The round-up of Raspberry Pi digital signage options is among the most popular posts on this blog, so the steady stream of people looking to trim hardware costs to the barebones for their signage project will be intrigued to know there is now a Raspberry Pi 2.
The Raspberry Pi 2 is described as being six times more powerful than its predecessor, and has twice as much RAM, but still costs $35 as a board. It will cost a bit more when things like portable memory and a case are included.
The new Pi 2 has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU that has been clocked at 900MHz, and has 1GB of RAM. The original was a single-core ARM v6 processor rated at 700MHz, and having 512MB of RAM.
The new version is similar in terms of connectors to the Raspberry Pi Model B+, which costs all of $45.
Interestingly, at least for some, the new Pi will run Windows 10, and that OS will be offered free later this year via a developer program.
It’s not clear to me, because I am definitely not a propellerhead, if the critical graphics capabilities for digital signage are upgraded with the Pi 2. I saw the original Pi working with Silver Curve’s graphics engine and it was already very capable, so maybe that’s not much of an issue … if you know what you are doing.
It’s important to note that the real Pi cost – once all the bits are put together – is more like that on Android stick or lower end set top box. It’s not $35 and you are good to go.