Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B SBC manufactured in Japan

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is the first member of the third generation Raspberry Pi family. It follows on from the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B boards and came before the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+.

What is a Raspberry Pi?

A Raspberry Pi is a compact computer board which offers endless opportunities. Simply plug in your TV, keyboard, mouse and power supply, and you are ready to go. There is a whole family of Raspberry Pi’s available to you, each providing various functionalities. There are also add-on boards available to enable other uses, such as camera and LCD display modules.
The great thing about Raspberry Pi is that it is suitable for almost all age groups. Whether it’s introducing programming to children, or used by engineers to make complex computer-controlled systems, anyone can use one.

Pi 3 Model B vs. Pi 2 Model B (V1.2)

The upgrade from the Model 2 to Model 3 opens up your connectivity abilities. WLAN, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are all available on-board the later Model 3 boards. This new connectivity is ideal for your Internet of Things (IoT) designs as you can communicate much easier with other supported devices.
The processor speed has also increased from 900MHz to an impressive 1.2GHz. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B power input has also changed to 5.1V/2.5A.

What’s on-board?

Processor: Broadcom BCM2837 Quad core (ARM Cortex-A53) SoC
Memory: 1GB LPDDR2
Ethernet: 10/100 BaseT socket
USB: 4 x USB 2.0 ports
Connection: GPIO Header 40-pin
HDMI: Rev 1.3 and 1.4
Video: MIPI DSI display port, MIPI CSI camera port & 4 Pole stereo output and composite video port
Multimedia: Dual Core VideoCore IV® Multimedia Co-Processor. Provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode. Capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
Storage: microSD card slot for loading operating system and data storage
Power: USB connector for 5.1V / 2.5A dc

LOOKING FOR SOME INSPIRATION?

When we say that Raspberry Pi offers endless opportunities, we mean it. However, it doesn’t help you to understand how a Raspberry Pi board fits into your lifestyle or workplace. To help spark your ideas and get your project going, here are some things you might find the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B useful for:
• Learn to Programme - Raspberry Pi is a great tool to learn how to program and there are tonnes of resources available on the Pi Foundation website and other communities to help you.
• Teach to Programme - Raspberry Pi is used in schools all over the country, inspiring the engineers of tomorrow.
• Media Centre - play and stream TV channels and music.
• Wildlife Monitoring - Keep track of the wildlife in your garden, both day and night with the addition of the original or PINOIR camera modules.
• Retro Games Console - recreate your favourite games from your childhood, complete with a retro style joystick.
• Home Automation - enter the generation of the Internet of Things by setting up automated lighting, appliances or temperature control systems throughout your home.
• Lighting Show - impress your neighbours with a spectacular lighting show controlled your Raspberry Pi board.
• Industrial - use the Raspberry Pi to monitor areas of production, automate timely processes or even use for quality control.
For examples of projects and a community of people to help you get started, head over to DesignSpark (https://www.rs-online.com/designspark)

The Raspberry Pi Community

There is a huge sense of community around Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi site features projects, blogs and downloadable software for you to get stuck into, or even to help spark your ideas. There is also a Forum section where you can discuss topics and ask for help from other Raspberry Pi users. Help Guides and other documentation are available to help you get started on your project. Find all of this information at: https://www.raspberrypi.org/

Note

The Official Pi 3 Power Supply Unit is for the Pi 3 board only. The power supply unit is not for general purpose power supply.