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The Raspberry Pi, a series of credit card–sized single-board computers developed in England, by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intent to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and developing countries. The original Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2 are manufactured in several board configurations through licensed manufacturing agreements with Newark element14 (Premier Farnell), RS Components and Egoman. Now, the company is up with the latest Raspberry Pi 3 computer, at the US $35. The Raspberry Pi 3 has been packed with a more powerful 64-bit CPU, and for the first time, has built-in wireless capabilities. The credit-card sized Pi 3 is up to 60 percent faster than its predecessor.
The new Raspberry Pi 3 has been incorporated with features like 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4, which weren't supported by its predecessors. Wireless communication was a highly demanded feature by users in Raspberry Pi 3 after being relegated to Ethernet in previous models. It also has a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, which runs at 1.2GHz. The processor is used in mobile devices and even servers and is a big upgrade from the 32-bit 900MHz Cortex-A7 on Pi 2. The rest of the features haven't changed from Pi 2. It has an HDMI port, Ethernet, MicroSD and four USB ports. It runs a Broadcom VideoCore IV 3D graphics processor that can play 1080p video at 60 frames per second, and has 40 GPIO pins, and display and camera interfaces.
Raspberry Pi has developed a cult following since the first computer was launched four years ago. It has spawned the development of robots, electronics, gadgets and even a Bitcoin ATM. But Pi 3 will bring a broader set of innovations to the table, particularly with the cloud in the mix. For one, the wireless features will allow users to build rudimentary smart homes by hooking up Raspberry Pi 3 to Bluetooth-based appliances, lighting or air-conditioning systems. Information from devices could be hauled to cloud services for analysis via wireless.
The Pi 3 could also be used to develop home security systems or "health hubs," where data is collected from health monitoring devices and sent to the cloud, Upton said. It's much like Fitbit, which sends health information from smartwatches to the cloud, where the data is tracked and compiled to recommend diets and workouts. The new features in Raspberry Pi 3 align well with Microsoft's Azure cloud service, which will provide remote automation, security, analytics and other services. Azure works hand-in-hand with the Windows 10 IoT Core OS.
However, some key features like ZigBee, which is key to home automation and IoT, are missing from Pi 3. Zigbee could have been included in the $35 price, but Bluetooth is the future of short-range wireless communications, so these features have not been included in the latest release.
Raspberry Pi is also planning a modular version of the Pi 3, which will have similar capabilities but be packaged on a board that could be installed on computers. A shipping date for the board wasn't provided.
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