Raspberry Pi finally offers an official starter kit after passing 10M sales

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/09/r...official-starter-kit-after-passing-10m-sales/

Priced at £99 (+VAT) though if you have a keyboard, mouse, usb power ect, already, the price for the pcb is around £35

John.

 

Is it really worth that much? The Pi 3 is only £30... and yeah I already have one.

 

There are certainly better high spec mini computers than the Pi, But the Pi has such a following and support, so many free apps, and with 10 million sales you cannot beat it.

John.

 

Can't argue with it. RPi is indeed very popular, who would have thought it'd be that popular when it was first released. Can do a lot of geek stuff (heard that it can even unbrick a Chromebook with improperly flashed BIOS ROM), but at the very least it can be used as a basic desktop, which is the role of my RPi trio at the moment.

The problem is, is it really worth to fork out £100 when you can just buy an RPi 3 board for £30 + all other accessories (case, PSU, micro SD card, cable, keyboard/mouse combo) for another £30, not to mention you get the option to pick the parts you want (like another case and 16GB SD card instead of 8GB).

Speaking of more powerful alternatives, I'm eying on Banana Pi (slightly better than RPi 2) and Odroid C1+/C2 (better than RPi 3, quad core version also available though about twice as expensive), all are available in UK and cost around the same as RPi.

 

You dont have to buy the Kit, A lot of people do not see £100 as a lot of money, Businesses/Schools ect, do not want to mess about buying all the individual parts.

Also anybody who has/had a desktop pc most of the parts, keyboard, mouse lying around, it uses an cell phone power supply, virtually every body has spare ones that belonged to dead phones lying around, same with microsd cards.

I am not really taking to you more taking to people who will read this post, and are thinking of buying an Pi

I dont have a Pi, I most likely will never buy one, but i have made a dozen threads/storys on them to inform NBR member/visitors of what is available.



John.

 

Well I'm simply sharing my view on what the Foundation is gonna do, just a bit baffled by the price. I mean, other RPi starter kit (official or 3rd-party) has existed for a while and they're much cheaper, some even have extra parts for geeks who wanna tinker their Pi.

With a quick look on Amazon UK, I can buy an official RPi 3 starter kit for £40 sans the following:

• An official 1m HDMI cable
• An optical mouse and a keyboard with high-quality scissor-switch action
• A copy of Adventures in Raspberry Pi Foundation Edition

Dropping £60 for these extra things is beyond me, and not to mention that £40 kit has a 16GB SD card included.

 

All my RPi accessories are dirty cheap or just reused from other equipment. For me, otherwise it would be pointless. I'd really like to get a good, preferably 2x2 802.11ac USB adapter to run OpenWRT on it, though.

 

That is the problem I ran into with the RPi. It's a cheap computer but once you buy all the accessories, it becomes a $150+ PC. But honestly, it's really designed to be a headless controller for projects and not a full fledged PC (although you can use it as such). It does and can use common stuff you likely have laying around though as already noted. But it seems to be sensitive to SD card types too, so even if you have a spare 8GB card lying around, it may not work or work well.

It's pretty awesome conceptually, and great for hobbyists who really want a decently powerful board to use as a "brain" for their project.

 

Huh? $150? You probably got ripped off from the accessories then.

If your goal is to build a basic RPi desktop, you only need:

• RPi board (duh) £30
• RPi plastic case ~£6 (much cheaper if bought from Chinese sellers)
• 5V 3A micro USB power adapter ~£5
• Micro SD card ~£4 (16GB, more if you need more space)
• HDMI cable ~£4 (5m, cheaper if shorter)
• Keyboard + mouse combo ~£8 (wireless, cheaper for wired)
• USB WiFi adapter ~£1.5 (only needed for RPi 1 & 2)

Always buy the parts from either eBay or Amazon.

In total I can keep the cost at around £60 (~US$75), monitor not included of course.

 

Well not buying one did not last long, I just bought an "Raspberry Pi 3 Model B" and an case.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/

I was watching an uTube video and the guy says the Raspberry Pi starts to throttle at around 80c and the newer Raspberry Pi SOC get`s hot really quick.

He tried adding a heat-sink in an enclosed case, it made very little difference, so you either need heatsink and some venterlation or an heatsink and fan, and i have ordred an case that comes with 3 heatsinks and it looks like i can mount a fan too it if i need too.

John.

"Raspberry Pi 3 Model B"



Case i ordered comes with heatsinks, looks like i can mount a fan, I have a few lying around.

 

I just ordered an better heatsink for the SOC, I have been doing a bit of research and found that ceramic heatsink are supposedly much superior to copper or aluminum in heat dispersion due to it`s micro-porus nature, also they are non conductive so if it falls off no shorting of components, also they do not block radio waves.

The SOC is 14mm x 14mm but i decided to get am 25mm x 25mm heatsink for better heat dissipation, it only cost £2.89 delivered so not that expensive.



John.

 

@Tinderbox (UK) great idea. Let us know how it goes.