Designing Raspberry Pi 400

It’s been a journey, but it’s finally here, and I can talk about the secret Raspberry Pi 400 project! I’ll also try to cover some of the questions you asked following Eben’s announcement of Raspberry Pi 400 yesterday.

Four years in the making

It’s been over four years since the original idea of a Raspberry Pi inside a keyboard was discussed, before I even started working at Raspberry Pi Towers. Initially, the plan was for a kit with all the parts needed for people simply to open the box and get started by connecting the accessories to a “classic” credit-card sized Raspberry Pi. The challenge was that we needed a mouse and a keyboard: if we could manufacture a mouse and a keyboard, we could make a complete kit. How hard could it be? Then, within a day of our announcing our new keyboard and mouse, we saw a blog from someone who had milled out the keyboard and integrated a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ into it.

Our jaws dropped – we were impressed but we couldn’t say a word. Then others did the same with a Raspberry Pi Zero, and by that point we kind of expected that. We knew it was a good idea.

The keyboard and mouse were the big things we needed to sort out: once the quality control and supply chain were in place for those, we could move to fitting keyboard matrices to Raspberry Pi 400s, and achieve final assembly in Sony’s manufacturing facility in Wales. We had first planned to make a Raspberry Pi 3-based version, but it was clear that getting such a complex item into product wouldn’t happen until after we’d launched Raspberry Pi 4, and this would make the new product seem like a runner-up. So, instead, we started work on the Raspberry Pi 4-based version as soon as the design for that was finalised.

A fresh, new Raspberry Pi 4

The board inside the housing is essentially a Raspberry Pi 4 unit, but with a fresh PCB design. It has the same USB and Ethernet system as the Raspberry Pi 4, but one of the USB2.0 ports is dedicated to the keyboard.

Left-handed?

We have already seen a few comments about the USB ports being on the left side of the unit, and the fact that this makes the mouse cable cross over for most right-handed users. The PCB shape had to be defined early on so that the industrial designers could get on with the housing design, and I then stared endlessly at the PCB layout, trying to get one of the USB ports to route to the right side without wrecking the signal integrity of the memory or the HDMI; I could not find a way to do this. Left-handed folks and Bluetooth mouse-owners will be happy at least!

Micro HDMI

Raspberry Pi 400 has dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 5.0. Like Raspberry Pi 4, it has dual micro HDMI output which achieves up to 4K video. It would have been lovely to have had full-size HDMI connectors, but in order to achieve this we would have to remove other functions, or make a bulkier unit. However, the kit does come with a micro HDMI-to-HDMI cable to cheer you all up.

We kept the GPIO connector since it is loved so much by beginners and experts alike, and this is after all a Raspberry Pi – we want people to be able to use it for tinkering and prototyping. The HAT functionality works better with an extender cable, which you can buy from numerous websites.

1.8GHz!

Raspberry Pi 400 has the same circuit layout of the power management, processor, and memory as Raspberry Pi 4, but with one major difference: we’ve adjusted the operating point to 1.8GHz! And did I mention cooling? We’ve solved the cooling challenge so users don’t have to give this any thought. Raspberry Pi 400 contains a heat spreader that dissipates the heat across the whole unit, front and back, so that no part of it will feel too hot to touch. In fact, there is enough thermal margin to overclock it, if you’re so inclined.

Why not the Compute Module?

Some folks have asked us why we did not fit the Raspberry Pi Compute Module inside. The reason is that above a certain scale, it generally makes more sense to go with a custom PCB rather than a module with a carrier board. With hundreds of thousands of Raspberry Pi 400 units in the first instance, we are above that scale.

Turn it off and on again

We also have a feature that is completely new to Raspberry Pi products: an on/off button! Power off is achieved by holding down Fn+F10 for two seconds. This is a soft control that negotiates with Linux to shut down, so you don’t corrupt your memory card or your USB drive. Power can be restored by pressing F10 (or Fn+F10).

Prototyping

An early unit going through thermal analysis

A lot of love went into making this the best possible product we can manufacture, and it has been through extensive alpha testing and compliance testing. I thought I would show you the insides of a very early prototype. There are already some teardown videos online if you want to see how Raspberry Pi 400 is put together; it has not changed much from this:

Inside one of the first Raspberry Pi 400 units – 3D-printed and CNC-machined. ~£1500 each to build!

Raspberry Pi 400 kit

The official Raspberry Pi mouse has been a lovely product to have available where Raspberry Pi 400 is concerned, because now we can provide a complete kit of official matching Raspberry Pi parts that looks fantastic on your desk. The kit comes with the SD card already programmed and inserted, so on Christmas day, you just need to plug it into the family TV and start coding. No frantic searches for somewhere that sells memory cards!

Top view of a woman's hands using the Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard and official Raspberry Pi mouse

The kit includes:

  • Raspberry Pi 400 computer with choice of six keyboard countries (more to follow)
  • Official Raspberry Pi mouse
  • Raspberry Pi USB-C DC power supply for the appropriate region
  • SD card ready-fitted in the unit with the latest software release installed
  • micro HDMI to HDMI cable
  • Jewel box to store the SD card
  • Fourth-edition Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide book with instructions for getting started with Raspberry Pi 400, as well as loads of things you can do with it

Ode to Commodore

Finally, a bit of fun to finish with. On Christmas morning 1985, I opened the polystyrene box of a Commodore 64 computer and the world switched on for me. It had the best games and the best sound, and it was easy to program. We think the combination of gaming and programming still works today, but we’ve come a long way since 1985. Here’s a chart to show how a Commodore 64 and a Raspberry Pi 400 compare.

I particularly like the benchmark increase for less than half the power. This makes Raspberry Pi 400 almost a million times more efficient at processing data.

We do hope this bring smiles to the faces of those fortunate enough to get one by Christmas. The factory has been running flat-out for the last two months building up stock – order yours soon though, since they’ll sell quickly! 

Special thanks to…

Alwyn Roberts, Andy Liu, Anthony Morton, Antti Silventoinen, Austin Su, Ben Stephens, Brendan Moran, Craig Wightman, Daniel Thompsett, David Christie, David John, David Lenton, Dominic Plunkett, Eddie Thorn, Gordon Hollingworth, Helen Marie, Jack Willis, James Adams, Jeremy Wang, Joe Whaley, Keiran Abraham, Keri Norris, Kuanhsi Ho, Laurent Le Mentec, Mandy Oliver, Mark Evans, Michael Howells, Mike Buffham, Mike Unwin, Peter Challis, Phil Elwell, Rhys Polley, Richard Jones, Rob Matthews, Roger Thornton, Sherman Liu, Simon Lewis, Simon Oliver, Tim Gover, Tony Jones, Viktor Lundström, Wu Hairong, and all the alpha testers and resellers who made Raspberry Pi 400 possible.

198 comments

Matt avatar

“We kept the GPIO connector” … I hope this was a really short discussion with no objections!

CooliPi avatar

Yeah. But does the power circuitry turn off 5V to USB ports and GPIO connector when it soft-powers down? Users should know, whether it is safe to remove/insert a GPIO enabled add-on card. Sometimes tinkering with those GPIO pins involves accidentally shorting it with an oscilloscope probe, for example.

Ed avatar

The accidental short is a big risk. I think this different orientation of the port, necessitating adapters for a lot of HATs anyway, would have been a great opportunity to switch to a female connector. Or perhaps the short protection is a lot better on this new board, which does have other power line changes?

Jeremiah avatar

I think it’s a bit of a cart and horse issue. The beauty of the pi has always been the emergent devices and peripherals. I’m sure once this has been on the market for a while and in the hands of hackers, we’ll see plenty of accessories specifically designed for this form-factor. Maybe a low-profile female adapter will be one of the first!

Carlos Luna avatar

Actually, short circuit protection is better on this model.

Paul Liversuch avatar

I read loads about this and watched several video clips and it looks brilliant. I like the comparison to a Commodore 64 – I’m an Amiga man myself!
Just one thought – why didn’t you add a ‘trap door’ for installing an SSD?
Will you be making an 8Gb version later?
Best regards, Paul.

AndyMac avatar

Could this be the ultimate A600mini?
I had the 600 as a kid and loved it, I’m now just aware of a 40ish gig whload thingy with everything ever written for amiga. Could this be the pinnacle that Amiga was striving for???

R. Prabhu avatar

I was shocked indeed to find out that 3.5mm audio out socket has been removed from the Pi 400 design without caring about those who need that input for their speakers / headphones. It seems Pi is no longer inclusive of people from all walks of life instead gravitating towards premium market.

Andy avatar

You could always use an usb audio adapter. Hardly costs anything. Your comment is kind of odd, coz I think including the audio device would have made it targeting premium consumers. Remember it’s still a pi, not an entertainment gadget. If they removed GPIO, then what you said would make sense.

Andrew avatar

Yes, no mention of this in the article. I would like Simon Martin to comment on this decision. What factors were involved ?

Ben avatar

I have been playing around with loads of Pis since the time the first version was released but thinking back, I never really had the need of plugging in a headphone to the Pi directly, except maybe once and even then I ended up using the audio out port of the monitor the Pi was connected to. I don’t think I would be missing the 3.5 mm hole, much less shocked in anyway, even if they took it off the actual Pi board itself, let alone this keyboard!

fzwo avatar

Had my first Openelec connected to a Soundbar via 3.5mm jack. The result was horrible, audioemulation via Processor was no strong point of the Pi Architecture. I have been tinkering with HDMI to analog adapters and Audio Hats since then, so I also think, that loosing the 3,5mm jack is not a big loss at all…

Chris Amadeus avatar

I agree totally, but I still love my Pi400 it reminds me of when I first purchased my Atari ST

Mikael Bonnier avatar

I also use the 3.5 mm connector to connect to a HiFi amplifier with my Raspberry Pi 4 B 8 GB. It’s also good to be able to connect a composite screen. I could use a USB headset connector, a chargeable Bluetooth to 3.5 mm adapter, or an HDMI audio extractor, but it would be better if 3.5 mm was built in. My monitors doesn’t have HDMI, but I use HDMI to DVI-D adapters.

Marcelo avatar

I totally agree with you. This thing is, and looks amazing, but a LOT of the nostalgia it brings back is related to the 8-16 bit computers form factor. I just ordered mine and only now i realize that the AV output was removed. :( I still have CRT tv for old consoles and to complete the experience running 8-16 bit computer emulators the AV out will be missed. ;( Not only for audio. And even for audio there’s many applications for Pi that are targed to audio/midi/music output, and all the previous pi have the AV, even the Pi 4 that has dual HDMI still has the AV. There’s nothing “odd” on whish to have it here too.

Mikael Bonnier avatar

The Raspberry Pi Zero has pin holes to connect to composite video & hopefully the Raspberry Pi 400 also have similar, and maybe one could run a cable through the Kensington Security Slot.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=202916
About audio you could connect some components to the GPIO port.

Steve Spence avatar

Bluetooth audio is all the rage these days. Have not used a audio cable in some time. https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/bluetooth-audio-raspberry-pi-3

James Carroll avatar

It seems to me the headphone socket is more critical for a mobile situation where you would be using the standard Pi form factor anyway. In a desktop setting usually you’ll either run audio through a pass through on the monitor as I have or utilize a cheap USB sound card.

Henrik avatar

I agree – leaving out the audio output is a loss.
Talking about the Pi’s in general i rather feel that skipping the analog video output and bringing in a microphone input would be the right thing to do.
With only three USB ports, using one for mouse, one for USB sound card makes only one left for other purposes.
Audio output (and input) is not only about music – lots of experimenting relates to generating and sampling sound.

David Sutton avatar

I agree, this certainly is an issue for many especially code clubs and schools who need audio. Most will have older monitors with no audio. Headphones are also preferable to reduce the overall noise in the room. I’ve now tried 3 USB audio devices headphones, speakers and a higher end sound card. None work. I haven’t found a list of proven devices and verifying that mine weren’t supported took quite a lot of effort. You need to be reasonably familiar with LINUX, as the most common things to try require investigating config files, running alsa tools and editing alsa files once one have identified the changes required for your device. I understand that supported devices will just work, unfortunately I have quite a few that don’t.

rpiMike avatar

Got mine – its awesome – thank you Pi team.
https://youtu.be/3aJFM-LA1jQ

Daniel Radcliffe avatar

I really want one of these now.

The only thing that’s missing is the CSI connector

Procyon avatar

First off, thanks for a brilliant design. The Raspberry Pi 400 is destined to become an instant classic in computer hardware design. I bought one the minute I saw it on launch day for $77.50 (inclusive of tax, with free delivery) from Cytron Malaysia. Absolutely incredible value for so much computing joy! My unit is scheduled to arrive later today. I can barely wait.

Clay Zahrobsky avatar

Awesome product, but I want to know where one can get a coffee mug like that!

Ashley Whittaker avatar

I know The Pi Hut and Pimoroni have them ?

Anders avatar

I got my mug like that from the shop in Grand Arcade. It was my office mug before I became a work-from-homer.

Ken avatar
Wen Chen avatar

Thank you for making Pi 400. I also got a C64 in 1986 that got me started with programming, which has an subset of Unix 6th edition cartridge. I like to request for your consideration a 8GB memory edition of Pi 400.

Procyon avatar

Looking at the teardown photos from Jeff Geerling and Tom’s Hardware, there seems to be sufficient empty space inside the keyboard case to fit a slim M.2 2280 SATA or NVMe enclosure. Specifically, the empty space just to the left of the Gigabit port and BOURNS SM51625L chip. I’m thinking we could Dremel a circular hole through the Kensigton key-socket to allow a USB cable to connect the internal M.2 SSD to the external USB 3.0 socket. Since the SSD enclosure is all metal, if we can get the heatsink-plate to rest over the metal SSD casing, the SSD’s heat can be conducted to the heatsink-plate as well, keeping thermals in check. I don’t mind voiding my warranty just to get an internally mounted SSD in my Raspberry Pi 400.

Fred Aunger avatar

I totally agree the one thing it needs is the availability of disk storage of the ssd type. I hope this mod can be included in the next release of hardware.

Procyon avatar

Why no RTC again? I can understand about not adding a SATA or NVMe slot to the motherboard to keep manufacturing costs down, but surely adding an RTC chip and coin-cell battery would not have blown the cost-envelope of the design? Relying on an internet connection to sync to an NTP server is not too reliable an option, especially in schools or homes located in rural areas outside of broadband coverage. I am curious as to what the thinking was behind omitting an RTC from the RPi 400.

W. H. Heydt avatar

Cost, probably.

Anyway, just connect an RTC to the GPIO, as usual. The ones I use these days use pins 1 to 6, so that would neatly prevent accidental shorts between 5v and 3.3v pins.

Procyon avatar

I have four Raspberry Pi 4Bs and every one of them has a DS3231 RTC module stuck to their GPIO pins. These RTC modules are so cheap (I bought them retail at $1 each) that at the scale RPT is manufacturing RPi 400s, they could have gotten the RTC modules for pennies. And there is plenty of motherboard space to add the RTC circuit lines unlike with the cramped RPi 4B’s circuit board. If it is about minimising the BOM for each unit, the why design-in a relatively expensive part like the BOURNS SM51625L Gigabit Ethernet PoE Transformer instead of using a cheaper GbE controller chip? The answer is because RPT is designing for the Enterprise and Industrial markets, not just educational markets.

CooliPi avatar

RTC needs a battery. You need to open it up to service it. And some regulations abides from posting it via some postal services. Hopefully not for a small battery, but anyway…it drains up over time. Most users don’t need it. An opportunity for small GPIO modules with those omitted interfaces can open up now. RTC, PWM audio to 3.5mm jack perhaps, I2S audio…

Andy Pastuszak avatar

You add a RTC with battery; you need to add a way to change the battery. That involves being able to open the case. I’m sure that would have significantly added to the cost.

Steve Spence avatar

A LIR2032 rechargeable battery would not need servicing for a very long time, if ever.

James Carroll avatar

The case isn’t that difficult to open. Regardless, the battery wont need to be changed often. Sticking junk off the back of the Pi sort of defeats the AIO feature. I ordered one, I’ll just configure an NTP server on my network. I’d like to have an RTC on board but I know I can’t have everything. The real disappointment to me is no internal SSD option. I’m going to have to hang an SSD off the back.

Paul Miilligan avatar

Accurate time is the least of your worries if you’re trying to run a Linux GUI without an internet connection. “I can’t watch YouTube but I know the right time” ?

Procyon avatar

I have visited several computer-literacy classrooms where Raspberry Pi computers were used as the learning PC for students. These classes were for underprivileged children in community centres located in impoverished rural areas, where no telco bothers to lay network cables to, or are in locations where you’d be lucky to catch a 3G signal, let alone a 4G LTE signal. In such locations, computer literacy classes are run “offline” where the teacher passes around USB flash drives to load lessons, with no internet access for the students while class is in session. I’ve seen Python and LibreOffice classes being taught this way, with admirable effectiveness. So, relying on an internet time server to synch up your Raspberry Pi 400 system time is a hassle easily solved by adding RTC parts that would have added just pennies to the RPi 400’s BOM. My point is a lot of these computers are going to be used in situations where pervasive internet access is a luxury, so something as basic as keeping system time should not require the user to buy another part. Also, projects like soil monitoring or water-quality testing rely on accurate time stamps for their data gathering.

Creshal avatar

NTP can be provided offline cheaply by, for example, equipping *one* Pi per lab with an RTC and ntpd.

For anything remotely professional like soil analysis you want highly accurate clock sources anyway, the average PC RTC is way too inaccurate for that.

Volker_H avatar

When you have several RasPis in a classroom they are probably networked in one way or the other. Just put up a NTP server in your network and be done with that.
Back in the day with my Apple //e I set the time on every boot.

Bryan avatar

If you need an NTP server, get a Pi1 or a Pi Zero and add an RTC HAT – if you’re a school, or have several for any reason, this is a very cheap and simple way to do it.

Harry Hardjono avatar

I have been happy with my Raspi4 4GB, but worry that if I go with the newer 64bit OS, the memory will be effectively cut in half due to double width memory addressing. In that regard is there a way for me to keep using 32 bit OS, or should I wait for 8 GB model?
Otherwise, this is an excellent form factor, and good to carry in my bugout bag.

Looking at the early paragraphs there it seems you missed the opportunity to design the keyboard with easy coupling of raspberry pi models. Had you provided several plastic posts, with easily snipped feature to custom fit raspberrypis, and simple usb connectors, even if done via solder pads, then we would have had this integrated form factor a long time ago.
Was there ever a question about full size HDMI, or was the design firmly established on micro size early on?

Procyon avatar

“The memory will be effectively cut in half due to double width memory addressing”. I don’t think memory addressing works that way. While a 64-bit processor does use double-width addressing, it does NOT halve your available RAM. The main benefit for end users with using a 64-bit OS is that it can directly access more than 4GB of RAM without resorting to hardware tricks like physical-address-extensions. As far as the 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS is concerned, you can make the OS boot with a 64-bit kernel (while maintaining 32-bit user-space in the rest of the OS) by adding a “arm_64bit=1” line into your /boot/config.txt file. This has some performance benefit in that it allows the kernel to make use of the extra registers available in the ARMv8 instruction set, which the 32-bit kernel does not as it uses the ARMv7 instruction set. Also, the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS is still under development and is not intended for use as a daily-driver yet.

CooliPi avatar

64bit OS can just use all of the memory linearly, whereas 32bit OS can use it with PAE addressing, but can’t allocate more than 3GB to a single process. Practically, if your process doesn’t use more than 3GB of RAM, you can have multiple such processes and not be concerned.
64bit on ARM is also about NEON unit, it’s a SIMD engine that processes data much like MMX or SSE on Intel. Before 64bit, ARM cpus were really fragmented in their abilities. 64bit unifies it – all of them have the same NEON simd unit.
What takes more memory is some paging in the kernel – it needs to keep all pointers 64bit. So typically, a 64bit system on RPI4 eats 200MB more memory just for the kernel itself.
But I’ve had much better experience with watching 1080P videos on youtube under Ubuntu 64bit, than on Raspbian on 32bit. Thanks to wider registers and twice the number of it (32x64bit). NEON simd is 128bit wide.
The only situation I’ve encountered, where it needs 64bit is with cutting video – I was using OpenShot to cut our PI4 liquid Nitrogen cooling video. Under Raspbian, it kept segfaulting. Memory allocation was to blame for. Under 64 bit and some additional swap space, It was working OK. It’s this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbzKM5XxlOA
The process allocated about 100 threads and needed about 11GB of RAM for final export.

Harry Hardjono avatar

Wow. 11GB RAM. That’s impressive. The cooling video is nice, too. Thank you for your reply.
Come to think of it, the program with its memory pointer maybe doubled in size, but the data will stay the same. So if the program is 1% of the process, then it will become 2% of the process.
I guess that ease my concerns. Thank you for responding.

CooliPi avatar

In reality, executables are some 20-30% larger. Two reasons – the new 64bit ISA (instructions) are coded into fixed 32bit words widths. In 32bit mode, it was smaller and varying widths. The second reason are the pointers. They need to be 64bit, maybe some executable format has them relative to library start in memory. I’d not go into details, because I don’t know them, but AFAIK a process on Linux is created by first linking together needed libraries with the code for the process itself. After creating the executable in memory (involves computing jump offsets to the libraries) – that’s called linking, it’s run.
This is very roughly what happens, if I’m wrong (certainly) then I ask you politely to correct me.

Harry Hardjono avatar

I’m sure you’re right. The instructions don’t need to be 64 bits, after all. Just the memory access. Pointers, variables, structures, jumps, and the likes.
But the fact that I can increase VM to large size with fast SSD boot drive is more relevant to me. I don’t really need fast CPU. Storage/RAM capacity is more important to me.

Chris Tyler avatar

CooliPi – just a note that both 32-bit and 64-bit modes used 32-bit fixed-size instructions (to see this: run ‘file /bin/bash’ to confirm that you have a 32-bit bash executable, then run ‘objdump -d /bin/bash|less’ to disassemble the code in that executable — note that the 2nd column of the disassembly, which contains the instructions, is consistently 8 hex digits wide, or 32 bits). (There is a 16-bit-wide “Thumb” instruction mode, but it’s not generally used in a Linux context).

Size differences between 32- and 64-bit binaries are more likely due to alignment and pointer size rather than instruction density.

Paul Miilligan avatar

A very useful example. With very fast SSD technology, the use of swap space becomes a realistic solution. Because of memory ubiquity there is a tendency to think swap should never be used.

Yan-Fa Li avatar

It would be really nice, if in future revisions you added a header for the internal USB port and a jumper to disable the keyboard controller chip. This would let people add a mechanical keyboard running open firmware, like QMK, easily to the design and re-use the board in a custom case.

Carfield Yim avatar

In fact, I think there should be mechanical keyboard version

James Carroll avatar

I think they were trying to keep it as cheap as possible within reason. You’re going to bust the budget.

Kyle Falconer avatar

My only disappointment with this design is the lack of a full-size HDMI port.

James Carroll avatar

Something you can solve with a $6 cable isn’t a problem. Worse is that there is no reasonable method to mount an internal SSD. I will solve it by hanging a USB SSD off the back but that’s lame for an AIO computer. Still, it’s only $70 so I’ll get by until I get around to spending 3 times that to build my own case. I’d pay $70 just for the board inside.

billy avatar

How does $70 convert to £94, because I have a load of dollars to trade at that price.

W. H. Heydt avatar

It was explain in comments in the launch blog post thread.
In the US, prices (such as $70) are quoted pre-tax (sales taxes vary wildly from state to state, and not infrequently, within states). Prices in the UK are normally quoted including VAT.

Andrew Rowland avatar

You are comparing the unit-only dollar price (£ 67) with the full kit price.

Neil Shepherd avatar

70$ is for the basic Pi400, 100$ is for the full kit with mouse, PSU and book. The kit is what you get for £94

Bregt avatar

I want to get some pi 400 to kids at our school who don’t have access to a digital device for learning during lock down. What I can’t find anywhere is: have the designers thought to make the keyboard either waterproof or water resistant? These kids often learn in very cramped conditions at home and if they or siblings knock a glass of orange juice over the keyboard, is that the end of the Pi? Many thanks

James Carroll avatar

Not at this price. If you’re worried about the Pi I’d suggest buying a standard Pi 4 and a good case with a keyboard and mouse. That way the Pi can be placed away from danger. At worst you lose a keyboard.

Procyon avatar

The Raspberry Pi 400 motherboard contains a BOURNS SM51625L chip module, which is a Gigabit Ethernet PoE transformer. Does this mean we can power the Raspberry Pi 400 using just PoE cables without adding a PoE HAT?

Anders avatar

It’s not PoE enabled. It would be really handy for me but the specs don’t mention PoE and I can confirm I tried it and at least with my PoE switch ports it didn’t work.

Mikael Bonnier avatar

Why does the Raspberry Pi 400 have a Bourns PoE transformer that doesn’t work with PoE?

Anders avatar

The Bourns SM51625L is a transformer for a LAN interface, it performs duties in standard CAT 5/6 ethernet cable isolation/driving. It is not only for PoE applications.

HResa avatar

I’am missing an internal USB-Port (USB-3) to connect an USB-Stick or USB-2-SSD Adapter/SSD
To save the SD-Card.

MW avatar

One USB 2 port is internally connected to the keyboard, same design as the Official Keyboard as it is the same part.

So you have not lost a USB Port.

Paul Miilligan avatar

Thanks for the rundown on the design. I suspect a lot of the “surely you could have …” comments that are arising in this and other articles about the pi 400 underestimate the compliance challenges of putting GHz signals inside a plastic case.

Pygar avatar

Extreme longshot: is there an FDM or SLA slicer that’ll run on this?

scruss avatar

Yup: there are builds of Cura and PrusaSlicer for the Raspberry Pi 4. I ran (but don’t recommend) the command-line slicer Cura Engine as part of OctoPrint for many years.

Harking back to the C64, it’s a real shame that BMC64 – the bare metal C64 emulator – doesn’t run on a Raspberry Pi 4 yet.

Urmil avatar

Hi
This can be built for Raspberry Pi 4 but the commands that are listed to build do not work for some reason. If you can work it out that would be great. I have tried building for pi 3 but it still throws the same error as below for pi 4.
Making for pi4
Making everything…
==============================================================
APPLY PATCHES
==============================================================
patching file libgloss/circle/errno.c
patching file libgloss/circle/fstat.c
patching file libgloss/circle/getpid.c
patching file libgloss/circle/io.cpp
patching file libgloss/circle/link.c
patching file libgloss/circle/lseek.c
patching file libgloss/circle/stat.c
patching file libgloss/circle/unlink.c
patching file newlib/doc/Makefile.am
patching file newlib/libc/include/sys/types.h
patching file newlib/libc/sys/circle/sys/dirent.h
patching file addon/fatfs/ff.c
patching file addon/fatfs/ff.h
patching file addon/fatfs/ffconf.h
patching file addon/linux/bug.h
patching file addon/linux/types.h
patching file addon/vc4/interface/bcm_host/bcm_host.c
patching file addon/vc4/interface/bcm_host/bcm_host.h
patching file addon/vc4/interface/khronos/common/khrn_int_common.h
patching file addon/vc4/interface/vmcs_host/vc_vchi_gencmd.c
patching file addon/vc4/vchiq/vchiq_2835_arm.c
patching file include/circle/memorymap.h
patching file include/circle/sysconfig.h
patching file include/circle/usb/usbhiddevice.h
patching file lib/alloc.cpp
patching file lib/sysinit.cpp
patching file lib/usb/usbgamepad.cpp
patching file lib/usb/usbgamepadxbox360.cpp
patching file lib/usb/usbhiddevice.cpp
==============================================================
BUILD CIRCLE-STDLIB
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin
==============================================================
patching file configure
Hunk #1 succeeded at 161 (offset 1 line).
patching file include/circle_glue.h
File libs/circle is not a regular file — refusing to patch
1 out of 1 hunk ignored — saving rejects to file libs/circle.rej
File libs/circle-newlib is not a regular file — refusing to patch
1 out of 1 hunk ignored — saving rejects to file libs/circle-newlib.rej
File libs/mbedtls is not a regular file — refusing to patch
1 out of 1 hunk ignored — saving rejects to file libs/mbedtls.rej
RASPBERRYPI=4
TOOLPREFIX=arm-none-eabi-
CIRCLE_BUILD=1
FLOAT_ABI=hard
NEWLIB_BUILD=1
RASPBERRYPI=4
STDLIB_SUPPORT=3
NEWLIB_INSTALL_DIR=/home/urmil/bmc64/third_party/circle-stdlib/install
NEWLIB_BUILD_DIR=/home/urmil/bmc64/third_party/circle-stdlib/build/circle-newlib
DEBUG=0
Remaining arguments:
Error: Invalid toolchain prefix, exiting
TOOLPREFIX is “arm-none-eabi-”
Makefile:3: Config.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target ‘Config.mk’. Stop.

David Snyder avatar

I owe much of where I am in my career today to the Commodore 64 that I received for Christmas in 1984 from my father. I’m delighted to know that another generation of curious developers and engineers will get their start on Christmas morning, 2020.

Anders avatar

I owe my long and rewarding career to a teacher bringing in to school his personal ZX81 and allowing me to use it at lunchtimes. I made contact with that teacher recently and he still had the ZX81, he passed it on to me. I have modified the tuner and have it working now.

Simon avatar

I love my Pi projects. I had an acorn electron when I was a kid. BBC Basic. Now I’m learning C and Python on Pi 3’s. Such good machines can be made.

Igor avatar

I believe that there is demand in Brazil for products like this. It would be incredible to have the option of the Brazilian keyboard. Being imported as keyboard would have a reduction in tax revenue compared to computers. And there are large national stores that could sell easily.

fanoush avatar

Thank you for Pi 400. Also got C64 for Christmas around that time, with tape recorder. Remember coding Mandelbrot fractal in BASIC that rendered 160×200 picture in 12 hours :-) Also wrote simple number guessing game with SAM reciter, that was big success in our family (computer can talk!). Some later Christmas got 1541 drive (with GEOS disks included). Oh those were the days :-)

Ordered Pi 400 right away but not sure if small laptop wouldn’t be better for kids these days (OLPC idea but done right).

Andrew avatar

Any chance the keyboard layout would be updated to move the \ key to the space between the backspace an enter keys?
I know everyone has strong opinions on keyboard layouts: this is mine.

Vince avatar

Does the US layout not suit your requirements?
https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/pi400/pi400-product-brief.pdf

Tom avatar

I have a theory the now-standard UK keyboard layout with the short left shift key was designed by an IBM engineer still harbouring an anti-English grudge from before the War of Independence. I’ve never understood why everyone – even Apple, say – still adheres to it so diligently when it could easily be rearranged to something more usable.

Fortunately you can get the 400 in the UK with a US layout (typing £ is left as an exercise for the reader).

Dagelf avatar

Finally! I have been tinkering away at a keyboard encasings for a small TV connected computer and I have to say, at $70 this packs quite a punch! Great work!

I do wish some of your team would spend some time in the developing world, the middle of Uganda, or somewhere in Rural India, China or Brazil, for example, as motivation to make the impossible possible… because the developing world is not only their governments, but vast majorities excluded by them, who arguably have the most to gain from this, because choices are so very limited – a world where the privileged are only getting analogue TV’s this year, for the very first time, where micro HDMI cables are almost impossible to find… and where a micro USB cable will for sure be jammed into this slot, where HDMI is rare, and where USB dongles, even mice and keyboards can take months to arrive… So it is a bit disappointing that billions of already made cables out there will have one more reason to be consigned to an ash heap, the ashes eaten by the livestock, as it goes… but it IS nice to see this.

PiPiPi avatar

I would actually love to see Apple transform a possible future Mac mini into something like that. Just a laptop without battery and display lid. But i guess there wouldn’t be GPIO :-)

Ebrahim avatar

I’m still not able to understand why not the Compute Module?
it is not about quantity. it is about flexibility and reusing the hardware. what about 2GB/8GB versions of this product. the CM will be reused in many boards and places. it is the concept i believe not the quantity that should shape your design.
i was actually thinking to open a thread in the forum to encourage Pi5 to be only a CM module with 3 boards: mini (replacement of Pi0/PiA), standard (replacement of PiB) and full (dev board). the user will just pick his choice of CM and board. simplifying the process is the best for all options. you already did it with CM and has 32 variants. this is better than trying to have all variants for all boards, we will end with unclear model.
this is just an opinion

fanoush avatar

It was not said there clearly but maybe replace word ‘sense’ or ‘quantity’ by ‘price’ to understand. It is mainly about price. $70 is amazing when compared to price of separate keyboard + pi4 (or 4GB CM4). When based on CM4 it could be $80 or more? You could say you would gladly pay $10 more for extensibility but then you are not the target audience. It is all abut cutting every possible corner to bring the price down as much as possible. Before first Pi came for $35 it was hard to imagine you can get such board for that price.

Martien avatar

A 3.5mm audio jack should of course not be missing.

Werner avatar

Very excited to get mine. One comment though, will we be able to get the face and keys in black, as to not show dirt so quickly?

Adrian avatar

So, next steps are to make one that can contain a CM4 cluster, and an addon case to connect an external gpu?

Ocean209 avatar

If it’s all about cost, routing and dimensions, then I don’t understand the decision to have 2 micro-HDMI ports even more. Of course I would like this PC to have CM4, M2, RTC, you name it. But full size HDMI (and one is enough, if you have a space constrains) is a must!

Mikael Bonnier avatar

I prefer to use two screens: one for typing, one for documentation. You can get old screens cheaply and use them with passive HDMI to DVI-D adapters.

Louie avatar

You must have missed it when the Pi 4 was first released with dual HDMI where they commented they had surprisingly found the Pi was being deployed quite a bit for digital signage as one big factor in the decision. With this integrated form factor it is even more perfect for that use without having to worry about some dangling keyboard. So some commercial money they cannot afford to ignore.

Harry Hardjono avatar

I don’t think digital signs need integrated keyboards. If anything, a smaller, cheaper form factor is best for that. A $35 2GB Raspi4 is perfect for that.
The suitable target market for these are full time IT workers: developers, stock traders, or even managers, where people need to have access ready reference materials on hand. These are even bigger markets than digital signage.
OTOH, I’m still using RaspiZero paired with Chromebook daily. That’s good enough for me, and I can just prop it next to my Raspi4 for easy access. :)
I can also pair my zero to 4, and sometimes I do, but then it won’t be portable anymore. I can’t carry my HDMI TV everywhere, after all.

Paul Miilligan avatar

Just another compulsive addition to your comparison with the Commodore 64 – if you adjust the Commodore 64 price for inflation it comes out at $1480 in 2020 pricing – so price ratio is 0.067 !

Gino A avatar

If you’re going to adjust for inflation, you should adjust for Moore’s Law and that throws everything out of whack.

JBeale avatar

Adjusting for inflation is reasonable, because the only meaning of price is in relation to what you earn and what you spend at that time. If $1 then has the earning power of $10 now, then old $1 = new $10. By contrast “Moore’s Law” is just a description of how hardware evolves but a 1 MHz clock rate then works the same as 1 MHz now, and 1 GHz is still 1000x faster.

Apple Pi 400 avatar

Give us back our mini AV jack, you evil fruit company!

Neels avatar

Will the SBC version of the PI4 also get the new 1.8GHz processor?

MW avatar

It is the same SoC which is used in the CM4, the only reason for the higher speed is the Heat Spreader.

If would expect this SoC to find its way to the 4B, and overclocking to 1800 should not be an issue as long as a cooling solution is utilised.

CooliPi avatar

Note that 1-4GB models of RPI4 have its PMIC circuitry running at 1MHz, whereas in 8GB model, they upped the frequency a bit to 1.5MHz, increasing its ability to pump in more energy per cycle. That allowed to stable overclock it above cca 1850MHz with load on all cores simultaneously. This PMIC circuitry was used in CM4 and is now used in Raspi 400. So, the 1800MHz overclock isn’t just because of the heatspreader (we were cooling 4GB RPIs with CooliPi much better than model 400 does, but the Pis eventually rebooted under load), but because the current handling ability of its PMIC chip has increased (1V rail was overloaded, to be precise).
So, the RPF has first upgraded the PMIC in 8GB model, then successfully used it in CM4 together with a new revision (C0) of teh BCM chip and then used it both in model 400.

In C0 revision, some bugs were removed, perhaps some critical timing paths narrowed. Eben Upton talks a biot avbout it in Tom’s hardware interview here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP29KEC5U48
at 7:20 time

Procyon avatar

Received my new Raspberry Pi 400 today. Man, what a great design. Wow. An absolute delight. RPT really hit it out of the park with this one. Absolutely amazing! I popped a freshly imaged Raspberry Pi OS 2020-10-30 armhf nightly image onto a microSD card (love that push-in to pull out spring loaded action) and did a quick setup. Stock speeds feels snappier than stock RPi 4B, even before overclocking. Took it all the way up to 2350MHz CPU and 750 GPU, with 4kp60=1. Tried 2400MHz and it won’t boot. So 2350MHz is the highest I can coax mine to go. Haven’t had time to run any Stressberry tests yet, but as I am typing this on the RPi 400 in Chromium with 6 other tabs open, the temperature is hovering between 43-45C. While watching a 1080 60p YouTube clip the temp goes up to 49-52C. Booting Twister OS 1.8.5 from a Samsung 860 EVO M.2 500GB SSD (in a Ugreen M.2 SSD enclosure) plugged into the USB 3.0 socket works perfectly. What I find incredible is that the keys don’t even feel all that warm, even the CPU is running at 2.35GHz. That large surface area heatsink-plate is doing a splendid job keeping thermals under control. Marvelous. Simply marvelous. To Simon Martin and the teams who brought this product from concept all through to market, I tip my virtual hat to you all. This product brings plenty of joy and excitement in these trying times. Thank you.

Jeetendra avatar

As someone who grew up with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer in the 80s, this is so wonderfully reminiscent of those days. More power to you, Mr. Martin, and your entire team. I look forward to using mine once the backorder is fulfilled.

Alan Ogden avatar

I wish this had been announced 2 weeks earlier. I was visiting my sister in law and she saw me playing some retro Gabe’s on my pi4 and she was interested. She asked me if I could build her something so she could play sooner classic games. I put together a pi4 with some retro games and sent it via the mail. She isn’t very technologically adept and struggled a little. If I could have slipped an sd card into the 400 and shipped out off. I think it would have been perfect.

I too got a c64 back in the 80’s. Al my friends were playing on their nes and other consoles. But not me I eyed the c64 and saved up and bought one. Which I grew into the 2nd largest commie bbs system in San Diego. It was a great piece of hardware for the times. Like the pi is now

Wilheim avatar

Why not go ahead and get the Pi 400 and just trade her for the regular Pi 4 back. Pretty sure you can still find uses/excuses for the Pi 4. ;-)

Anders avatar

After 24 hours with this Pi 400 I can declare that I absolutely love it and I am getting behind on other work I have to do, I can’t tear away from it. This thing is an absolute DREAM!

Olaf avatar

What CAE package do you use to design the schematic and PCB layout?

MW avatar

Kikad, believe it is release 5.1.7
https://kicad.org/

Chris Hills avatar

I have received my 400 and I am very happy with it. The only glaring omission is a plastic or rubber cover for the 40-pin connector.

Anders avatar

I have ordered five sets of these connector dust covers in red colour. Of course I don’t need five, so I’ll send you one for free if you like.

Wyatt Jackson avatar

Looks absolutely lovely. It would be cool if there was a USB out from the keyboard, and a switch, so one could share the keyboard between to systems.

David Brown avatar

Have a look at a package called Barrier (https://github.com/debauchee/barrier) It is a free open source keyboard and mouse controller. I have it running on a PI4B (server) and windows 10 (client) and you just need to move the mouse off screen to control the other computer.

Ghost Excess avatar

Dear PI Team, thank you for this wonderful home computer in 2020. I grew up with the C64 and it was a big part of my youth. The Raspberry Pi 400 in the colors of the original C64 breadbin would be a dream come true for all fans of the 80s home computers. Please let this dream come true!

James avatar

Is it possible to install embedded Gentoo on it?

https://raspberrytips.com/gentoo-installation-raspberry-pi/

many tip sites, but many embedded boards do not provide sufficient detail to put other, usable, embedded linux distros like gentoo on the prototypes or hardware that actually ships.

Demo, and I’ll purchase (6)

James

Steve avatar

Re. the left handed mouse.
Could you not have just mounted the PCB upside down?

Max buyzero.de avatar

Steve, the SoC can’t be upside down because the heat spreader is placed on top of it and underneath the keyboard – which is a core idea in the Pi 400’s design.

Faberfox avatar

I’m hoping to get one soon, can’t thank you guys enough for all that you do, I don’t know if you’ve seen Perifractic’s review on youtube, he had a friend do some renders with classic computers color schemes (c64, vic20, speccy, cpcs, amiga), and as far as I know, with the injection molds already done, getting new colors released shouldn’t be hard to do. I’m a commodore guy, but if you ever do release alternate colors, I’d get a Spectrum one, looks like the perfect one for the form factor.

Chris Stagg avatar

What should come as part of the kit, a cheap but hard plastic encased usb extender that attaches to the back for right handed mouse users.

Paul Naish avatar

The raspberry pi 400 is about as clever as the Sinclair C5. Look at the plate of spaghetti required. If anyone was using joined up thinking they’d have created a monitor with a USB power supply and a bracket for a conventional pi. Wireless mouse and keyboard and voilà, something really cool, a Mac buster in fact, with a clutter free desk. But there again who said smart people aren’t capable of doing stupid things, eh Clive?

Anders avatar

Can you do your integrated monitor solution for £67?
Or would there be any point, because any Pi owner could by the VESA mount case and do it themselves with virtually no skills required.

Clarius avatar

Cool idea. I velcroed my Flickr to the back of the monitor. Like that.

Marcelo Souza avatar

I just ordered mine. This thing is amazing. I built one pi inside a keyboard myself to teach basic to my son on a CRT. lol. The only thing i cannot agree that it’s a good idea to remove is the AV out. :( I will miss that. HATE they removed it from phones now the Pi is going the same way. Don’t understand why. There’s plenty of space on the board, and the PI 4 HAS the Av out. Why removing it ? :(

Pete avatar

But does it have RTC? No? Why not? Biggest thing missing from Pi. Especially in this new configuration… :-(

Mikael Bonnier avatar

It would be good if one could reprogram the keyboard controller since I would like to add Pause, Super R (Right Windows key), Menu, Enter (on the num pad). Shift+F10 is an alternative to Menu, but doesn’t send the Menu scan code. I think there should be combinations with Fn that makes it possible to generate all scan codes on a pc105 keyboard plus multimedia keys.

It would be a wish that the next version of the official Raspberry Pi Keyboard and Raspberry Pi 400 could generate all scan codes for pc105 even if it is the US version (i.e. pc104), because then I think Fn+Z should generate the key left of Z on a pc105 keyboard. Fn+B could be Pause key ─ it cannot be Fn+P because that’s already – (minus) on the numeric keypad. Fn by itself doesn’t send a scan code. It would also be good if multimedia keys were supported using e.g. Fn+F3 to Fn+F9.

CNXSoft avatar

Excellent. I suppose the next step is to make a Raspberry Pi 4000 laptop :)

Oscar avatar

I totally like this new Pi. But is there a black keyboard version in the works with maybe 8 Gigs? Please do tell.

Andy Pastuszak avatar

Your CPU seems to be a new Rev C of the BCM2711, where the 4B uses Rev B. Is there anything in the rev C that made it better for this design? Does it have better thermals?

MW avatar

The revision CO is also used in the CM4, likely it will be used in the 4B.

Various tweaks was mentioned somewhere on the Forums…

Rodney avatar

Firstly great product it looks stunning.
Are you guys going to upgrade the ram to a 8 gig and also make a plan for a m.2 drive then I would definitely buy one.

Olaf avatar

The only thing we now need is an easy-to-use Linux distro like Linux Mint, which I use almost on a daily basis.

Anders avatar

That would be for Clem to sort out.

Raspberry Pi already provide an easy to use distribution with optimisations for the Pi.

MW avatar

If any Operating System is compatible with Raspberry Pi 4B as at September 2020, it will function on the 400.

steve avatar

easy to use distro?
Manjaro. Choose your desktop. I use KDE Plasma but others like XFCE and Cinnamon are very good. I just let it upgrade to kernel 5.9.3 from 5.8.11 on a laptop. Not tried on a PI yet.
Manjaro just works. Period. Give it a lash :-)

Jesús Cortés avatar

A wireless mouse would be the icing on the cake instead a wired one. I´d rather loosing another usb2.0 port for this. Just for a cleaner desktop experience.

Anders avatar

No reason you can’t buy a wireless mouse for it. Less than €10.

Clarius avatar

Saw a video online where someone tricked out the keyboard to style like various retro computers. I so want that. Oh, and 8gb in a full size keyboard. Santa?

John Henry Oellrich avatar

I really love your stuff and I think it’s cool how you are adding new and new things to the raspberry pi ecosystem but instead of working on a keyboard maybe you guys could work on a raspberry pi 4A <3

Brent Longborough avatar

Love this, but would really like to see an 8Gb RAM model.

Fraser Fleming avatar

I loved messing around with the Pi 4 4gb. I am very impressed with the pi 400. I am very interested in the accessibility functions of the operating system as I feel this could potentially be a non expensive everyday solution for many visually impaired people.

Nathan avatar

Blind user of the Pi here (note, my comments will center around the use case of a fully blind person). Raspbian doesn’t ship with accessibility software in the default image, but it does support the normal accessibility software available for Linux including the Orca and Speakup screenreaders and the BRLTTY braille engine. Setting these up either requires SSH access from something else with accessibility, external assistance from a sighted person, or a prebuilt image (there used to be one, but it’s not been updated for a while and shouldn’t be used now. I’ve been thinking of making one of those, but haven’t done it). The easy way has been to run the commands over SSH but this requires some level of knowledge about Linux which may not apply to everyone.
The usefulness of the 400 is perhaps more debatable. As with every other Pi, it can work well for the blind if they like the form factor, and I’ll probably be buying one soon, but it’s worth keeping in mind some limitations:
1. The 400 has visual output. Assuming we’re talking about completely blind people like me, this isn’t useful. I need either audio or braille output. A braille display is expensive, thus negating the cheap price, so I’m assuming we’re mostly talking audio as the interface. The 400 can do this either with a USB speaker, an HDMI adapter which splits off the audio, or Bluetooth (this one is a little trickier). Either way, the speaker has to be separate.
2. It’s not portable. No battery and a separate audio device means this has to stay on a desk. If it’s competing with a different desktop, it might win from the price difference. If competing against a laptop or mobile device, this lack may weaken its standing.
I suppose the answer to your question most heavily depends on the use case you’re imagining. It can certainly fill several, but it may not fill some of the more important niches.

steve avatar

seems to me after reading a lot of responses here like a dock device may be a good option and could provide docks with builtin speakers, MICs, 3.5mm audio socket, braille assistance tools, RTC and battery, allow the 7″ touchscreen to be slotted in too in either orientation.

steve avatar

also have a slot in the dock for user-replaceable M.2 SSD and full-size HDMI

Mr. John C McCulloch avatar

As RISC OS v 5.28 is available now on Raspberry Pi 4, will it be possible to run it on the Raspberry Pi 400.

Chris Evans avatar

RISC OS runs fine on my Pi 400. To get it running see the 10th comment by Chris Hall on:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/15805?page=3#posts-109220

BlastFX avatar

With all this board space you still couldn’t fit in the extra 4 traces to make the third USB port 3.0? Really?

Nathan avatar

Why would you want to plug the low speed mouse into the only PCIE lane of the board? Since this Broadcom SOC hardware comes with USB2, just keep the keyboard and mouse on that. Leave the USB3 so it can be dedicated to an external flash or hard drive or shared among other high-speed peripheral.

BlastFX avatar

That has nothing to do with what I said. My complaint is that we still only have 2 USB 3 ports available.
You see, the USB controller they’re using sports 4 USB 3 ports. The only reason we only have 2 on the Pi 4 is that they didn’t have space on the board to route the super speed signals (4 extra traces per port) for all 4 ports, so they didn’t connect them for the 2 ports on the edge, making them high speed only. But on this much larger board I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find room for just 4 more traces to make the 3rd exposed port super speed as well.

Jason avatar

Thank you for making the Pi 400! I love keyboard computers and have been hoping for an official Pi Keyboard computer for years now. It’s funny that you mentioned your love of the Commodore 64… Like so many others, that was the first computer that I had regular access too. Earlier this year I modded my (dead) Commodore 64 with a Pi4 and Keyrah C64 keyboard to USB converter. It definitely brings back a lot of memories, but with a boatload of modern functionality. I look forward to getting the Pi 400, as well!

Shannon K Spurling avatar

So, is that a ‘user port’s? Will you have a pi-modem cartridge for it? ;-)

Jonathan Primrose avatar

I’m amused seeing all the comments comparing it to the C64. As soon as I saw the mention of Commodore in the blog post, the first thing that came to my mind was that they’d obviously named the Pi 400 after the Atari 400.

Anders avatar

Those comments come from places where C64 was totally dominant. I recall there being a choice of CPU in KB form factors, where the C64 wasn’t the only runner in the race.

doimus avatar

This is the coolest RPi so far, by far!
My only gripe is the USB-C power cable, which is definitely not suitable for this usage scenario. It’ll just come off and switch off the Pi at the slightest pull of the cable. This is not an issue on standard models, but users move their keyboards all the time.

Anders avatar

After a couple of days of use I can confirm that the USB C cable stays snugly in place when I move the keyboard around, using the official Pi power adapter which has a nice flexible cable.

JBeale avatar

In my experience, most USB power connections are pretty tight. The exceptions are the ones you continually plug and unplug, eg. charging phones and tablets. If this is used like a normal desktop keyboard (not moved much) I don’t see a problem. If you move it and plug/unplug every day, it could be. One idea is a very short USB extension cable that stays attached to the Pi.

Mikael Bonnier avatar

I read in Elektor Magazine that the EEPROM is left out compared to Raspberry Pi 4 B. Is this because you think the boot code is finished?

MW avatar

That is totally mis-information, it was discussed in Official Forum

Mikael Bonnier avatar

I wrote this question here hours before the Elektor Mag. article was discussed in the forum.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=289934&p=1755420#p1755428

Pete Cal avatar

I am right handed but have always used my left hand for the mouse. That is because I “have better things to do with my right hand”. Like writing numbers and notes from the screen, etc.
Try it and you will see how much better it works. I have converted many people over the years.

Pier Michele Impeduglia (Peter) avatar

Thanks to PI 400 i went back around 38 years ago when, young engeneer, I started to write program on the Commodor 64. One request why don’t delivery PI 400 using more then one keyboard color ? gray or black could be a good idea to install it in office too.

Basti Fantasti avatar

I’d like to see a trackpoint in the future ?

JBeale avatar

Just to be “that guy”… why does your title illustration show the Pi 400 on a desk next to two Pi camera boards, that I assume cannot be used with the Pi 400 if it lacks a CSI-2 camera port?

Robert Will avatar

All my friends were playing on their nes and other consoles. But not me I eyed the c64 and saved up and bought one. I grew into the 2nd largest commie bbs system in San Diego. It was a great piece of hardware for the times. Like the pi is now

OldeCoyote avatar

Kudos on the design. I’m impressed that you managed to create such an effective passive cooling solution. The bit at the end of your post made me smile. Back at the 2010 Rails Conference Robert Martin performed a similar exercise, comparing the laptops and smartphones in the audience to his first love, the PDP-8. It was a machine that was so powerful for the time that he felt “we ruled the world!” By crunching the numbers as you did, he reached the conclusion that computer hardware had progressed 10^25 times. (His talk was primarily a lament at how little software development had improved in the same half century. You can find the lecture on YouTube; Martin is an entertaining speaker.)

Mark Krueger avatar

I received my Raspberry Pi 400 today and absolutely LOVE it! I too began my computer explorations with a Commodore (Vic 20 in my case), This is such a beautiful design, and wonderful homage to the all-in-one designs that got so many of us started, The keyboard is absolutely perfect! From my perspective you nailed every design choice perfectly with the exception of the 3.5” jack. I hope that can find its way back somehow in a future revision, I have mine connected to dual HDMI displays that unfortunately lack 3.5” output. So for now I’m dealing with crummy built in monitor speakers until I purchase a USB sound card. Still I would rate this computer 10 out of 10. You hit it out of the park with this design. It makes me want to design cool “cartridges” with my 3D printer, SO many ideas :-)

Malcolm Ratcliffe avatar

Totally amazed, great product but easy access to sound via a headphone jack is so important for schools. This has the potential to be used with old monitors in schools across the world. But the only way to access sound, out of the box, is to use it with a TV or modern monitor with speakers. That doubles the cost. The world is moving to wireless headphone via Bluetooth, ut managing this in a school would be impossible. Unless you know otherwise!

Kevan Martin avatar

I want to use the keyboard with a larger sd card. I have tried the latest version of Raspberry IOS but it will not boot. Which software can i use?

Patel avatar

What model and make is the SD card? Did you use the Pi imager to load the OS onto the card https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/imager/. You can also try Etcher instead https://www.etcher.net/. Or the OS image could have gotten corrupted during download. Download again or alternately get the smaller-sized Lite version version first to test boot capability
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_lite_armhf_latest

Mogens Jensen avatar

You don’t have to be left-handed to prefer the mouse to the left side. (To type with the right hand of course )

John Cartmell avatar

Twenty years ago I asked for a low price, low power, ARM-based, desktop computer that ran Linux and RISC OS and had easy access to enable kids and techies to play around with linking the machine to the outside world.
Thank you for delivering. :-)

Mikael Bonnier avatar

How did you compute how thick the cooling plate should be? Could the cooling be improved if the plate was thicker or thinner? The keyboard would weigh less if it was thinner, which would be an advantage for e.g. shipping costs.

Protik avatar

Where can I get that mug? Love the color…

RM avatar

I’d love to attachable display lid for this- it would make the perfect laptop!

Anders avatar

With a fairly hefty battery somewhere, yes. A Pi laptop is what I’m hoping for.

Ruby Vivian avatar

Eye catchy Color and design.Just Love It

James avatar

Will the 400 be offered in the alternate black/grey color scheme like the official cases?
I understand wanting to have a brand identity, but the white/red color scheme is not to everybody’s taste.

Hans avatar

I just love the RPI 400.
If only it had 8GB of RAM, black keys, USB-connectors on the inside of the case, a 20MP camera with four lenses, a trackpad, a headphone jack, or better still, stereo speakers, and a 5,25″ floppy drive. Oh, and why is it so expensive?

Prince avatar

Heh heh lol. I saw what you did there – the floppy drive gave you away sir.

Dexter Muir avatar

To me, this form factor brings back the Sinclair QL. That was the first to break the 16-bit address space barrier with a Motorola 16000-series processor (the first Apples pre-Mac used them). The QL had expansion too, at the end: there were dual-floppy-disk, and hard-disk adapters to take the place of the fiddly microdrives. They also failed badly with their keyboard connection: a fragile film edge-connector. Info was published for rewiring a PC keyboard, but I never got that far. Monitors were a strange aspect ratio too.
I had 2 of them: they were fun and a good learning exercise trying to overcome those fails, but a flop otherwise.
I wonder if anyone still has a functional unit to benchmark?

Anders avatar

68008 was a weird hybrid thing with 16 bit internals but 8 bit external bus so it could talk to cheaper 8 bit ram etc.
I had a QL for a short while and it would have been wonderful if it had been more developed at release.

not_a_robot avatar

I’m just kind of angry that there wasn’t any previous mention of this, because I bought my Pi just a few months ago, and I definitely could’ve waited. Still, the original board still has some advantages over this one.

Mike avatar

Nice, but not quite there for me. If you bring out an updated version in the future, please consider:
1: 8GB RAM version
2: Full-size HDMI ports (at least ONE of them full-size)
3: m.2 SATA support
4: A matching wireless/BT mouse

Steve avatar

On spot: I fully agree!!

Mike avatar

Oh, one other thing – I thing it should come with a cap/cover for the expansion header-slot. My mate almost fried his shiny new Pi 400 when he nearly turned it one with a paper-clip lodged in between the pins (courtesy of his 5 year old!).

Gughanathan M avatar

When, It will be available in India?

1wwwiiio avatar

I am Japanese. English may be a little strange. Excuse me

This blog was interesting. I got a good idea of the raspberry pi400. I’m looking forward to the next post.

Luberth Dijkman avatar

Like the pi 4 and 400
much better as pi 3b+ as desktop pc (no more problems with chromium)
do NOT like the text on pi400 keyboard
the print is not centered on the keys

Ken Perry avatar

This is missing a very important thing. The 3.5mm jack. For those of us who are blind. This would have been an instant accessible computer. Now how ever it makes it very difficult. Not impossible but difficult to setup with a headset out of the box. It can be setup with braille pretty good but for those of us who use audio out as our monitor and do not have an HDMI monitor with speakers this becomes hard to get working. It would not have been that hard to run a 3.5 mm jack. To bad.

Jaco avatar

A 3.5 mm jack has its uses but not for current headsets. Those are USB.

Anton Konrad avatar

would be cool to have kensington locks on both sides, just in case someone wants to attach something using them

Richard McCombs avatar

I wish the keyboard was more like the C64. I have the keyboard that I purchased with the kit with the 4B 4GB model, and I have to hit the [end] key hard to get it to work. I guess you couldn’t do much better for the price but I think I probably won’t buy a 400. I have a 4B 4GB and a 4B 8GB with different metal cases.

Alif Ilhan avatar

Have you guys noticed some connectors under the pcb? I believe hat comes straight from the USB controller. What do you guys think about it. Is it PCIe?

Trevor Owens avatar

Curious why a built-in trackpad or pointing stick wasn’t considered? Can people realistically use this product without a mouse?

bc avatar

… and don’t you find it even more curious Trevor, it doesn’t even come with a monitor or PSU and oh look at the outrageous cost of the thing!!

profix avatar

Four years of development and you forget the audio connector. The most basic thing. This degrades the whole device. Depressing. The user must buy additional peripherals such as HDMI VGA audio reduction or USB AUDIO and lose the USB port. HDMI audio has very poor software support and is a problem to get up and running. The design of the device is good, but this one with the sound is miserable.

John Mac avatar

I’m fairly new to the Raspberry Pi bandwagon, but I guess its never too late. I liked the overall design and the concept used. However, just like someone mentioned above. Having a wireless mouse, would have been the icing on the cake.

Henry Larson avatar

Nest Raspberry Pi 4 will add more cool features I think. I have read all comments and I found how much people care about the Raspberry Pi 4. When it will be available at India?

rank website avatar

This blog was interesting. I got a good idea of the raspberry pi400. I’m looking forward to the next post.
Would be cool to have kensington locks on both sides, just in case someone wants to attach something using them.

David Ross avatar

Curious why a built-in trackpad or pointing stick wasn’t considered? Nest Raspberry Pi 4 will add more cool features I think. I liked the overall design and the concept used.

GCCRecruitments avatar

i have seen clips from youtube someone tricked out the keyboard to style like various retro computers. I so want that. Oh, and 8gb in a full size keyboard. that would be dream come true.

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