sensors, and a ZWave thermostat.
I apply a weighted average of the temperatures in the house and can fine-tune the temperature to a tenth of a degree, and can separate heating and cooling setpoints by as little as one degree – both in Celsius.
It dropped my electric bill by 15%. I also have an algorithm to determine what the house actually feels like using humidity, but I am still testing its full range and effects before it goes live.
I wish they could have kept the “same low price point” here in Sweden. Instead we’re seeing a hefty price increase. Price at time of launch: B+: 349 SEK, 2B: 399 SEK, 3B: 499 SEK (58 USD). I suppose the justification is that they keep the price constant in USD and that the USD has increased quite a bit in value over the past year compared to e.g. the GBP and EUR. Are people seeing the same level of price increase in other countries?
I’m still getting one though (maybe even two). The built in wifi is such a great addition that I’d get it even if there were no other changes. USB dongles are such a pain to deal with. There’s always something that refuses to work the way it should. As someone who’s mostly using his Pis as cheap desktop computers I’m obviously also looking forward to the overall performance increase.
Unfortunately, one cannot do much about the fluctuations in exchange rate between the currency used to set the base price and that where one lives.
Hopefully, the relative price rankings of the Pi3 and other small single board products remain similar across the countries.
With the OSMC operating system, my Pi2 already makes a pretty decent audio & video player. I’m excited about picking up a Pi3 and trying it as a regular computer for net surfing, using a wireless keyboard, mouse and the TV as a monitor. The Pi3 specs look good enough for it to be usable.
Very cool. The Raspberry Pi foundation is also celebrating it’s 4th year. With the Raspberry Pi 3 being roughly 10 times the power of the original Raspberry Pi, imagine what a Raspberry Pi will be like 4 years from now?
My point is that if any of you are hesitating on jumping into the Raspberry Pi world because they’re not powerful enough for some tasks … they continue to get more powerful. Support for the platform also continues to grow. So the future is bright for the Rpi. Things just keep getting better. Apparently there is also an Rpi 3 A+ board coming out later in the year.
This is one more of those unanticipated runaway success stories about a product which fitting many un-expressed needs at roughly the right price point.
It also points to the continued existence of users who enjoy tinkering with CPUs -even with some limitations- as long as they do not cost arms and legs! Given the applications explored by many hobbyists, we may soon be able to say: “there is a circuit board for that”!
I’m really excited about its success as well. I also love seeing all the peripherals and other accessories that keep popping up. It’s still a new market with plenty of room for new, innovative, cool stuff. I usually go to Kickstarter and Indiegogo a few times a month to check out any new Raspberry Pi-oriented project that have shown up and maybe even back one or two of them.