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New product: Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ on sale now at $25

TL;DR: you can now get the 1.4GHz clock speed, 5GHz wireless networking and improved thermals of Raspberry Pi 3B+ in a smaller form factor, and at the smaller price of $25. Meet the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+

Long-time readers will recall that back in 2014 the original Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ was followed closely by a cut-down Model A+. By halving the RAM to 256MB, and removing the USB hub and Ethernet controller, we were able to hit a lower price point, and squeeze the product down to the size of a HAT.

Small but perfectly formed

Although we didn’t make A+ form-factor versions of Raspberry Pi 2 or 3, it has been one of our most frequently requested “missing” products. Now, with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ shipping in volume, we’re able to fill that gap by releasing Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+.

Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty-bitty living space

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ incorporates most of the neat enhancements we made to its big brother, and features:

A 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2/BLE
Improved USB mass-storage booting
Improved thermal management

Like its big brother, the entire board is certified as a radio module under FCC rules, which in turn will significantly reduce the cost of conformance testing Raspberry Pi–based products.

In some ways this is rather a poignant product for us. Back in March, we explained that the 3+ platform is the final iteration of the “classic” Raspberry Pi: whatever we do next will of necessity be less of an evolution, because it will need new core silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology. So 3A+ is about closing things out in style, answering one of our most frequent customer requests, and clearing the decks so we can start to think seriously about what comes next.

Just in case

Our official cases for Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ and Raspberry Pi Zero have been very popular, so of course we wanted to offer a case for this new device.

Unfortunately it’s not quite ready yet, but as you can see it’s rather pretty: we’re expecting it to be available from the start of December, just in time to serve as a stocking filler for the geek in your life.

149 comments

Congratulations on the latest family member

Great!

Happy news and a bit sad also, sine it will be the last Raspberry Pi as we know it! A ‘new’ Pi will be disruptive but welcome ofcourse!

Do expand on that, please! Perhaps you know something we don’t?

It’s right there in the third to last paragraph :-)

No, he’s just read the paragraph from Eben above – “whatever we do next will of necessity be less of an evolution, because it will need new core silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology”

Bummer! I was hoping for some juicy details :)
Well, I for one can’t wait for the next evolutionary step.
The Pi3 (SSD backed) is my every day desktop and it’s *almost* there!

It’s great news – I hope there will finally be Raspberry Pi with some power management, sleep mode etc. Current Raspberries are very bad for battery powered devices.

Big Congratulations!!!

I am Tim Chiang, a tech editor of CAVEDU education in Taiwan.
We currently manage a tech blog: http://blog.cavedu.com/
In short, could we translate this announcement into traditional Chinese for our readers and Taiwanese Raspberry Pi users?
We are well-experienced in translation. We have helped the TensorFlow team translate some articles into traditional Chinese.
Please consider it.
Thank you very much!
Timothy

Hi Tim! I visited CAVEDU a few years ago when we were in Taiwan for a couple of days; you guys are amazing. We’d be really delighted to see you translate the announcement – thank you for asking!

Thank you very much!!!

Can we use this lovely new A+ in OTG mode like the Pi Zero?

256mb or 512mb?

512.
The 256 mention was referring to older device.

Wow… this is now at the very top of my “Christmas” gift list.

What a great way to end the year. Thank you again!

Congratulations on your latest baby!
The Pi has been a constant in my life for several years.
Should any new Raspberry series be a different constant, the Raspberry Planck maybe?

ooo new shiny!

I can finally retire my original RPI A+s from robot duties and benefit from the increased CPU performance. Suspect a few PiWars entries are going to get rebuilt around this!

If only it had Ethernet.

Why does it need ethernet? It’s got 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi on the board (which makes it an order of magnitude better than the original RPiA+).

The 3B+ has ethernet, use that one.

hi,
good news!
Aside from the form factor and a full usb plug (instead of micro usb), are there other differences between the new A+ and the pi zero w?

Thank you

CPU, dual-band Wi-Fi…

so pi zero w is not dual band? I need to check that one..

No…it’s not.

More to the point, the Pi0W is a single-core ARMv6 while the Pi3A+ is quad-core ARMv8.

Pi Zero is 32 bit ARMv6 like the Model A+, but the Model 3A+ is 64bit ARMv8 like the Models 2/3/3+

Love the video

Happy news and a bit sad also, sine it will be the last Raspberry Pi as we know it! A ‘new’ Pi will be disruptive but welcome ofcourse!

Will the 3A+ run the October 2018 release(s) of Raspbian Stretch, or will a revised release be made?

NOOBS 2.9 or plain Raspbian 2018-10-09 or Raspbian Lite 2018-10-09.

It can also boot from a USB stick with any of those.

Will it boot from a micro sd card?

All Pis will boot from a microSD card; it’s the standard way a file system is added to the Pi.

I love that Far East style promo video. Good job!

Not again… I’m addicted to Pis and whether I need them or not, I can’t help myself; I buy every new model. With a few duplicates I’ve already reached 12. Oh well, I suppose I need to complete the set!

SNAP! Don’t know what i’m going to do with it – but i’ve got one on the way. I bought one of the first 10k and have at least one of every version!

My doctor tells me it’s called “RasPi Serial Syndrome.” Apparently lots of people are afflicted. Symptoms can vary from a plethora of wee red boxes distributed around the house, to the more serious cases of recurrent apt-get disorder.

No cure on the horizon, I’m afraid.

Yikes. I hope they don’t cure me. Maybe a single power supply with 50 pi taps WOULD make a good holiday season gift.

What’s the power draw compared to the old A+?

Hey, that are great news!
I was waiting for the RPi 3 Zero W, but okay, will have to wait one more year I suppose…
And this A+ version could keep me busy till then.

Thanks a lot!

This.

A Pi3 zero is extraordinarily unlikely. The BCM2837 is wildly unsuited to the Pi0 form factor and manufacturing process. What is needed to move the Pi0/Pi0W forward is probably a single-core ARMv8 SoC packaged to work with PoP RAM. Unless someone walks into Broadcom and asks for such a beast, there is no hint of where a suitable SoC would come from. For sure, the RPF/RPT can’t afford to have one developed on their own.

Some day, some how, some thing is going to have to happen in order to make the Pi0/Pi0W 64-bit OS ready, but it sure isn’t going to be the BCM2837 SoC. (Though, in theory, a redesign that eliminated 3 of the 4 cores could be relatively inexpensive but any cost would eat into the already razor thin margins on the Pi0/Pi0W.)

Congratulations and thanks to the team for this brand new, and long awaited, Raspberry Pi 3 A+ !
Does the “+” is really needed in the name, since there is no regular “A” in the market like the first generation ?
(There is no more “B+” but just “B, though)

As you mention the next generation, please, please : keep the compatibility with this generation of Pi’s, it may be the most important feature, far beyond pure technical improvements !

Backwards compatibility is very important to us, and we will endeavour to make any future Pi as backwards compatible as possible.

If that means the official OS userland will stay targeted for armv6 and 64-bit proprietary driver support won’t improve, please don’t.

As we have said repeatedly in response to comments like yours, there are very few advantages to running a 64-bit OS on the Pi, given the amount of physical RAM it has available to address. For the vast majority of Pi applications, a 64-bit operating system offers no advantages whatsoever over a 32-bit one – there are a few special cases with particular applications where there is a small performance advantage, but they are few and far between.

Considering our user base as a whole, the small advantage that a 64-bit OS offers to a small subset of it is vastly outweighed by the loss of backwards compatibility for a much larger number of users. As James says, backwards compatibility is hugely important to us; far more so than the minimal advantages offered by a 64-bit OS, which most people only want because they think that as 64 is bigger than 32, 64-bit must be better…

The + was dropped with the raspberry pi 2 but brought back with the 3B+. This is the A model counterpart to the 3B+ so it makes sense to name it as such.

The + is the + on Power Draw.

It says “we’re expecting it to be available from the start of December” in the article above.

But it’s “In stock” here:
https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-a-plus

Now who’s right and who’s wrong?

It’s the release date of the case, not the Pi

cool! :)

the only bummer is the 512mb ram. even the 1gb of the B models isn’t enough nowadays.

will LibreELEC run with 512mb without any problems?

Will probably run, but more slowly. If you want more memory, you have the 3B+. It’s why we sell a range of devices, so you can chose the best one for the task, and pay appropriately.

512MB “isn’t enough”…for what? I’ve still got 256MB Model B Pis that work just fine, thank you. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a couple of 256GB A+ boards, too.

Me, too. I’ve got Pis of all sorts, mostly on robots, but including three original model Bs that have been running 24/7 as servers since they were state-of-the-art.

I run 2 pi 3s off of 2.4A USB power supplies, the kind us d for quick charging phones, they seem to be doing fine one has octoprint and one has pihole so there not doing anything super intense but they never crashed or anything

We can expect a better power consumption since there is no USB to Ethernet power hungry converter/hub.
Can’t wait to test out this on my hands.

Please include a battery backed up real time clock in what ever comes next…sometimes a PI is used in places where NTP isn’t easy to get.

Unlikely, since its not used by the majority of people, it would be a waste of money to put it on every board. Much better done as a HAT or add-on so only those people who need it need to pay for it.

I agree James. So many people don’t need these futures. If i need RTC, i can buy for 3$ module or a hat.

In silicon RTC will cost 0,00001$ of they pick right SoC they can just bring RTC Battery Backup into headers and board will have RTC at almost no cost.

You are right about the silicon cost, but have failed to take in to account the multiple millions of dollars requried to add that silicon to the SoC, or the multiple millions of dollars needed to change to a different SoC.

Hmm, kind of like half way to the “Zero Plus” (cf. something like the Compute Module 3 but in Zero packaging) with no more needed than a beefier/modern CPU (let’s face it, the old ARMv6 is above all a hassle compatibility-wise) I had hoped for eventually, but I’ll buy one of these too of course… But dear Santa Pi, pretty please? ;)

when they get a smaller process, they should really consider rebranding the wireless zero with headers to model A.

micro USB with host/device mode,
is so much more useable than USB Type A!

or even better USB Type C*, then the micro HDMI could be replaced with USBC alt.mode.

*can also be used for USB2, if the SOC does not support USB3.

when will be available, approximately, the the new raspberry generation?

We do not announced product releases in advance.

is the RPi3A+ the long-touted x-mas surprise?

When will we have a pi with usb3? That could be fantastic product

It would! May even be one in the future, but we do not announce product releases in advance.

I heard this was going to be USB3 but they blew the design budget on a flashy promo video instead!

Guilty.

Can we use this lovely new A+ in OTG mode like the Pi Zero?

This would be so awesome!!!

You should be able to. The A+ can be used that way. The only hitch is that you’re going to master or slave, but not switch back and forth dynamically. The extra connector isn’t present in the full sized USB-A jack.

In the last few seconds of the promo video embedded in the article it does end with “USB OTG suppor” and then cuts off. Looks like it will be possible though

As long as there’s always a version with Ethernet.

Is the power comparison comparable to the zero w? I want to use one where low power draw is of utmost importance.

The core itself will use a lot more power than the one on the Zero, after all, its now a quad core A53 rather than a single core ARMv6. So I woudl expect power cunsumption to be higher than the Zero (We are working on power figures to be posted in the docs in a couple of weeks)

I would still like to see the Quad-core hit the Zero form factor before the core gets re-tooled for the next quantum leap!

We don’t ‘retool’ the core, we just use different one, so the original can still be manufactured as and when required.

I just meant I’d like to see a quad-core version of the Zero before, as Eben says, “clearing the decks so we can start to think seriously about what comes next.”
However, I am also excited to see what new directions lay ahead, too!

Yeah, Quadcore Pi Zero form-factor would really be nice.

The 3A+ is still too large and heavy for below 250 gram Quadcopter builds.

DESOLDER ALL THE THINGS! ;)
Seriously, the bulk of the weight is going to come from the HDMI and other ports. unless you remove what’s totally un-necessary

Congrats on the latest family member!

As it embeds the same chip (BCM2837B0) as B+, I am gessing that the hardware issues with the I2C functionality are still not fixed regarding repeated start and clock stretching functionality?

Please take a note of this so that even the advanced I2C functions will be working on next silicone release.

Cheers,
Terje

Same chip, so will have the same issue. We are well aware of the clocking stretching problem….

This looks great. Would also like to see 2gb RAM version of B+

Not possible, the required lines are not present in the SoC.

Congrats on the new pi guys! Feeling a bit like how i felt when Nintendo discontinued the GB series because of the third last para though… The Rpi design has become so popular now that even Asus and Banana pi copied it. Gonna miss the old ones..

New silicon, not necessarily a new form factor…..

Got distracted by the news today for some reason so completely missed this launch! This Model should be good for wireless camera projects. I was planning on making a wireless camera with a Pi Zero but I think I’ll use one of these instead.

For a wireless camera, I don’t see that this offers any advantages at all. I have some nest box cameras based on the Pi Zero W that work just fine, streaming HD H.264. The hardware encoder means you would get no benefit for that use case with the A+, all you would actually end up with is a much bigger, heavier and power hungry camera. Even the 5Ghz wifi won’t bring any improvements for this application.

The pins PEN and RUN pins are not documented in any of the specs that I could find.

In several places, on the article, I see “TL;DR: you can now get the”. Is this my browser, chrom or a blog problem

It doesn’t seem to be us; I think your browser has the collywobbles.

Seeing same TL;DR; using Chrome Version 70.0.3538.102 (Official Build) (64-bit)

TL;DR: you can now get the 1.4GHz clock speed, 5GHz wireless networking and…

This is just after the ‘div class=”entry-content”‘

TL;DR: you can now get the 1.4GHz clock speed, 5GHz wireless networking and improved thermals of Raspberry Pi 3B+ in a smaller form factor, and at the smaller price of $25.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read
“The tl;dr label is often used to point out excessive verbosity or to signify the presence of and location of a short summation”

I think it would be better if all of that specs come in zero’s form factor.

Not feasible due to the manufacturing process undertaken to get the Zero to a $5/10 price point, the Zero uses PoP Memory which sits atop the SoC..

WoW! at long last a 1A+ replacement.

It will please the developers who have used a 1A+ in Industrial or End User products.

Using the 3B+ WiFi / BT is a good feature at this price point.

If that is not enough 5 year availability is thrown in….

…whatever next ?

To the detractors if the specification or form factor are not to your liking then please stop bickering. Just consider what RPT / RPF have given us for the last 7 years, more than anyone could of predicted.

I love how many people take a look at this marvelous feat of engineering at this amazing price and complain that the Raspberry Pi Foundation haven’t managed to cram an entire Raspberry Pi 3B+ into the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor.

I mean, really?! Would you like it to hover as well? How about a Star Trek warp core, should they throw one of those in too?

Yes, I would really like for my RPi to hover. Not that it seems like a reasonable feature to request, but one can dream. :-)

Congrats! Was just asking my local dealer about availability of A+s, and I was surprised to hear him say he was getting a bunch in next week … I meant 1A+s, and I think I know what he meant.

Has anything been cut out from the B+ apart from the USB hub and ethernet controller?

The 3A+ has 512MB RAM, half that of the 3B+.

I have been building and providing graphical touchscreen point of sale solutions since 1986. Since the Model 3B the RPi has been my hardware host CPU choice and the Zero W my hardware terminal CPU choice. I will now be able to replace the 3B+ with this new 3A+. I wish the whole world could understand that a $25 computer can automate a restaurant, and that a $10 computer is all that’s needed to add a terminal to the network. The touchscreens have an integrated usb hub so I only need one usb port! My code is GPL and can be cloned from github. An RPi image with a custom Xfce desktop for Point of Sale is available on the ViewTouch web site.

–Gene Mosher

I can’t believe I’d not seen the ViewTouch site before. It’s extremely cool: exactly the sort of real-world commercial application of Raspberry Pi that we love.

Congratulations on the new diamond!!!!
I hope in the future to have a new version with:
A power switch on the board
Pins on the board of USB contacts, so that USB devices can be installed inside the box.
A microphone on the board

It would be so so cool if the development of the Pi would be a bit more open.
Not sure what you reasons are for not announcing products in advance but it would be super interesting to follow the development of whatever comes next, with all its hardships.

This is something that you really can’t get a look into unless you work in such projects yourself.
The educational benefit of a weekly video blog about developing an SBC of such scale would be tremendous!

Generally we’re concerned about the Osborne Effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Our partners have very large investments in supply chain for our current products, and pre-announcing future products has the potential to cause a lot of disruption to that pipeline.

A valid point and good that your looking out for your partners needs as well as your own, but PTS also makes a good point, documenting the process would be of tremendous educational benefit.

Maybe documenting and releasing the footage after a product’s reveal could be considered.

I’m sure it would be interesting to many Pi fans and who knows, it may just plant the seed’s that set the direction our future engineers and inventors choose to pursue!

Most awesome! Thank you!

You can’t announce this It’s not the end of February…

Congrats on a great work done! And about time too! The Model A/A+ is a great little unit for what it can do and has its own slot of where it should belong. It is not a R-Pi 0 or a Model B/B+ but something somewhere in between. It has always been great where it is.

Can the USB port do OTG? Would you be able to make a USB gadget with this Pi and an A-to-A cable?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=227044&sid=5815625635959ac76a547fc66a68d41d&start=25

Awesome!

But one more thing…

NEED x64 SYSTEM IMAGE!

My salute to the end of the ‘classic’ era was to by one of course!

As for the future, getting hardware accelerated open GL would be awesome… getting the latest blender to run with EEVEE would be epic!

Oh, This was a surprise. I’m waiting to review this as soon as possible.

Minor issue in change log for today’s release: 3A+ support is listed under items for last month’s Raspbian release. :-o

That’s intentional, since support was added in the previous release.

That’s because the support for the 3A+ was added to the previous release. We just thought that if we’d mentioned it in the change log, it might just have revealed the existence of a forthcoming product… ;)

Oh really, Simon? :-o :-D

Ordered already in India.,
Will experiment with it once it arrives..,

This is fantastic!

is the RPi3A+ the long-touted x-mas surprise?
i am a bit disappointed…
already the 3B+ wasn’t that burner to me.

Received mine today with a 4 port hub and saved 1£ over a full Pi3B+. Firefox is glacial with one tab open and the mouse hangs, 71.9% memory used with flightradar24.com. A second tab bogs the system so much that it is on the verge of a hard power down. Now I am playing ‘find the cursor’ Best to avoid this board until the memory is at least doubled.

As feared, Firefox and a frozen Task Manager with a leap frog mouse cannot be terminated. SSH times out and a VC terminal is not available. The system time is 15 minutes out. So they are going to be returned today. Very disappointed.

firefox-esr is not supported (the version in the Raspbian repositories is obsolete), please try the latest Raspbian Stretch with Desktop which includes chromium-browser.

Issues you have should ideally be posted in the Forum’s…..

Using 4.14.79-v7+ #1159, so if you wish please purge my comments and I will move it to the forum. What other limitations should we know about?

The ‘limitations’ are exactly as the article says – 1 USB, no ethernet, and half the memory of the 3B+. Of course, for many, they are not limitations, and the 3A+ is exactly what is says, a cut down (and therefor less capable) 3B+. Which is why it costs less.

I sure wish the next Raspberry Pi would have a few analog input pins.

We can expect a better power consumption since there is no USB to Ethernet power hungry converter/hub. Can’t wait to test out this on my hands. Cheers. :)

Do you have any more details on the following please?
– Improved USB mass-storage booting

Booting the Pi3A+ in host-mode via USB (stick, …) is working and dosn’t require any SD. Only booting the Pi3A+ in device-mode does currently require a SD.

does it run octopi ?

I have a problem with OctoPi as the OctoPi image fails to boot. I am just about to post a new question about it.

The forum is the best place to ask for help.

The developers of OctoPi would know, it is not a RPF supported Operating System.

Sorry, I can not speak English
I translate this comment from Google.
Asian markets want the Raspberry Pi Foundation to be able to create high-performance boards. for example using Rockchip RK3399. because the Asian market is easily saturated, they miss high performance boards but are supported by a stable OS. the boards that have been present are Orange Pi, Nano Pi and other Pi. absolutely not supported by a reliable OS.

Good one . I am just going to test this.

Hello,
Is the Hardware Revision Code for Pi 3 a+ changed? Or does it remain same as Pi 3 b+ ? (which is “a020d3”)

This is an incredible little computer. I just burn a copy of my Arch Linux version running on RPi3B and it ran flawlessly on RPi3A+! This includes Kivy UI and gstreamer displaying rtsp streaming video on the 7″ touchscreen display. Thank you Raspberry Pi foundation for making the real estate smaller to fit better and cooler in a tablet.

Wish list for the next generation of RPi.

1) Don’t do it! The hardware in this generation is fine, except there are too many models. Keep them, but stop!

2) Well, perhaps you can make a B3++, A3++ etc that
are plugin compatible with the current ones, but have a larger range of power voltages, faster ethernet/usb.

3) Improve software and documentation. A lot. Make a simple operating system that is essentially a standard library to control the hardware, that is fully documented and complemented with simple but essential tools–something like the menuetos perhaps, or riscos or something.
Publish detailed, both tutorial and reference documentation of the hardware and how everything works.

The purpose of a system that can be entirely understood by anybody, like the spectrum and bbc computers, requires stability of the configuration, simplicity of the operating system, full disclosure of the internals, at different levels of comprehension. If the hardware changes, there is not enough time to prepare teaching and playing materials,
as they constantly go obsolete.

This goes contrary to the requirements of using the latest technology or complex operating systems.

We need a dwarf system for kids to completely understand and play with. If you grow the dwarf, it is not a dwarf anymore. Dwarfs don’t compete for who is the largest.

3) Produce more peripherals, hats, cases and applications.
It must be good for hardware tinkerers, but also to software
guys who don’t care about assembling things by themselves.

Good closure of this generation. Well done. Is the case capable of fixing the camera on it.

The price difference is not that big an issue unless you’re buying several. To me the appeal of the A+ was the small footprint, and in most of the places where I would have used one it’s been superseded by the Zero. Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll find a use for one. Or two ….

Excited for the case :)

Maybe the PI team could ask Apple if one of the older CPU’s for iOS could be made available as a low-power core, for the new PI family to come ?

will the case be out before christmas

I would like to know too, already ordered one.
I’m using a cigarette pack as case now, but just for temporary…

Are you planning to upgrade the raspberry pi 3 model too?

Here for the Aladdin reference

Can we able to install Android Things Wear in this ?

Is there any news for updated version. thanks

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