Today the Raspberry Pi model B+ is officially announced. It’s a well polished upgrade of the previous model B rev 2. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one a bit early, so had time to examine, photograph, video and briefly try out the new Pi model B+ with HDMIPi.
Here’s what it looks like…
Raspberry Pi B+ front view
What’s New? What’s Changed?
The processor and board size are the same, but there are lots of changes. We now have…
- a metal micro SD card slot on the back. Having previously broken (and fixed) two of the plastic ones, I am delighted about this. If you were wondering why the official Swag Store NOOBS cards are micro-SD cards with an SD adaptor, now you know!
- a newly designed power circuit (A) with an efficient switching regulator. This means that if you’re running your Pi from batteries, you’ll be able to use it for longer between charges/replacement. If you’re not, it should use a bit less power, which is a good thing.
- composite video and audio combined (B) into a single socket. We now have a 4-pole 3.5mm socket that does the job of both composite video and stereo analog audio sockets from the model B. It’s much more compact and elegant than the previous solution. The analog audio quality has been improved as well.
- 4 USB ports onboard (C). Instead of the previous 2. This pretty much eliminates the need for a powered hub. Massive improvement.
- 40 GPIO pins (D) (up from 26) with 9 new GPIO ports, 2 DNC pins and 3 new GND pins. The P5 header is gone.
- Cables only on 2 sides now. Composite, audio and power have all been moved to the same side as the HDMI port. So two sides of the Pi now don’t have cables coming out of them.
- Better tolerance to low voltages. Many people had issues early on with inadequate power supplies. These should almost disappear now (apart from perhaps with some USB peripherals.) Also, it didn’t reboot when I hot-swapped a USB keyboard dongle. :)
- 4 mount holes. Rev 2 Pi had 2 holes, but they were not ‘officially’ mount holes. These are.
- Rounded corners. It still doesn’t fit in an Altoids tin without major surgery, but who really cares?
- A slightly smaller overall footprint because the USB ports don’t stick out much over the edge of the board.
Raspberry Pi Model B+ rear, showing metal micro SD slot
Raspberry Pi Model B+ annotated
It’s Still The Same Price (RRP)
The recommended retail price is still $35 + shipping and local taxes. Considering all the enhancements, it’s great that they’ve managed to keep the price down to this level.
Here’s a Video Walkround
Will My Add-ons Still Work?
Yes they will. Rather cleverly, they’ve kept the top 26 pins exactly the same for backward compatibility. But even cleverer than that, the next two are the DNC (Do Not Connect) pins, which are used for ID EEPROM only. What this means is that, if your add-on board protrudes just a bit, like the RasPiO® Breakout…
Raspberry Pi model B+ with RasPiO Breakout
…those two DNC pins are covered and no usable pins are blocked. Since a lot of boards will be like this, I think it was a genius placement of the DNC pins (where they’re least useful).
A few of the more complex and larger add-ons will not physically fit because of the new positioning of the ethernet and USB ports relative to the GPIO header. I’m thinking specifically of the Wolfson audio card (which uses the now deleted P5 header) and any ‘full-size’ boards that don’t have an extended header lifting them above the USB/ethernet ports.
What About the Pinouts?
Here’s a schematic showing the GPIO pinouts (click it to enlarge)…
Raspberry Pi B+ GPIO pinouts
Another New Addition to the Raspberry Pi Family
So in the history of the Raspberry Pi so far, major board releases have been…
- Model B rev 1 (Feb 2012)
- Model B rev 2 (Sep 2012)
- Model A (Feb 2013)
- Compute Module (June 2014)
- Model B+ (July 2014)
Here’s a shot of the whole family together…
The Raspberry Pi family July 2014
It’s A Major Improvement
In my opinion, the new Raspberry Pi model B+ is a really well thought out upgrade. Congratulations to Gordon, James and the team for making so many improvements. I gather this has been worked on, quietly, for the best part of a year.
It’s hard to see how the hardware could be improved much further now without starting again from scratch with a new(er) system-on-a-chip (SoC). I expect that will happen one day, some way off in the future. But for now, let’s enjoy our greatly improved Raspberry Pi model B+. What do you think of the improvements and which is your favourite?
More GPIO pins, while keeping the add-on compatibility.
And the smaller footprint, with only 2 sides used for cables. Nice for cases and cable management :)
Thanks for the review, and its a brilliant upgrade. Still the mature Raspberry Pi B, but with much improved connectivity like many more GPIO, 2 more USB, no extending SD parts, connectors only on two sides, less power drain. Love the 40 pin connector, now i can reuse all those old IDE flatcables ;). The I2C EEPROM ID thing is interesting. I suspect it will be active before booting an OS and allow an addon board init?
Yes I think that’s the idea. An ID chip will preconfigure the GPIO ports at boot for the board it identifies.
[…] On Alex Eames’ Raspi.TV (best photography here!) […]
Great video, Alex. Love all the close-ups and detailed explanations
Thanks Mike.
I strongly suspect that the “RUN” header on B+ is identical to the “P6” header on the Rev 2 A and B boards.
I bet it is too, but I’m not going to short it in case it’s an abbreviation for “light the blue touch paper and run” :)
Yes. Jonathan’s confirmed it is the same as the old P6 header… http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=577791#p577791
[…] This is very exciting news – many great blogs covering the story, I will follow suit : testing a B+ as we speak. Other excellent reviews: http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=10323 & https://raspi.tv/2014/raspberry-pi-model-b-launched-today […]
Looks great! Alex, as king of all things GPIO, do you know if (or when) these extra pins will be supported with RPi.GPIO? (I see WiringPi supports them already, but I’m less familiar with that).
They are already supported if you use the BCM GPIO numbering scheme.
Brilliant – thank you!
And it sounds like an update will probably be coming soon ;-)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=577702#p577702
You say that the extra new GPIO pins can be used using the ‘bcm’ numbering method, but can you still use the ‘board’ method to call them during GPIO setup etc?
Yes, you can still use the ‘board’ method, but only with the first 26 pins.
Once there’s an update to RPi.GPIO, you’ll be able to use board with all the pins. For now, if you want to use the new pins, it’s BCM or nothing. But I bet there’ll be a new update within a few days. Ben Croston has already got a B+ :)
Alex
On the ‘old’ model B rev 2, there was two PCB through connectors next to the regulator RG2. to which I fitted a small pushbutton to use as a hard reset, Is there any reset take off points on the B+
regards
Derek
Yes. I found out yesterday that the P6 reset header on the B is the RUN header on the B+
[…] nice video from the guys over at Sparkfun that does a comparison between the B and the B+. I prefer Alex Eames’ video, but this one has a guy in a white […]
Hello Alex..Very nice site, with brilliant videos..Surprisingly nobody have mentioned the LAN9512 chip update to LAN9514 which has enabled the additional 2 USB ports which was mentioned above.
Hope to meet you on the next CamJam..:-)
I guess it’s just the next level of detail really. All my info came from a chat I had with Gordon Hollingworth a few months ago under NDA/strict embargo. I took some notes at the time, but not that kind of chipset detail. Don’t forget this blog was written ahead of the official launch and published at the exact moment the embargo was lifted. :)
Thanks for everything you have put into this site Alex.
Hope to see an spi tab here soon ;)
I was going to suggest https://raspi.tv/?s=spi but as “SPI” is included inside the strings “RASPI.TV”, “RASPICAM” and “RASPIO” it turns up a *lot* more results than you might expect ;-)
However looking through the list, it does include
https://raspi.tv/how-to-enable-spi-on-the-raspberry-pi
https://raspi.tv/2013/using-the-mcp23017-port-expander-with-wiringpi2-to-give-you-16-new-gpio-ports-part-3
https://raspi.tv/2014/bitscope-micro-logic-analyser-demystifies-spi-on-the-pi
[…] I have just paid for my new Raspberry Pi B+ and I should have it on Friday if all goes to plan. Check out the post on its launch on Raspi.tv […]
[…] There is also a great detailed look at the NEW Model B+ at RaspTV : Raspberry Pi Model B+ Launched Today […]
[…] 3, column 3 is the model B+. This was launched on 14 July 2014 and was a major change in form factor. Rounded corners, corner mount holes, 40 GPIO pins, 4 USB […]