Unboxing the Raspberry Pi 2

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B+ and robotics.

We received a Raspberry Pi 2 from Newark this morning!  John was so excited.

Raspberry Pi 2 and the Raspberry Pi B+ and the Raspberry Pi B for robotics.

We’ve come a long way in a year!

Notable Differences

  • There’s a chip on the bottom!
  • The Raspberry Pi 2 ships with a nice little instruction booklet.  This should be really helpful for new users.

Notable Similarities

  • Fortunately for us, the Raspberry Pi B+ and the Raspberry Pi 2 have a similar footprint.
  • The Raspberry Pi 2 still has all the same super-important adapters for setup: the ethernet is still there, and we still have 4 USB ports.
  • All 40 GPIO pins seem to be there (Critical for our robotics parts!).

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B+ and robotics.

Nice new addition: a printed manual!

Will (product) work with the Raspberry Pi 2?

Yes, we’re pretty sure it will.  From what we’ve read, in spite of adding 6x the speed of the older chip, the new Raspberry Pi 2 is very similar to the older models.   Over the next few days, we’ll be testing rigorously with the GoPiGo, the BrickPi, the GrovePi, and the Arduberry.  We are sure we’ll have to update the image with some new software.  But we’re sure our products and projects will work with the new Raspberry Pi.

We will report back soon!

We’ve got a few discussions popping up in our forums here, here, and here.

Discuss

Do you think the Raspberry Pi 2 will be better for robotics?  What wasn’t included you really wanted to see?  What made it in that you really liked?

1 Comment

  1. peter lin February 17, 2015

    I just compared building OpenCV with Raspberry Pi 2 B and it’s much faster compared to Pi 1 B+. Before it used to take over 5 hours, now it takes 1:34.

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