Raspberry Pi 3 to sport Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE


 
Steve_M

Steve_M

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/26/raspberry_pi_3/

Also looks to be 64bit.

A couple of pics from the article above:

raspberry_pi3_top.jpg

raspberry_pi3_bottom.jpg


A cover pic of the March edition of MagPi:

CcLcgtzUEAAp9NE.jpg
 
Wow they just keep adding on don't they? I'm glad they've decided to include the WiFi onboard finally, I can hear the collective screams of "Nooooo!" over at Edimax as they just lost a giant chunk of sales for people who buy one or two of their adapters (assuming the first one wasn't working properly). I'm interested to see what the power usage is overall now since they recommend a 2.5A power supply now (although they say it is for USB devices). Nice that it stayed the same footprint though.

I still think the CHIP is the better deal, especially considering that HeaterMeter doesn't need 10x the performance of even the original Pi! It is $9 vs $35 and includes the storage (and a LiPo charger which works as a UPS to protect HeaterMeter against brownouts). I do love how they keep putting out an improved product every year at the same price point though, although now I would say they've essentially dropped the price by $10 because you don't need a wifi dongle.
 
I fully agree with the RasPi vs CHIP argument for the HeaterMeter. What would be nice is a Gen 2 Pi Zero with onboard wifi, selling for $10.
 
I waited on getting a Heatermeter due to the RP3 coming out soon with onboard wifi and ble. With these being sold at the same price ($35) as the RP2, this is exciting. Any one know how long, approx, before we'll see a revision of the Heatermeter? Hopefully before the summer. I'm ready to pull the trigger now that the RP3 is out.
 
FrankG said:
I waited on getting a Heatermeter due to the RP3 coming out soon with onboard wifi and ble. With these being sold at the same price ($35) as the RP2, this is exciting. Any one know how long, approx, before we'll see a revision of the Heatermeter? Hopefully before the summer. I'm ready to pull the trigger now that the RP3 is out.
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My assumptions:

The wifi on the RasPi 3 will probably not be backported to work with OpenWrt 12.09, which is what the project currently uses. There are plans to use the latest version of OpenWrt, but I would not expect any substantial update on that until probably closer till the end of the year or maybe later. It's a pretty big undertaking.

The path of least resistance to getting up and running would be to get a kit with the RasPi model B from the HeaterMeter store. Don't let the RasPi sway your decision. The brains of the HeaterMeter is primarily on the software side + Arduino code.
 
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Eben Upton, one of the founders of Raspberry Pi said there will be a Pi3 version of the A+ later this year that will have wifi on it. That will probably be a better fit for the HeaterMeter. No need for the bulk of the Ethernet jack and 4 USB ports.
 
FrankG said:
I waited on getting a Heatermeter due to the RP3 coming out soon with onboard wifi and ble. With these being sold at the same price ($35) as the RP2, this is exciting. Any one know how long, approx, before we'll see a revision of the Heatermeter? Hopefully before the summer. I'm ready to pull the trigger now that the RP3 is out.
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Exactly what Steve said. You'll save $10 not buying the separate wifi adapter but you'll be waiting a year or more before the software works on it. Sure we can get it to boot on the Pi3 tomorrow, but we'll need to build support for the wifi adapter which may mean copious patching of the kernel tree. I really wish the Pi foundation would create a buildroot Pi image instead of Debian. HeaterMeter's entire linux distro zipped is 7MB and they could do something similar which is just what you need to get it booted.

I'll be evaluating effort level of the different options we have for the next HeaterMeter software release soon and determine if there's any way we can integrate their kernel into our system rather than having to go to Patchytown to get OpenWrt to play ball with us. This would make supporting new Pis and features easier. I also need to consider how CHIP can also use the same codebase.

That said, you can't tell the difference at all in speed between HeaterMeter on a Pi at 700MHz vs a Pi2 a 900MHz so the performance improvements are a moot point. If performance is what you're after, HeaterMeter is fully up and running in like 20 seconds from when you plug it in. Even Pi2s take much longer than that so you could technically say we have more performance!
 
If only they would add wifi to the PiZero and then produce sufficient supply so that we can actually purchase it for the $5 they promised in the press release. :P
 
Steve_M said:
Have you seen https://github.com/gamaral/rpi-buildroot?
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Yeah there's actually a bunch of unofficial RPi buildroot forks out there, but I don't really feel comfortable using them because you never know what level of maintenance people are going to put into them. If there was an official version that I knew the Pi foundation planned to support I'd feel much better. There's so much work involved in jumping platforms that I'd hate to jump to one that would then require me to do all the upkeep on.
 
Bryan Mayland said:
Yeah there's actually a bunch of unofficial RPi buildroot forks out there, but I don't really feel comfortable using them because you never know what level of maintenance people are going to put into them. If there was an official version that I knew the Pi foundation planned to support I'd feel much better. There's so much work involved in jumping platforms that I'd hate to jump to one that would then require me to do all the upkeep on.
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I see your point on the maintenance concern. What caught my attention of that particular buildroot project is the fact that it does seem to be actively maintained with 26,000+ commits, 32 releases and 350+ contributors.
 
Yeah I didn't notice the regular releases, but the 26,000 commits and 350 contributors come from the buildroot team itself. When you clone a git you get all the commit history so there's no way of knowing how many are actually done by this group themselves. I will take a closer look at it when I get into that stage though, thanks!
 
One thing to keep in mind with all this integrated Wifi stuff is a lack of external antenna. I dunno about a lot of yall but an external antenna is crucial to our team's setup, as I can easily communicate with our pit when I'm 2-3 booths down. It also is crucial to my home setup since my house's wifi "environment" is overloaded with signals, so i can use all the power and signal strength I can get.

Last year I used an adapter without an antenna and i would lose signal after about 20ft, and we're talking Line of Sight at a competition.
 
NickMV said:
One thing to keep in mind with all this integrated Wifi stuff is a lack of external antenna. I dunno about a lot of yall but an external antenna is crucial to our team's setup, as I can easily communicate with our pit when I'm 2-3 booths down. It also is crucial to my home setup since my house's wifi "environment" is overloaded with signals, so i can use all the power and signal strength I can get.

Last year I used an adapter without an antenna and i would lose signal after about 20ft, and we're talking Line of Sight at a competition.
Click to expand...

If I were doing a competition, I would use something like this instead of running in AP mode. Although it is an extra cost.
 
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