A new US$25 Model A version of the innovative Raspberry Pi personal computer – a credit-card sized single board computer that could potentially revolutionise the teaching of computing to kids – has been released in Europe.
The new Model A is a stripped-down version of the Model B Raspberry Pi, which comes with no Ethernet, one USB port and 256MB of RAM.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation explained that the stripped-down version is US$10 cheaper than the Model B and consumes a third of the power.
This, it says, is ideal for students who want to run projects from a battery or solar power, robots, sensor platforms in remote locations or attaching Wi-Fi repeaters to local bus stops and more.
“We’re working on software to get the power consumption even lower. And we’ve seen how well XBMC works on the early 256MB Model Bs we sold last year; it’ll work just as well if you want to make a $25 media centre out of your Model A,” its creators said in the Raspberry Pi blog.
The Raspberry Pi is manufactured through licensed manufacturing deals with Element 14/premier Farnell and RS Components.
Purchasers from outside Europe who wish to buy the new computer will have to join a waiting list until the necessary paperwork to allow them to sell it outside Europe is completed.
The original Series B comes with a Broadcom BCM2835 System on a Chip (SoC), which includes an ARM 700 MHz processor, a VideoCore IV GPU and 256MB of RAM, which was later upgraded to 512MB.
