Developers and Makers rejoice now because the best hobby-embedded platform for easy prototyping and design, the Raspberry Pi, has released a new model. The Raspberry Pi B+ is essentially an iteration on the previous model that enhances a lot of previous features while keeping the unit at the same price.

Most of the basic specs remain the same—same Broadcom BC2835 processor, 512MB of RAM and the $35 price tag. The full specs are listed, and discussed, in a post over at the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s blog.

The new Raspberry Pi B+ changes include more General-Purpose Input/Output pins (GPIO), it possesses a larger 40 pin GPIO header (with the same first 26 pinout as the previous 26 pin version) allowing the B+ to receive more inputs, such as sensors and other sources, and control more outputs, such as LEDs and controllers. The B+ also gets four USB ports, up from two in the B model. The Micro SD slot has become a push-push slot, replacing the friction-fit slot in the B. It has a reduced power consumption, down to 0.5W and 1W. The B+ should have better audio as it incorporates a dedicated low-noise power supply for the audio circuit.

Very importantly, the Raspberry Pi B+ has had its form factor changed so that the mount holes in the printed circuit board (PCB) match standard mounts better. This means that Raspberry Pi B+ owners can use a greater variety off-the-shelf enclosures to mount their project.

The Raspberry Pi B+ model is immediately available; but the model B will remain in production for as long as demand continues. Developers and Makers interested in buying a B+ today can find it from vendors such as at Farnell/element14/Newark here, at RS/Allied Components, and, of course, Adafruit Industries.

Raspberry Pi as a developer phenomenon

As of October 2013, two million Raspberry Pis had been sold since the inception of the open source hardware platform in February 2012.

Since then it has become the basis of numerous projects by amateurs and experts alike using as a platform for innovation, prototyping, and experimentation.

Hackers (the kind who develop new stuff) have built a secure, personal-cloud OS called arkOS with easy setup and a GUI. The Pi has been configured to combine with the privacy-network onion router Tor, which thus allows homeowners to easily connect it to their own network and stay private with their browsing. Minecraft publisher and developer Mojang released a version of their indie cult classic block-based video game for the Pi in early 2013.

The Raspberry Pi also isn’t just for garage-hackers either, it has numerous industrial applications such as prototyping for field automation and the Internet of Things. In 2014, the Rasbperry Pi Foundation released the Raspberry Pi Compute Module for industrial needs that can interoperate with all the millions of modules (and 3rd party work) that the standard Pi has received.

Image credit: Raspberry Pi logo, via Raspberry Pi website.