New Raspberry Pi 2

Today the new Raspberry Pi 2 just dropped for the same price as it’s predecessor the Raspberry Pi. The new Pi has a more powerful processor and twice the amount of RAM. This is what you can expect from the new Pi.

• A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance)
• 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory)
• Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1

I am so passionate about these devices because they are here to change the world. People, albeit adults or children can easily afford $35 for a complete single board computer. All they need to do is add a display, keyboard, mouse and they have a full blown computer. Alternatively there is a Raspberry Pi 1 A+ model with an even lower cost of $20 which does not include Ethernet or USB ports.

My son bought one last year actually got a lot of use out of it. It was his first exposure to Linux and within a couple of days he was using Python and learning how to stream YouTube on it.

The Raspberry Pi comes standard with GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins to interface with the outside world. With this interface, the Pi can receive input from a sensor or send a signal to an external LED for example.

There is a version of Minecraft ported to run specifically on the Pi which includes a Python API. This means you can control in-game elements with Python scripts.

With the faster processor, it’s said that a version of Windows 10 was being ported to Raspberry Pi 2.

For the last six months we’ve been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2. Microsoft will have much more to share over the coming months. The Raspberry Pi 2-compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers.

This is awesome that Microsoft sees the value of entering into this space. Debian based linux distribution named ‘wheezy’ has been the primarily go to operating system of choice.

This is pretty exciting news. People have found a ton of ways to use the Pi. I need to dust off my Raspberry Pi B+ and get to doing something exciting with it. This is mine pictured below wrapped in an Adafruit acrylic case.