What is Raspberry Pi ?
Raspberry Pi, a computer smaller than a credit card, has become a real hit! The latest third generation of the famous Malinka - RaspberryPi 3 Model B+ is a minicomputer with enough power for desktop applications. Thanks to the integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it is no longer necessary to buy USB wireless modules.
Features of the Raspberry Pi 3B+
On the 85.6×56×21 mm board there is a new central unit - SoC Broadcom BCM2837B0 chip , with four 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 cores , at 1.2 GHz. The latest Raspberry is equipped with integrated graphics, Videocore IV, clocked faster - 400 MHz.
The minicomputer also has a built-in 1 GB of 900 MHz LPDDR2 RAM and a radio chip. Cypress CYW43455 which provides dual-band (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) Wi-Fi 802.11n/ac and Bluetooth 4 .2/LE. The board is also equipped with a USB/Gigabit Ethernet controller (100/1000 Mbit/s) SMSC LAN7515 with PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) function using a dedicated overlay and four USB 2.0 ports. It has a large HDMI output and an audio/video minijack output that is extremely useful for desktop applications. As standard, the minijack is equipped with a CSI camera connector, a serial interface for DSI display, and a microUSB power connector. It is of course equipped with a 40-pin GPIO connector, thanks to which Malina has become so popular for electronics and control purposes. The storage is a microSD card that needs to be purchased.
Additives to Raspberry PI 3B+
Raspberry can be equipped with a useful housing available in several colours. Dedicated accessories are also available: HD(1080p) camera, capacitive touch screen, overlay for power over Ethernet and many sensors supporting educational projects.
Why buy Raspberry PI 3B+
Raspberry gives us the opportunity to work with the latest version of Raspbian software, but through the NOOBS installer it is possible to install two other operating systems: OSMC_Pi2 (an easy-to-use multimedia center) and Windows 10 IoT Core (for users used to Microsoft's environment).
Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ can be bought in our shop for 189 PLN. The older RaspberryPi 3B model is also available in the shop's offer and is still supported by the Raspberry organization.
At the moment no competitor can match the Raspberry Pi in terms of available community, documentation and software. And a free license for Mathematics may encourage many students to buy.