The RPi Foundation announced a $10 price cut for the Raspberry Pi Model B+ and launched a “Sense HAT” add-on. Meanwhile, Pi competition continues to emerge.



When the quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 Model B arrived in February with the same $35 price tag as the old Pi 2 Model B+, we knew something had to give. Now the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which previously promised to continue supporting the B+, has dropped its price by $10 to $25, only $5 more than the stripped down Model A+.







Pi Model B+ (left) compared to the newer Pi 2 Model B

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Chip

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We’re not sure if the timing of the announcement had anything to do with Next Thing Co’s hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for its $9 and up Chip SBC. Or perhaps the foundation’s comfort level rose after selling “well over” a million Pi 2 units in the last three months, according to the Eben Upton blog entry today. Even at $35, the single-core ARM11-based Model B+ has continued to sell well, writes Upton.

In truth, the $9, Cortex-A8 based Chip is really not much more than a blip on the radar for the Pi Foundation, which arguably has an even better bargain with its much faster, $35 Pi 2. The Chip SBC, which has now exceeded $1.2 million in funding, won’t ship until December, and versions with real-world display ports won’t arrive until May 2016 at $19 (VGA) and $24 (HDMI) plus shipping.



Other Raspberry Pi alternatives

There are still a number of Raspberry Pi clones or near-clones to choose from, although none have matched the RPi’s price/performance ratio, especially since the Pi 2 upped the ante.

A trademark dispute has slowed the momentum of two rival next-generation Banana Pi clones. On May 5, however, SinoVoip posted an update on the issue, announcing that Chinese OEM technology giant Foxconn is stepping in as an arbitrator on the dispute.

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Since the Banana Pi project forked last fall, followed by threats of legal action on both sides, the official BananaPi.org community site has changed hands from SinoVoip to LeMaker. Both projects have shipped their respective boards. LeMaker’s Banana Pi Pro B+ clone sells for $49, featuring a faster dual-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A20 SoC. SinoVoip’s Banana Pi M2, which has a quad-core Cortex-A7 Allwinner A31 that is very similar to the Pi 2’s Broadcom BCM2836, goes for $59.







Left to right: Original Banana Pi, Banana Pi M2, Banana Pro

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In the new agreement, Foxconn will “assist in forming a non-profit organization (NPO) with un-biased creditable open source community figures as board members, to handle all Banana Pi intellectual properties,” says the report. Foxconn stepped in because the company came up with the original idea for a Banana Pi clone and backed the original project. The update goes on to say that LeMaker has agreed to hand over its trademarks once the NPO is set up.

In an email response from SinoVoip’s Judy Huang, she seemed to suggest that only SinoVoip boards would be supported under the new Foxconn-established Banana Pi organization. In addition to SinoVoip’s currently available Banana Pi BPI-M1 (or Banana Pi M1) and BPI-M1+, these will include the new, quad-core BPI-M2, as well as two more specialized boards covered in our initial Dec. 2014 coverage of the BPI-M2 and Banana Pi Pro. The dual-core A20-based BPI-R1 wireless router board now sells for $65 on AliExpress. The ARM9-based BPI-D1 low-end camera board is going for $39.

The new Banana Pi organization will also support a new BPI-G1 smart gateway boarde, which is now selling at AliExpress for $100. As with the Android-ready BPI-R1 and Linux-ready BPI-D1, there’s no Raspberry Pi compatibility on the BPI-G1. In fact, it doesn’t even run Linux. The device, which supports WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee, is equipped with a Cortex-M3 microcontroller.







Left to right: Orange Pi, Orange Pi Mini, Orange Pi Plus

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Still other Raspberry Pi alternatives include Hardkernel’s $35 Odroid-C1 , featuring four 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 cores, dimensions matching the Pi, and a quasi-Pi-compatible 40-pin expansion bus. And then there’s a trio of Orange Pi SBCs from Shenzhen Xunlong Software, which are served up in $40, $50, and $70 flavors.



Other RPi news

In other recent RPi news, the foundation announced a Sense HAT using the RPI’s Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) add-on standard.







Raspberry Pi with a Sense HAT

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The Sense HAT features an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, as well as air pressure, temperature, and humidity sensors. An 8×8 LED display and “teeny joystick” are also included. The Sensor HAT has yet to be priced, and will be aimed at the educational market. Further details are available at the Astro PI site.