Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-400-the-70-desktop-pc/

by schappim • 6 years ago

2594 754 6 years ago

Truly amazing how the Raspberry Pi team keeps innovating.

As far as I know, they're not a billion dollar company yet they keep innovating by making better Pi's and continuously upgrading the builder/user experience.

Congratulations to Upton and team!

kzrdude3• 6 years ago

They are a non-profit, aren't they?

alphaomegacode3• 6 years ago

I'm assuming they are and that makes it even more amazing I think.

MarcScott5• 6 years ago

You're right. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is an educational charity. We're funded, in the main, by the sales of Raspberry Pi hardware.

That the hardware and software engineers at Raspberry Pi Trading can keep innovating and producing such amazing products, astounds me.

19962• 6 years ago

My 2 cents on this device: you are replicating the 1980s "computer in the keyboard". Back then, the issue was the lack of screens, so TV were used instead.

For educational purposes, the same problem exist today: however, kids will not have a space HDMI screen with a micro HDMI cable.

The replacement screen that most people have is different: it's a smartphone, as there are more smartphones than TVs.

So a "notch" or receptacle on top on the keyboard, to secure a smartphone into place, would be helpful: the use case would be powering the 400 from the smartphone AC adapter (kids may not have a spare adapter matching the pi4 power requirements), plugging the phone into the 400 using a USB cable to keep the phone charged, use the phone as the screen - without it falling out and breaking, or hanging by a cable.

Android being finicky, you may not be able to have autodetection/USB gadget mode, but a remote desktop solution would go a long way.

It is not possible at the moment, given the 400 power requirements, but newer/more powerful AC adapters will eventually be more common.

This leaves the notch, which you may want to consider in the next revision

person_of_color• 6 years ago

Whats the relation between Broadcom and RPi? Isn’t Eben employed by Broadcom?

alphaomegacode3• 6 years ago

The pleasant surprise is you all make improvements to the hardware and the software that really enhance the experience.

Nowadays, leading billion dollar tech companies often come out with upgrades that highlight being a few microns thinner and camera resolution without really launching actual innovative products or without enhancing the user experience.

Thank you.

zatertip• 6 years ago

This is such a great idea. Plug it into a tv and you have a PC. Plug in an SSD with movies and you have a media center, no extra assembly required!

petre2• 6 years ago

Yup, FFW 38 years into the future and the Commodore 64 is reborn, only with a ~22 times lower price.

weinzierl2• 6 years ago

[...] with a ~22 times lower price

...and roughly 1800 times the clock speed. One millions times the colors that the C64 display[1]. It even comes with User Port (in spirit)[2].

[1] Yes, the number of colors a home computer could display was a major selling point back then. My C64 only hat 16, my friends CPC had 32, including the rad "Bright White" which enabled stunning effects. Man, I envied that.

[2] Exposed GPIO header is super awesome and quite similar to the C64 User Port. Even more awesome was the Commodore's Expansion Port which basically exposed its bus. It think something like this would not be practically possible with today's GHz clock speeds but still this was super awesome and allowed (and required) you to even dig deeper into the internal workings of your machine.

newsbinator• 6 years ago

This is really cool. Does it support an Asus Zenscreen USB C portable monitor? I recently started traveling with one as a second screen. Weighs less than a kilo.

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ZenScreen-MB16AC-Portable-Monito...

Setting it up on my MacBook Pro required the 'DisplayLink Manager' util to be installed, but otherwise it just works and doesn't need a second power source.

I wonder if that would still work with this Raspberry Pi 400.

nl2• 6 years ago

Not sure about that, but there are lots of portable monitors that have HDMI input that should work fine; eg: https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Monitor-Display-Speakers-Inc... (Not a recomendation and I haven't tried this one).

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

Eek, $236,- for a monitor for a $100 system? Hard pass. For $236 you can get a fairly decent tablet nowadays.

That said, what are some affordable / basic screens for a RPI?

bbayer• 6 years ago

It reminds me the joyful moments while I plugged my Commodore 64 to TV set.

weinzierl2• 6 years ago

That was my very first thought too. Joyful moments indeed.

rcarmo• 6 years ago

This is an awesome idea, brings me back to my Sinclair days - grab the computer, plug it into the TV, done. Perfect for kids.

Only one concern: I own one of the keyboards (they also have a US layout) and they’re not bad, but the right cursor key fails to register sometimes. So let’s hope they tweaked the build quality a bit in that regard.

comboy• 6 years ago

Fantastic. They clearly took into account vast user base not interested in electronics and tinkering and just interested in a cheap PC. SD card with system included which was a hassle for novice users. And they even kept GPIO outside for those like me.

I'm so glad about Raspberry Pi popularity. There are many superior hardware platforms but having one that's really popular massively speeds up prototyping when most modules and sensors have libraries written for it, and you know you are testing them on the same hardware on which they were developed.

regularfry5• 6 years ago

I'm intrigued by the "faster, cooler" comment. Anyone know what that refers to? It looks like there aren't any vents on the visible surfaces, so I'm guessing there's been a hardware rev to make thermal throttling less of a problem?

If so, that might imply a pi 4 board release some time soon, which would be nice.

fanf26• 6 years ago

The clock speed is up from 1.5GHz to 1.8GHz, and there is a heat spreader built in. https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/11/02/raspberry-pi-400-tea...

terramex• 6 years ago

It's a new design of boad (not a Pi4 in a case) and has a large heat spreader inside, and the C0 2711 chip which has better clock gating so blocks can be turned off the save power. This means we can run at 1800 by default. It runs very cool.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1752436#p...

regularfry5• 6 years ago

Just watched the teardown video from there. Man, that's a lovely design.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

The BCM2711 SoC inside is a newer stepping (C0 vs B0 in Pi 4 model B), and can run faster and slightly cooler than the older revision.

Thus the Pi 400 has a 1.8 GHz default clock, while the Pi 4 model B has a 1.5 GHz clock.

Note that I just checked my Compute Module 4, and it also has the C0 revision of the chip... so it's interesting the Pi Foundation chose to keep it at the default 1.5 GHz.

It might have to do with the fact that the Pi 400 has a massive keyboard-sized heatsink attached to the SoC in the unit!

h3h3• 6 years ago

It’s a custom pcb in keyboard format with vents at the back and huge metal heat sink/anti flex plate.

regularfry5• 6 years ago

Yeah, so I watched a teardown from one of the sibling comments. Looks like there are vents underneath, but no fan (which would have ruined it for me). Turns out it's got both a huge heat spreader and a newer version of the Broadcom SOC. That's really interesting, because it means they've got the bugs ironed out to be able to do a better pi 4 board which isn't so finicky about its enclosures. And that means I could potentially upgrade the pi 3 that's currently sat in my dusty workshop without caring about fans getting clogged. (yes, I know there are passively-cooled pi 4 cases about. They don't quite do it for me.)

kzrdude3• 6 years ago

It's easy to overclock pi 4 (revison 1.2) to 1.8 GHz as well, so they are probably very similar.

lukifer• 6 years ago

Love it. I first learned BASIC on a keyboard form-factor Atari 800 XL [0], plugged into an old B&W 12" television. I think this device will be much more approachable, and open the Pi/Linux ecosystem to many more users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family#Newer_XL_ma...

acvny• 6 years ago

I started with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector-06C

bencollier49• 6 years ago

This tugs all the heartstrings for me as it mimics the computers of the early 80s. My only criticism is that their use of micro-HDMI makes it very easy for children to wreck the machine. I've had this happen twice to me on RPi4s, and it's not a terribly pleasant experience.

Now all I want from them is a custom edition with the function keys in red, the rest in black, and the body in beige.

lloeki• 6 years ago

[Unpopular opinion] having been spoiled by a working case† of USB-C, I wish there were 6 of those at the back instead of all the different plugs (save for Ethernet and GPIO)...

[Even more unpopular opinion] ... even if they were functionally different and marked explicitly as USB 3 x3, HDMI x2, power x1.

† I hear this is not everyone's case, but I just decided to buy a bunch of USB-C <-> whatever cables and stash the old cables in a drawer. The experience has been refreshing ever since, even emergency charging the laptop over 5W.

WatchDog• 6 years ago

I would imagine that a USB-C controller, would add a fair bit to the price, maybe a later SOC will support it.

PostThisTooFast• 6 years ago

Yeah, they should've gone with full-sized HDMI ports, since they have the room.

Kim_Bruning3• 6 years ago

If only it had the traditional orange F-keys. Then it would be perfect!

references:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro#/media/File:BBC_Micr...

or an actual ARM model:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes#/media/File:A...

rbanffy9• 6 years ago

My memories prefer an Apple II theme. Either brown and beige or beige on off-white.

bofh233• 6 years ago

If you’re feeling nostalgic just tweet some BBC Basic code to @bbcmicrobot.

BBC Micro Bot - 1000 Tweets of Code https://www.bbcmicrobot.com/ "BBC Micro bot runs your tweet on an 8-bit computer emulator."

varispeed5• 6 years ago

I can't understand the reason why this port even was invented. The cables I have seen are few times bigger than the connector itself, so there is a lot of pressure and tension being applied on that tiny port. Only thing I can think of is saving some PCB space, but if they put more effort into arranging components, then I am sure full size port would fit nicely.

myself2483• 6 years ago

Yup, and if you look at Jeff Geerling's teardown photos, there were acres of extra PCB space and they easily could've switched back to regular HDMI for this unit.

It's a senseless design defect in what otherwise looks to be a splendid little unit.

If I end up with one of these, the first thing I'm gonna do is cut a little base-plate to glue it to, which extends behind the unit and has places to secure the HDMI cables (and maybe some other goodies as long as I'm at it), to prevent exactly the torque we all know happens.

bofh233• 6 years ago

I think the Raspberry Pi 4 should have had one standard HDMI port and one micro HDMI port. That would have addressed the majority of users. Only the minority of users that want a second monitor on their RPi would need an adapter or special cable.

kristopolous2• 6 years ago

What a clean and stylish execution. I have too many pis already but I think they just sold me another.

That video ad is Steve Jobs-level excellence.

saagarjha• 6 years ago

If I were doing it I'd use a cleaner background, some background music, add a British voiceover, and do more continuous shots. The cut away from the wire going into the port hurt me :(

kristopolous2• 6 years ago

it's called glamour - you intentionally don't show everything and let the imagination fill in the gaps. It's a gorgeous advertising technique when done properly and a terribly annoying one when done poorly. I'd argue here it might have come close but obviously not for you.

Glamour is mightily hard. I don't even try it when doing products. Apple's pulled it off a few times.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

I was lucky to get a pre-release version to test, and I decided to tear it down before I started trying it out. I posted this blog post with detailed pictures of the insides, and some more details and performance benchmarks: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear...

There are also a couple videos linked in the post, if you're more visually-inclined.

Fun fact: the Pi 400 (and Compute Module 4) both have newer revisions of the BCM2711 SoC (C0 instead of B0), and that's part of the reason the clock speed is higher on the Pi 400 (1.8 GHz) than on the regular Pi 4 model B (1.5 GHz)—the newer revision apparently handles faster clocks and scaling with less heat than the older revision.

avian2• 6 years ago

One comment regarding your "performance comparison" graph. Is the "dd" result read or write? I wondered the same thing with your Compute Module 4 post.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

It's write speed; sorry about that, I should probably be more specific! All the benchmarks I'm using are from this Wiki page (http://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/microsd-cards) — though I need to update that page to include some more USB/SATA/NVMe performance benchmarks since I'm now using a lot more drives with the Pi 4 and CM4 (and skipping microSD entirely for most builds).

drcongo• 6 years ago

On the subject of heat, how is it on this thing? I've heard stories about the Pi 4 B.

ygra• 6 years ago

There's an aluminium plate that serves as a heat sink and appears to work quite well, apparently.

flyinghamster2• 6 years ago

According to the article, it isn't a problem; the heat sink is big enough to not need a fan. Nice bonus that it's a slightly faster SoC.

I have a Pi 4B with a heat sink and fan that's running BOINC 24x7 (yielding a RAC of about 750-775 on World Community Grid), and with the fan connected to 3.3V it runs at a comfortable 52-54°C with absolutely no throttling. I think I'm going to try overclocking it a bit and see how it handles it.

MivLives• 6 years ago

They pushed out a firmware update last year that apparently solves some of the heat issues.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/thermal-testing-raspberry-p...

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

It runs cooler than the Pi 4 model B, at a higher clock speed. The newer chip helps with that, in addition to the massive heat sink on top of it!

satysin2• 6 years ago

Just watched a few videos on your channel and love it. Really great stuff.

I love this Pi 400 and think in the new year I will pick one up for my son. We have a Pi 4 that we use a lot and he loves but like you say in your video it is a bit annoying with this little box off the side with a bunch of cables coming out of it.

Not terrible by any means just annoying so I really love the form factor of it all being in the keyboard.

I have thought for a while now they should do this kind of form factor or sell a simple RPi branded monitor with a Pi built in so I am happy to see they thought about it too. A keyboard is much more practical than a monitor of course so it is a far more sensible choice!

Really hope this sells well and they continue with this kind of form factor in the future. Even a slightly bigger keyboard with a "forehead" (C64 vibes) would be excellent.

FerretFred• 6 years ago

simple RPi branded monitor with a Pi built in

Oh, I'd definitely be up for that!!

cat199• 6 years ago

agree the keyboard-in-one is great -

also fyi the pi-top project has a DIY 'all in one' for the PI:

https://www.pi-top.com/products/pi-top-ceed

and a DIY laptop:

https://www.pi-top.com/products/pi-top-3

only claim pi-3 compatibility at the moment, not sure if it would still work with 4, probably need some adapters or so

(maybe other projects like this, not sure)

KaiserPro• 6 years ago

Excellent, I was looking for this sort of info.

(side note, I love the ansible roles you've made, especially AWX, saved me a bunch of time back in 2018)

tyingq3• 6 years ago

How is the keyboard? It looks, uh, cheap, so I'm curious if typing on it is an ok experience.

gh02t• 6 years ago

At least superficially it looks like it might be the same basic keyboard as the official Raspberry Pi keyboard that they already had. If so the experience is... not great but not horrible. It's not the worst chiclet keyboard I've used, I'd rate it as adequate. You would not want to use it as your primary keyboard all day, but that's also not what it's intended for.

timw4mail• 6 years ago

(This is assuming the existing keyboards are the same) Pretty decent scissor-switch, but one of mine squeaks when typing some.

numlock86• 6 years ago

The Pi Keyboard was decent. I would expect this to be the same just with the Pi integrated.

VLM• 6 years ago

Apple made the chiclet keyboard cool again. It might be OK.

Gen-x who remember the TRS80 MC10 and its keyboard remember chiclet keyboards as not much better than membrane keyboards (Consider the ZX81 Spectrum)

But decades later Apple started shipping chiclet-appearing keyboards that actually worked, so the style has been somewhat revitalized.

That said, yeah they could be shipping a 1980s quality chiclet keyboard or a 2020s quality chiclet keyboard, so that's worrisome.

simonh• 6 years ago

Or alternatively, how hard is it to plug in and use another keyboard instead?

bitwize3• 6 years ago

It feels plasticky, but not flimsy. I think it uses scissor switches, so it feels better than a standard rubberdome, but it's obviously not going to replace your Model M or Cherry-switch keyboard.

Sauce: I have the keyboard without the computer in it, from when I bought a Pi 4 "starter kit" a year ago.

prox4• 6 years ago

Can you use the keyboard.... as a keyboard for other computers?

omk• 6 years ago

With a little bit of code, you should be able to pipe keyboard input to one of the USB ports.

sdenton42• 6 years ago

One of my main uses for random keyboards is hooking them onto a raspberry pi that needs some local debugging...

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

Yes, I think Gordon Hollingsworth from Raspberry Pi has posted somewhere specifically how to do it (maybe in the comments on the post on the Pi website?).

ahnick• 6 years ago

You should probably be able to use Synergy (https://symless.com/synergy)

JKCalhoun2• 6 years ago

Curious if you have any specs on the ribbon cable that connects the keyboard. It looks like it must carry more than USB?

Abishek_Muthian• 6 years ago

Hey Jeff, I recently bought the RPi Keyboard Hub (Pictured in OP and In parent blog) for its soft keys (Got bone issues), I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. I use Wacom Touch Tablet for trackpad along with a Steel series mouse in its Hub; But I'm worried about saturating the bandwidth as it's just USB 2.0 although I haven't found any conclusive issues.

Have you tested the Keyboard hub's limits? Controller seems to be QinHeng Electronics USB-Serial.

pedroaraujo• 6 years ago

This is slightly disappointing, I was expecting it to be some kind of case for the the Compute Module (or at least for the RPi4. I don't know if it's unrealistic, but it would be nice to have some sort of upgrade or repair possibilities.

wtracy• 6 years ago

That seems to more or less already exist: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-keyboard

dualboot• 6 years ago

I agree, I wish this was the case but it's still a compelling gift for my nieces and nephews and tickles my nostalgia for the era of computing that it mimics.

bakul• 6 years ago

Have you tried the coffee spilling test on it yet?

cpascal• 6 years ago

Just wanted to say that I've been watching your Pi videos on YouTube over the last few months and I really enjoy them. Your video about trying to get a GPU working with a Raspberry Pi was particularly fascinating. Keep up the great work.

908B64B197• 6 years ago

Fun fact: the Pi 400 (and Compute Module 4) both have newer revisions of the BCM2711 SoC (C0 instead of B0), and that's part of the reason the clock speed is higher on the Pi 400 (1.8 GHz) than on the regular Pi 4 model B (1.5 GHz)—the newer revision apparently handles faster clocks and scaling with less heat than the older revision.

Reading your article

the Pi 400 didn't overheat even when I was running it with an overclock to 2.147 GHz, the maximum it allows currently

This only makes me wish they sold an 800 version with 8 GB of RAM, just like the Pi 4.

happycube• 6 years ago

... and a mechanical keyboard, to complete the possibly unintentional Atari reference.

(Folklore says the original product plan had the Atari 400 come with 4K of RAM, and the 800 8K... and then memory got cheaper by release.)

kovek2• 6 years ago

Thank you geerlingguy for your ansible repositories!!

ThePowerOfFuet• 6 years ago

Edit: It looks like they're affiliate links for monetization, so what I said doesn't apply in this case as they're not the usual tracking crap Amazon et al commonly add to their sharing links.

---

You might want to replace the link to the plexiglass cutter to remove the tracking info (linking everyone who clicks it back to you); here's the smallest you can get it:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BZZ1D0

The same goes for your SD card links.

jbverschoor• 6 years ago

Why was it not just called a "home computer" ?

anthropodie• 6 years ago

Like everywhere else, schools here in India also have gone online. But students here do not have computers. They are taking their classes using parents smartphones. Now you can imagine all the issues that one can face while using this setup. Moreover it's not feasible to sit with a mobile phone for 5-6 hrs of classes.

My father is a teacher and I had this idea to let his students use Raspberry PI with TVs but this is perfect for them.

rootsudo• 6 years ago

I love it, I really do.

The logitech keyboards w/ the touchpad built in suck.

This just looks adorable.

rhys_the_davies• 6 years ago

Got myself a pre-release version to test with Ubuntu. The higher clock speed at 1.8GHz makes such a nice difference, https://ubuntu.com/blog/raspberry-pi-400-with-ubuntu-support

randomsearch• 6 years ago

How usable is it? What desktop runs out of the box and does it lag? Genuinely missing Linux and thinking this would be fun, but only if I can use an up to date distro and it doesn’t hang all the time.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

I would buy immediately if it also had a display and a battery to make a laptop (and a cooler so I wouldn't have to worry when I start a long compilation routine on it). Looks great otherwise.

MarcScott5• 6 years ago

That would probably quadruple the price. Look at PiTop. They used to include batteries and a display, but have moved away from that, as these are the most expensive peripherals. You can by a cheap display, or use your existing TV. A USB power supply isn't too expensive either.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

I have indeed got enough spare displays but I just want to carry my Pi 4 around and use it in public transport and everywhere so a separate display and a web of cables doesn't seem particularly convenient. Perhaps I could buy a PiTop but their current model is not a laptop.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

Why quadruple, anyway? I've seen quite a number of ~$200 laptops and found their screens and batteries tolerable (although, obviously, not really good).

Robotbeat2• 6 years ago

The display seems to me to be a bigger problem than the battery. Small, 3 Amp capable USB batteries are common and cheap ($10-$20 on Amazon). Displays are expensive (and need their own power source), but people can at least use TVs like they did with those 1980s PCs.

I sort of suspect that if this is really successful, they might come out with a laptop version. That'd be nice.

tunnuz• 6 years ago

I anyone using the Pi to run very old computer games? Because this could be the perfect gaming console for the nostalgic.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

One of the YouTube reviews deals specifically with retro gaming on the Pi 400: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nopc7mJUDkM&list=PLcd1Q0-YkB... — also that channel spent a little time rendering some concepts for more retro-looking Pi 400 designs.

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

I've got a RPI with RetroPi, it... sorta works, but the cheap controllers aren't very good, and there's a noticeable input lag in games like Mario Bros. N64 games don't get a decent framerate. Mind you this is with an RPI 2 or 3 so not the best hardware either.

I got a refurbished N64 as well, works as intended.

regularfry5• 6 years ago

"Very old" means different things to different people. If you want to run the sorts of games that used to run on "keyboard plugged into the TV" computers, think Z80, not VR4300.

Udo• 6 years ago

After combining two broken Amiga 500s into one single working one, I had an Amiga case and an Amiga keyboard left over. The nice thing about the Amiga keyboard is that it is pretty much a serial device, so it wasn't hard to set up an Arduino Pro Micro to act as a keyboard-to-usb adapter.

Then I put in a Raspberry Pi with a Retropie SD card, two gamepads, a mouse, and that's all.

I didn't put a lot of effort into making it look nice, so it's basically just a bunch of cables coming out the back of the Amiga, but at first glance it's still an ordinary Amiga.

Works pretty well overall for Amiga, C64, Spectrum, Atari, and DOS games. Of course boot time is not great, and add to that the time spent navigating Retropie's menu system, it's all a bit of a hassle. It does work better than my actual Amiga for "productivity" applications because I can set it up with more memory and better networking options.

willis9362• 6 years ago

I’m putting one together soon. The retrotink ultimate stopped being made last year, which is very sad. The community hasn’t picked up the source yet. It’s a matter of time though. I’m going with a PI2SCART for video output. I would use this Raspi 400, but the GPIO location is not well suited for hats.

I’m going this route because I also want the flexibility to have a computer on my CRTs. If you want pure gaming, then look into MiSTer FPGA.

jug• 6 years ago

Haha, this is exactly what I'd like to see but for the MiSTer FPGA system.

I like retro computing and while the RPi can do that, doing it in hardware is even better.

However, now that it's released, maybe it can be disassembled and reconnected for that one, if it fits...

jonny383• 6 years ago

SD cards really let the Pi down. Thank god for USB boot.

peterburkimsher• 6 years ago

First impression: yes, this looks beautiful, reminiscent of the microcomputer revolution, and of course I wish I could get one.

What would I change?

It's a pity that the keyboard is connected using a flip-up ribbon, rather than internal USB. Although I can see why the target market (education) just prefers an all-in-one computer, this also means that the RPi 400 can't be used as a keyboard for other computers. Therefore I'll still need to carry a keyboard around.

There will be software options for virtual USB host (e.g. shameless plugs for the EspUSB which uses WiFi, or KeyMouSerial which uses serial) but in practice, those wouldn't be as easy for most hackers. There's also no F12 key, which is needed for system configuration on some distros.

The two Micro-HDMI ports are quite small and close together (especially when using a 3-way micro-mini-full size HDMI adaptor).

Like Apple, there's no headphone jack. Also no built-in SD reader, so I'd still need to carry a USB card reader (unlike my laptop, which can go directly from camera SD cards to HDMI on a projector).

Final nitpick: if this keyboard is intended for young people, their hands are smaller, so full-size keys are actually less comfortable. (believe it or not, I've even seen keyboards intended for children that have extra-large keys). A design with smaller keys that could fit in my large pocket (e.g. TI-84 sized device) would be preferable.

What the RPi Foundation has done is an excellent feat of engineering, and they should and will be rewarded by the market for their innovation. It's a great product. I just still see some room for future improvements.

secfirstmd• 6 years ago

Yeh the keyboard for other computers would be awesome.

fanf26• 6 years ago

I believe the USB-C power port can be used for USB-2 gadget mode, so you could in theory configure the Pi 400 to act as a keyboard for another computer :-)

herogreen• 6 years ago

If one of the usb port allow OTG someone can hack a driver to turn the 400 into a keyboard (albeit a very bloated one as it would be running a full OS!).

nl2• 6 years ago

That GPIO port looks so much like the old C64 cartridge port: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64#/media/File:Commo...

Wouldn't it be fun to ship cartridge games again?

schappim2• 6 years ago

It is quite amazing to see how far we've come since the C64.

  Clock speed: 1827x
  Benchmark: 430000x
  Memory: 65536x
  Power: 0.5x
  Screen resolution: 130x
  Serial port rate: 1562500x
  Introductory price: 6x less

Reference:

[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-Image-2020-11-02-20-0...

photon-torpedo• 6 years ago

And boot time? ;)

schappim2• 6 years ago

Gotta give the C64 something.

forinti2• 6 years ago

RISCOS boots really fast.

TekMol• 6 years ago

    Benchmark: 430000x

Cool. That would mean performence more then doubled on a yearly basis.

Unfortunately, your "reference" is just the same numbers you posted but as an image. I don't know if this counts as a "reference" :)

Any links to who performed those benchmarks?

boltefnovor3• 6 years ago

Demanding facts and methodology eh? You don’t seem to understand benchmarks.

pvg3• 6 years ago

That would mean performence more then doubled on a yearly basis.

How do you figure? They were released 30+ years apart. 2^30 would be a billion times faster. Instead it's something under 19 doublings, nowhere close to doubling every year for 37 years.

cambo2• 6 years ago

Why isn't it just a CM plugged into the bottom of the keyboard circuit board for upgradability... it doesn't bode well that Rasberry Pi's own products aren't using the weird connecter the CM has.

SahAssar• 6 years ago

I hadn't seen that the new CMs don't use the SODIMM form factor anymore, that's a bit disappointing.

cambo2• 6 years ago

Jeff Gerrling goes over why they changed... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUamq0ey8_M&ab_channel=JeffG...

exged• 6 years ago

If you want to upgrade you might as well just buy a regular RPi4 and plug in your own keyboard.

imtringued• 6 years ago

I've seen a lot of devices like the CM that use a random connector and for some reason they never actually name the connector and its MPN. Alchitry and Parallela have "weird" connectors as well and it was always a pain in the ass to figure out which connector they've been using.

DanBC• 6 years ago

RPi do name the connector in the CM4 datasheet: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/cm4/cm4-datasheet.pdf

You can buy the connector here: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/products/1362374/?grossPrice=...

I agree with you though. RPi appeals to people with a wide range of skills. There are lots of programmers who want to use Pi to get more electronics knowledge, and RPi foundation could make that a bit easier for those people.

(EDIT: I don't understand why parent has been downvoted. A lot of similar devices do use newer more specialised connectors and it can be hard to work out who makes and supplies the connectors.)

fyfy18• 6 years ago

For anyone wondering it is $70, meaning £67 or €69 (DE).

mosselman• 6 years ago

Wow, the pound has seen better times.

mekkkkkk2• 6 years ago

It's not a straight conversion, parent poster refers to GB/EU pricing of the product. A straight conversion would be ~54£.

I did a double take as well, and had to look it up.

billpg2• 6 years ago

Cheers Boris!

a254613e• 6 years ago

€69 (DE)

Where did you find that price? On the official purchase page[1] the lowest price is 97 EUR (which is around $113)

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/?resel...

namero999• 6 years ago

Depends whether the reseller is selling the kit or just the device. Welectron for instance lists both, and device-only is 69 EUR. https://www.welectron.com/Raspberry-Pi-400-Computer-DE

tromp• 6 years ago

I really want to like this, but the shrinking of the keys around the return key is a big turn off.

mytec• 6 years ago

The pipe and backslash are beside the Z key as well, making the left side shift key narrower.

19962• 6 years ago

This is because the picture is for a British/ISO layout, not out standard US/ANSI layout.

0-_-02• 6 years ago

I think it copies the macbook layout, like so many other mini keyboards:

https://keyshorts.com/blogs/blog/37615873-how-to-identify-ma...

bitwize3• 6 years ago

Oh, man, it's like an 80s home computer for today. It's just what every kid needs.

qz210• 6 years ago

Can we please have a Pi without a crappy storage interface. It's either a microSD card or something dangling off USB. An M2 SATA or NVMe would make this credible but 99% of the problems I've had with the Pi platform is storage related, either being knackered microSD cards, terrible performance or USB power problems.

ejolto2• 6 years ago

Sounds like you're not the target audience for a RPi. They are meant to be cheap computers for "the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools and in developing countries"[0]. Adding NVMe support would increase the price.

There are alternatives to RPi that do what you want, odroid-h2plus for example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

qz210• 6 years ago

Schools don't want to be debugging microSD and USB issues.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

Also, the CM4 does work with native NVMe or SATA storage (at the expense of USB 3.0 ports).

bonzini• 6 years ago

The RPi4 SoC already has PCIe support; it's used for the USB controller, but it wouldn't be impossible to have a version that has an M.2 PCIe slot. It could be used for NVMe, WWAN or faster Ethernet.

USB could remain available through USB OTG and it would sit in the middle between the RPi4 and the Compute Module 4. Using the USB power socket for OTG is doable already on the Pi4, but to do it in a fully supported way would need some extra components to properly handle USB-C configuration. Still cheaper than an H2plus

JustFinishedBSG• 6 years ago

Or you know there's this thing called eMMC that's mostly pin compatible with SD cards and yet provide fast, resilient and cheap storage.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

There are alternatives to RPi

The alternatives to RPi don't have nearly as rich selection of polished software, vibrant community and ecosystem as Raspberry Pi has. The best parts (besides hacker-orientedness) of RPi are its uniformness and popularity.

qwertox2• 6 years ago

If would make sense to be able to attach a $25 32GB SSD to the bottom of a RPI. Then add some kind of a U-shaped connector to connect the RPI to the SSD and a place for the screws, so that they are fixed back to back.

pizza234• 6 years ago

eMMC storage are comparatively very fast, and I believe they have a comparatively little or negligible impact on the end price (competitors like Hardkernel put it in the directly competing products).

jonp8883• 6 years ago

This is misleading. You have removed the first part of that sentence "Early on, the Raspberry Pi project leaned towards..."

Whilst education is still important, particularly on the charity side, these days the RPi Trading division explicitly targets multiple markets, for instance, the compute boards specifically targeted at industrial usage. This product is described in their own press release as targeting the christmas toy market amongst others.

Rebelgecko2• 6 years ago

What percentage of raspberry pis do you think actually go to that "target audience"? 20%?

numpad05• 6 years ago

There are countless Android phones with eMMC without much problems

ajsnigrutin• 6 years ago

Android phones are useles... no ethernet, no gpio, shitty cooling, hard to get an OS installed, hard to debug, and compared to RPI4, too expensive.

RPi4 is great... small cheap, basically a full pc in a small box, with low power usage, low heat production, no noise, and yes... with a shitty storage solution.

ornornor• 6 years ago

FWIW I’ve used a rpi1 then 2 then 3 as my Kodi/openelec/libreelec box for years each and it’s been running very smoothly. Maybe not the most demanding in terms of storage writes but still, I’m very satisfied with it.

pbronez• 6 years ago

NVMe hats are available for less than $50

Geekworm Raspberry Pi 4 X872 M.2 NVMe SSD Expansion Board Compatible with Raspberry Pi 4 Model B only, Support X735/X710/X765/X725

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0855T2KFW

hda1112• 6 years ago

It's still USB storage. It's theoretically possible to solder a PCIe ssd on the Raspberry Pi 4. At the cost of USB 3 support.

qz210• 6 years ago

vomit. There's PCI lanes coming out of the CPU right? Even a bottom end Intel unit these days has one for an NVMe slot, not 5 devices down the bus.

hda1112• 6 years ago

2021 Compute Module 4 will have NVMe storage.

filleokus• 6 years ago

FWIW: Now you can get raw PCI-E access with the Compute Module [0] + IO Board [1], allowing you to put a SSD on there over a robust interface.

But yeah, I would also love this to be built in on something like the RPI. Closest option according to my research is probably the Rock Pi, but then it's not really straight forward to boot from it etc...

[0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4/ [1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4-io-boa...

throwaway8943454• 6 years ago

I know relatively little about the Compute Modules... Are there any decent "racks" for these that would allow you to assemble many of them into a single unit?

smokelegend• 6 years ago

Have you tried using berryboot?

Gives you an option to install os on external storage. You can set it up to dual boot multiple distros if you wanted.

I agree pi4 would benefit from better storage options, but for the money it's still a impressive package.

MisterTea• 6 years ago

Pi 4 compute module breaks out the pcie port which is use for usb 3.0 on the pi 4. This means someone could make a motherboard with an m.2 M-key socket. The pcie port could also be routed to a switch to be split among multiple pcie devices such as usb 3.0, ethernet and so on.

rwmj3• 6 years ago

The RPi 4 has USB 3 + UAS which is actually quite decent. I use it for Aarch64 development[1]. It boots and runs entirely off the SSD, and the performance is not spectacular but perfectly usable, and being it's a regular SSD it should be at least as reliable as a laptop.

It also has a firmware bug where it cannot boot unless there is an (empty, unused) SD card in the slot, which is annoying!

[1] https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/raspberry-pi-4-running...

larschdk• 6 years ago

I boot my RPi 4 entirely from USB with the Sep-3-2020 bootloader. No sd-card inserted. The Sandisk Extreme Pro benchmarks at 230 MB/s on USB 3.0.

kingosticks7• 6 years ago

Sounds like they fixed (read: worked-around) that issue in https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/tag/v1.17

cure• 6 years ago

I boot a RPi 4 via PXE (or rather, the RPi version of PXE, which is decidedly non-standard, meh). No SD card in the slot. No problem. Are you on the latest firmware?

silon42• 6 years ago

normal SATA(2/3) would be plenty good (even better if 2 ports).

justin664• 6 years ago

An M2 SATA or NVMe would make this credible but 99% of the problems I've had with the Pi platform is storage related, either being knackered microSD cards, terrible performance or USB power problems.

It sounds like literally all your problems would be addressed by using the official power supply and a USB-connected SSD - although your problems might very well be solved just by using the official power supply and a decent SD card.

SATA and NVMe interfaces are something some nerds who aren't the target audience for this hardware would like but they don't address the real-world problems you mentioned at all.

cbm-vic-20• 6 years ago

Jeff Geerling (HN:geerlingguy, who is participating in this comments section) has demonstrated using a NVMe drive with the RPi 4 Compute Module and its IO board, which has a PCIe slot.

https://youtu.be/HUamq0ey8_M?t=429

throwaway8943454• 6 years ago

Hah, just came across his blog while trying to debug an issue I'm having: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/fixing-503-service-un...

m4632• 6 years ago

I think usb-c/usb 3 solved most of the problems.

I used to have the low-power indicator show up all the time in the past, but it seems the usb-c power supply has resolved that.

Additionally usb boot + usb3 speed has made running completely off of usb instead of sd a good solution. There are also pretty fast yet small form factor drives like the samsung fit to choose from as far as physical size.

mberning• 6 years ago

You are looking for in Intel NUC.

qz210• 6 years ago

Yes. I already know what I'm looking for. I posted a picture of it yesterday: https://imgur.com/yjPMYaX

(M600, sort of a NUC)

morio• 6 years ago

I agree 100% with this. I have a fairly large tinker shop with 20-30 different machines and initially bet on the Pi platform to do CNC/Octoprint/robotics/etc controls, thinking I should standardize. Most of the Pis failed with storage issues eventually; be it eMMC, microSD or USB flash drives. Since then I've moved on to x86 based industrial motherboards which ended up costing about the same when you include everything. Zero problems since then. And boot times are now measured in seconds, not minutes.

forest_dweller• 6 years ago

These look pretty decent for the price. I still wish there was proper storage but otherwise this looks really nice.

I don't have a use for one though. I only really use my pi4 as a Kodi box and my Pi2 is just a FTP server for my friends.

boltefnovor3• 6 years ago

I like the general idea but frankly this is underwhelming.

Where’s the sense of fun?

Given the origin of the raspberry pi being the old BBC and other home computers it would have been fun to have a solid computer with a full size keyboard reminiscent of the old 8 bit machines like the Acorn or the BBC micro.

The is just a keyboard. And really a missed opportunity to be something unique and fun and exciting.

This is kinda neat but nothing special. I’m not involuntarily reaching for my wallet.

yreg• 6 years ago

Isn't the goal to provide an affordable computer to those who currently can not afford one? Instead of selling a cool collectible…

boltefnovor3• 6 years ago

Is affordability the goal?

I thought inspiration was.

sschueller• 6 years ago

I was hopping they would just use the compute module[1] and you could replace/upgrade or even use it in another project. In the teardown you can see there is only one board. [2]

I would have also though it would cost less but I guess integrating it directly is even cheaper.

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-compute-module...

[2] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear...

rsync• 6 years ago

"In the teardown you can see there is only one board."

I'm curious - can one buy that one board ?

It is an odd form-factor that I have not seen a raspi use in the past (long and rectangular) - is it only sold as part of these keyboard units ?

glaive123• 6 years ago

for some reason I thought the title was Raspberry Pi $400 Desktop PC... but it's only $70

sloshnmosh• 6 years ago

Awesome!

I didn’t know that Raspberry Pi had these.

I will definitely be ordering one.

I do already own a newer Raspberry 4 with 4Gb of RAM and the massive heat sink is a must! These things run WAY hotter than the Raspberry Pi 3’s.

There are heat-sinking cases made of aluminum made by third-party’s that dissipate the heat almost as well as the turbo fan setups.

mysterydip• 6 years ago

The Pi4 is a great piece of kit, and I love the idea behind this, but for me personally I really need to see all USB3 on it. I have some high speed peripherals that require it, and using a hub doesn't work.

sytelus• 6 years ago

Gosh... if they had made this as box that connects to display and talks to any bluetooth keyboard then this would be gold. Requiring wired keyboard is such a let down and limiting. I would then connect it to my 4K smart TV and also use it as full blown computer! With dedicated app, it can turn any TV to smart TV, picture frame etc with unlimited customizations. It would be like Chromecast on steroids, open programmable OS and a keyboard!

gchadwick• 6 years ago

I think an existing RPI 4 in one of the many available cases would do what you need there. It already has bluetooth built-in.

catmanjan• 6 years ago

Yep! A Chromecast running Linux basically

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

Gosh... if they had made this as box that connects to display and talks to any bluetooth keyboard then this would be gold.

That's basically the existing RPi desktop kit minus keyboard/mouse (RPi, case, power supply, HDMI cable) — it does bluetooth OOB. Which you have been able to get for a long time.

So, they already did it. This is a new, extra thing.

leoncvlt• 6 years ago

How do I play sounds with this? I see no jack for speakers or headphones. I assume one could have sound over HDMI but monitors with built-in speakers are not very common.

teekert3• 6 years ago

RPi4 has BT.

cardiffspaceman2• 6 years ago

There are Bluetooth "DACs" that have tube-based amplifiers so you can really go nuts with a DAC that costs like 5 times the cost of the RPi 400.

nobodyshere• 6 years ago

Monitors with 3.5mm outputs however are not that rare.

kingosticks7• 6 years ago

A super-cheap USB soundcard is another option albeit an ugly one. But I do agree it's a shame they couldn't squeeze an audio output into the design somewhere.

rootbear• 6 years ago

I noticed that. Audio has to come from the HDMI connection or from Bluetooth, either of which will produce better sound than the standard Pi audio jack. I imagine they see this being used with a TV, much like the old classic 8-bit consoles.

AlanYx3• 6 years ago

You can use a USB audio dongle. Just to take one example, the Apple USB-C audio dongle is only $8 and has extremely good measured performance: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

elihu• 6 years ago

I like how the GPIO headers are right there in back by all the other usb/hdmi/ethernet ports.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

I can also see no reason why does it have to be this small (I would appreciate a keypad) and why is there still no heatsink.

RoryH• 6 years ago

I personally think this product looks awesome, maybe partly nostalgia.

qwerty4561276• 6 years ago

It does, but it would hardly look worse if it were wider. It would break no canon either - e.g. Amiga had the same form-factor but with a full-size keyboard incl. keypad.

regularfry5• 6 years ago

There is a heatsink. It's a large chunk of metal under the keyboard.

pta2002• 6 years ago

It has a massive heatsink inside of it, it's passively cooled but it's a big chunk of metal the size of the keyboard, which is more than enough for this chip.

barnacled• 6 years ago

Absolutely wonderful! This is getting ever more close to the joy of the original home computers, and a great setup for a kid to start with especially with the book provided. The RPi4 is also an impressive bit of kit. Bravo RPi foundation!

danmaz74• 6 years ago

Yes the form factor reminds me of my first computer, a Commodore 64.

rbanffy9• 6 years ago

They should offer the case/keys in more colors. I have the black keyboard and it's nice beyond anything I could expect at that price range.

Anyway, if they make the board available separately, there can be a huge ecosystem of interesting cases for it.

mathnode• 6 years ago

I've ordered one, it arrives tomorrow, and until I read your comment I had overlooked the book.

When I was younger, I was lucky enough to have an Amiga Commodore 500+, and I read all the included literature cover to cover, over and over again. I have a lot to thank those manuals for!

EDIT: It's available for free online as a PDF, https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/books/beginners-guide-4th-ed

kumarvvr2• 6 years ago

Wow. This would work awesome for distributing Apps that require hardware, for example Point of Sale Systems.

graycrow2• 6 years ago

Missed opportunity to use the Compute Module 4 and full-size HDMI ports.

revanx_2• 6 years ago

This is so good, I work from home and I've been eyeballing products like this for a while but until now its all been 3rd party. What would really take the cake for me is if they made a version of this but with a battery and wireless charging, then this really would be an exceptional portable desktop pc.

Narishma• 6 years ago

At that point they may as well make it into a laptop.

johanbcn• 6 years ago

I'm hoping some company takes the new Compute Module 4 and does that. Would be great as a thin client + browser only machine.

revanx_2• 6 years ago

I guess this is why I was down-voted at first, but it really isn't a laptop if it doesn't have a screen and I don't need one. I think we will see hacks with the pi 400 soon that will have a battery anyway, or one can just disassemble it and attach a power bank to it anyway so I guess the solution is already there.

anonytrary2• 6 years ago

I'm curious how you plan to use it wirelessly if you need to plug it into a monitor anyway? Do you also have a mobile monitor?

miki123211• 6 years ago

If there was a way to attach a battery to this, and possibly an external speaker, this would be a pretty cool setup for a notetaker for the blind.

We had talking and braille notetakers (basically our equivalent of PDAs), years before the rest of the world heard about such devices. They've been falling out of fashion lately, mostly because they're so expensive, compared to cheaper but slightly worse alternatives like laptops. If we could make one based on a Pi 400, though, it would probably be way cheaper than anything else on the market, and way more powerful, considering we can put Linux on it.

fanf26• 6 years ago

Sadly the 400 lacks the audio socket that the 4B has :-( so audio out is only available over HDMI or Bluetooth.

You can probably power it from a USB battery pack quite nicely.

einpoklum• 6 years ago

So what are the storage medium options for this device? I'm not much of a Pi-guy; some comments mention "eMMC"; can that actually be used? Why and how would it be better than an SD card?

graycrow2• 6 years ago

There is no eMMC or other internal storage option on this PC. Just a microSD card slot and USB.

brainless5• 6 years ago

As an engineer/founder from India who dreams of access to the Internet for everyone on this planet, these are the efforts that make me smile.

I am in the process of sorting out my financial situation - tough founder luck. But I am happy to order a few of these (and monitors) and rent a small garage to give local kids a free computer lab to learn. (Kolkata, India)

ipi• 6 years ago

Is it really an affordable situation with the current pricing of the RPI to setup a computer cafe for the kids who don't have access to the computers and internet ?

Flex247A• 6 years ago

Compared to old computers, it is.

brainless5• 6 years ago

Access to Internet, thankfully and recently, has become super affordable by my own standards to give away. I have a 100Mbps fiber from Airtel (I have US/Europe calls all the time) at around USD 15 (INR 900) / month. I could easily get another for the cafe.

Rent for a small garage would be about USD 35 / month. Electricity would not cross USD 50 / month.

minerjoe3• 6 years ago

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free.

One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely.

I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser printers, scanners, tablets, projectors, big-screens, etc. Without spending a single dollar on hardware.

This has two effects, it reuses a resource that was destined for destruction, and it doesn't add fuel ($$$) to the ecological dumpster fire that is modern capitalism.

raverbashing3• 6 years ago

I don't know why you're downvoted.

This is exactly how it's done in many places. A 10yr old computer is perfectly fine for this, maybe even older. Yes it might not play all youtube videos, but it works.

itsoktocry• 6 years ago

One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely.

I think broad computer illiteracy in the general population has convinced people that you "need" a new, powerful computer. In reality, 95% of the population can get away with any decent computer from the last 10 years. Grandma isn't training a neural net, she's checking Facebook.

I continue to use a 2nd generation i3 desktop as a "daily driver" for a lot of my computing/server needs, without issue.

dbancajas2• 6 years ago

how did you find out about the local school throwing away 50+ small dell quad-core i5s?

zeckalpha• 6 years ago

Electricity utilization is another dimension. A Pi can run off batteries or a hand crank in the worst case.

bitwize3• 6 years ago

A few months back I literally found a computer by a dumpster in the rain. It was some corporate castoff from a local investment firm. I brought it in, dried it off, let it dry thoroughly for a few days, and examined it, and the innards looked to be brand-spanking-new with no rust or damage in sight. After installing a hard disk (its original hard disk was removed and presumably erased or shredded), it was ready to go.

It's a pretty sweet machine too, an HP Elite 8300MT from about 2012 or so. It has one of those side panels that can be removed by working a latch with your hand -- no screws necessary. I'm making it into a build server.

brainless5• 6 years ago

I agree with you and I want to look into that too. But I am not sure it would be easy to order such computers, in working conditions, as easily as this RPi. If the logistic hassle is too much, it might not take off at all.

slightwinder• 6 years ago

Old Computers are usually rather big, heavy and a bit limited in their ability in terms of interfaces. Like they often have no sd-card-slot, bluetooth or wifi. And yes, they need more power.

This RP400 is small, can be taken everywhere by kids, has all necessary interfaces to make something funny and can on worst even run from a manual energy-source (which of course is more relevant for a poorer country than a rich country).

I can see kids taking this RP400 around like a (paper)notebook, work with them at school, home, their friends home or somewhere else and motivating them to use them more than some stationary device. And because of the hdmi they even can switch places fast if neccessary, limiting the interuptions in their work.

justin664• 6 years ago

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run

In the developing world electricity tends to be very scarce. Raspberry Pis, and stuff of that sort, are ideal for that environment.

Chris2048• 6 years ago

They might take a bit more electricity to run

But how much more? Just "a bit" or a significant amount?

chrisweekly2• 6 years ago

I like what you do and why you do it; do you have a blog or website?

lifeisstillgood• 6 years ago

Good luck - that sounds a brilliant move.

Kelteseth• 6 years ago

My mother runs (from germany) a local shelter for street kids in Kolkata. Let me know if you want to share some of your knowledge with these kids :)

brainless5• 6 years ago

Wow this is the HN effect, right?

I would love to get some insights. I have been wanting to get into some long-term model of social giving. I have been really lazy and only do regular donations to Watsi (YC funded) for about 6 years now. I constantly feel I need to invest more of my personal energy into this but I would like some guidance.

technics256• 6 years ago

Does she accept donations?

varispeed5• 6 years ago

I dreamed of something like this for ages. Now I need to find a nice pocket monitor and a power bank. I am going to feel like a teen again. Respect!

amq• 6 years ago

Missed opportunities: full-sized HDMI, M.2 storage and a touchpad.

myself2483• 6 years ago

Oh wow, I hadn't even thought of m.2 but you're spot-on. There's a ton of space in there, and we know the SoC has PCIe lanes.

Welp, who's gonna solder one up first?

I wonder what signals are on the J5 connector...

GordonS• 6 years ago

You're spot on - a touch pad integrated into the case would mean you didn't need a separate mouse; there's plenty space for an M.2 module, and SD cards are shit; and mini-HDMI really is such a pointless form factor.

I'd be ordering one of these tomorrow if it had these features - still, I expect it will sell very well as-is, so I'm really hoping they come out with a new version at some point!

kumarvvr2• 6 years ago

I would really love to see a version with on-board flash memory, instead of an SD card for storing the OS and data.

Slap on a customized linux system, configure it to load a WebAssembly PWA from a predefined server and you have edge computing on the cheap.

dannyw• 6 years ago

Even 16GB eMMC will do a lot for intended use cases and you can expand with your own.

mawalu• 6 years ago

A bit of topic: I recently got a Pi 4 and tried to use it to play 4k content on a TV. I could not get hardware decoding working and found a lot other people online with similar problems. I honestly was a bit disappointed because the Pi is often touted (in this thread as well) as having great software support, much better than all the other ARM single board computers out there.

ksec• 6 years ago

I wonder why Google doesn't work with Raspberry on Chrome OS, Android etc. ( Or even secretly donating money to them )

Commoditising your complacement [1]. Otherwise it wont be long before Apple ship a $399 Mac Nano. Not exactly a direct competitor, but it will surely sell like hot cakes in the educational market.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

teekert3• 6 years ago

They keep adding the minecraft-pi window, which gets me excited. But it is no longer supported or developed: [0], let alone that you could use it to join any multiplayer server.

Context: I run a Java Minecraft server (for my son who plays Java edition from Linux) with GeyserMC (which allows Bedrock clients to connect and play) so my son's friends can join from tablets and Wii's. It would be cool to be able to play from pi's.

[0] https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Pi_Edition

ryukafalz• 6 years ago

GeyserMC (which allows Bedrock clients to connect and play)

Oh wow thank you for mentioning this, I had no idea this existed!

teekert3• 6 years ago

It works best without any other plugins but the community is very active and issues (which there definitely are, i.e., on a touchscreen you can still only place water/lava where the pointer would be on java) are addressed really fast.

If you drop the plugin into the plugin folder of your mc server (recommended server is paper) it should work after a restart.

robotnikman• 6 years ago

Nice, I never even knew geyser existed. I've been waiting for some kind of Proxy to allow Bedrock players to join Java servers. Bedrock server software is basically non-existant.

Foivos2• 6 years ago

Is the USB-C only for power?

Could you plug it in a monitor directly through USB-C, so that you could have display and power (and possible access to the hub of the monitor) through single cable?

fanf26• 6 years ago

If it is like the Raspberry Pi 4B then the USB-C port has a USB-2 data connection for OTG / gadget mode purposes. No high-bandwidth data.

pachico2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, in reality it costs at least $115 (at least in all providers in Spain) which changes quite a lot the value proposition.

forinti2• 6 years ago

I wouldn't mind paying that.

Nobody is shipping to Brazil anymore. I used to buy from Modmypi (great customer service and shipped to Brazil!), but then The Pi Hut took over.

Oh well, sooner or later Aliexpress with have it.

pachico2• 6 years ago

You might pay for it, true, and so would I, probably.

However, for schools and institutions (especially in low income realities) this 60% difference might be the differentiating trigger.

LeonM• 6 years ago

Is there any information on why it is called the '400'? there seems to be no important specification with 400 in it, so where does the name come from?

coder543• 6 years ago

The important specification is that this is based on Raspberry Pi 4, thus... 400.

Since it is modeled after computers in the 80s that were sold in a keyboard form factor, such as the Atari 400 and the Amiga 500, they apparently thought that a three digit number would hit the right note for the nostalgia they wanted to invoke.

k__• 6 years ago

Nice to see that my Asus Tinker Board still holds up well with the current state of RPI after all these years.

johnnylambada• 6 years ago

Kudos to Raspberry Pi for choosing to call it the "400". An obvious nod to the Atari 400, the computer-in-a-keyboard of the mid 1980's that I grew up with.

Niccizero• 6 years ago

Sadly it sufferes from "squished" ISO syndrome like so many keyboards and laptops nowadays. I had to spend a buttload of money in a P1 in order to get a Thinkpad without a squished ISO layour keyboard.

tyingq3• 6 years ago

I like the subtle shout out to left handers, with the mouse on the left :)

rob74• 6 years ago

As much as I like to see minorities supported this way (I am left-handed too), I suspect this was mainly done so they wouldn't have to cross the mouse cable over the other cables, which would have looked awkward in the photo...

tyingq3• 6 years ago

Ah, so maybe V2 will have the USB port located on the right.

winter_blue• 6 years ago

This is a really cool throwback to the era when computers were integrated into keyboards (like the Commodore 64, etc).

xattt• 6 years ago

There was a thread about distraction-free writing a few days ago. This is an absolutely perfect machine without having to resort to buying old laptops and hacking FreeDOS onto them.

maxme3• 6 years ago

Any recommendation for a monitor?

My 5yo son has fun with an external keyboard connected to an old Android tablet. He learns to type and write basic math and words.

I'd like him to jump to the next step. I was contemplating buying him a monitor and a mouse to plug in an old Raspberry with linux distro for kids.

TheRealDunkirk• 6 years ago

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005BZNDOO

I've been buying Asus monitors for years, and I just bought that one specifically for hooking up tertiary computers like Pi's.

fanf26• 6 years ago

One thing that the Pi 400 has that the 4B does not is POE (power over ethernet) built in: the chunky BOURNS chip near the ethernet socket is a POE transformer. So it only meets network, display, and mouse to work!

fanf26• 6 years ago

Actually this is probably incorrect - I got this information from https://ubuntu.com/blog/raspberry-pi-400-with-ubuntu-support but it looks like the BOURNS chip is just the usual ethernet magnetics, which are built in to the jack in the other Raspberry Pi models. There’s no visible connection to the power circuitry. (They are using a different ethernet jack which has a lower profile than their usual one.)

puzzlingcaptcha2• 6 years ago

This would be nice with miracast, if miracast was actually a good interoperable standard and worked.

nfriedly• 6 years ago

Does the power port support USB 2.0 data lines? The Pi 4 B does, and one of the things you can do with that is make it emulate a keyboard. If that works with the Pi 400, it could be the ultimate programmable keyboard!

Edit: per https://youtu.be/3A7pQN5W08E it supports USB OTG, so it sounds like the answer is yes!

Udik• 6 years ago

This is beautiful, and it really has the vibe of the 80s home computers on which I learned how to program. What those computers also had, though, was that they immediately booted to a programming interface and a small but well defined set of capabilities explorable through coding. Wanted to do calculations? Code. Wanted to do graphics? Simple enough, but also required coding. Sound, same. You wanted to load a program or a game? You had to use the command line for that too!

Does a similar system exist today? Something you can boot a computer to and it immediately provides a kids friendly, interpreted programming environment with the ability to do graphics and sounds- but nothing else? That would be the perfect companion to this machine.

AlanYx3• 6 years ago

Raspberry Pi can run Squeak, which is a full-blown Smalltalk-80 environment, not unlike the one Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg taught kids to use in their Dynabook work. You could configure a Pi to boot directly into Squeak and it would be the spiritual successor to that kind of environment.

There are also other good educational alternatives that aren't entirely immersive but run well on the Pi (Scratch, Python's Turtle module, Mathematica and its interactive notebook (free on the Pi), etc.).

varispeed5• 6 years ago

One missed opportunity regarding the educational value is that it is a shame they used some BGA chips instead of more soldering friendly package. People then could learn how to mod these by swapping RAM or other components or training repairs. Sure you can do BGA as well, but it may be too intimidating for a beginner and may require special equipment.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 6 years ago

Do non-BGA chips exist at the performance level they want? I was under the impression that nobody was manufacturing such things, in which case the pi foundation probably can't do anything about it.

varispeed5• 6 years ago

You are correct. Unfortunately I can't see any comparable chip in a package other than some kind of BGA.

edit: that makes me think if they could release something less capable but in more friendly packages? That will probably not have enough market share to be viable.

Woodi• 6 years ago

That is so cute ! IMO trendsetter :> But still C64 rules!

In mean time I will stick with my lovely Thinkpad X60 - it have 2 Gb RAM less, old wifi, worse display options but better cpu, true-and-only keyboard, "mouse" and display build in ! It runs OpenBSD without a blink, do www stuff, even yt (but fullscreen is a challenge) - perfect for what Pi400 is advertised for.

I also have x200, x220, t420 and t430 (<- this is worst tp I ever had - PWM! And never models are all flawed). But lastly my carry around and be happy thinkpad is just x60 :)

But also this shows Pi400 is quite capable and ehmm... modern ;)

So, RPi Company hurry up that lazy nVidia !

And hope Mozilla will not kill/waste Firefox and themselves... Like they usually do when MS or G have soon be to present new, shiny browser...

kup0• 6 years ago

I don't know why I love the idea of this thing, but I do

Maybe because it reminds me of my very first computer, a Tandy 1000HX, which also had a keyboard as its case.

adontz• 6 years ago

Is there any close up photo of the ports? Are there two HDMIs or just one?

Foivos2• 6 years ago

2 micro-HDMI [1]

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/specif...

phonon• 6 years ago

2 micro-HDMI ports.

ineedasername9• 6 years ago

This blows my mind. I know, it's much more incremental than it is revolutionary, but I think the form factor achieves a much greater degree of access for many people than a typical Pi whose bare hardware may be a lot more intimidating. Now, it's "just" a computer, which happens to expose a 40-pin connector for the standard Pi hardware fun. And unlike other options you might find, this has the massive built-in community that comes with Pi

It reminds me of what Apple does when it redefines a product category by "just" bringing together existing technology into a more convenient form factor and UX.

I don't know if this will quite have that level of impact, but I see the potential, especially now with remote learning: My kids are on a hybrid schedule. I'm fortunate to be able to provide them their necessary computing resources. Not everyone can: The district couldn't secure all of the necessary Chrome Books, and some students have been left attempting remote learning via their parent's phone, or simply left behind. A cheap mass market device has some truly amazing potential to fill in these gaps at the same time that it enables more advanced S(T)EM learning than you could get with a typical cheap Chrome Book.

I'm also old enough to remember when you'd be hard pressed to find a desktop computer for under $1000, perhaps $1500 adjusted for inflation. One for $70-$100 really just hammers home how far we've come.

JKCalhoun2• 6 years ago

Does Chrome OS run on Raspberry Pi?

How crazy is it that one of the Big Players come in, port their OS to the device, and more or less take it over as just another platform with a Start Menu?

dunnevens• 6 years ago

There's a way to make Chrome OS run on Pi's, but it's insecure. Uses the Fyde version of Chromium OS.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=227281

holtalanm• 6 years ago

not sure but CloudReady might run on it: https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text

fouric• 6 years ago

Are you talking about Microsoft/Windows or Google/Chrome OS here? They're both Big Players, and both trying/would try to take over/appropriate the Raspberry Pi platform.

TheRealPomax• 6 years ago

I understand the sentiment, but you know that Raspian, Ubuntu, etc. have all had the equivalent of a start menu for years now, right? =)

dleslie2• 6 years ago

Manjaro for Pi ships Chromium in a docker image. It works great; Netflix and all.

ineedasername9• 6 years ago

That would be useful given that many schools are standardizing their distance-learning based on Chrome OS, so (as much as I might want a more open OS) it might help streamline students' experiences on this.

jononor• 6 years ago

Very curious to see how the third-party market will build up around this device. For the RPi Single Board Computer there is a lot of products to extend it into all kinds of directions, assuming one is willing to breadboard and maybe solder a bit. With this new PC/keyboard things are opening up even more for casual geeking around, which I think might bring even more people in. If the community picks it up I think it could be very impactful!

codysan• 6 years ago

It reminds me of what Apple does when it redefines a product category by "just" bringing together existing technology into a more convenient form factor and UX.

That's a wonderful observation. The form factor is as clever as it is logical. Stuff like this makes me really optimistic for the future of Raspberry Pi (and widespread computing!).

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

It's one of those designs where you kind of go "ah yes, I thought that would be a good idea". But before you saw it you might never have planned it in your head exactly the way it is. The iPod was like that for me, with its scrolling click wheel.

Like getting to the platonic form of a specific type of device.

The Pi 400 is the completion of the idea of an educational computer for kids, IMO. It's not going to compete with a Mac mini or anything like that, and the keyboard is likely not going to be anyone's top choice for a 'professional' keyboard. But it's good enough in all the right ways as a general purpose computer.

ilrwbwrkhv• 6 years ago

and it is british. anecdotally in terms of longevity and development i have seen they do the best job.

interestica3• 6 years ago

The one weird thing to me is their mouse placement decision. Their promo photos and videos show it on the left side because of the most convenient usb port. I have never actually seen a left-placed mouse in the wild. Having it all look so clean and organized in the promo is a bit disingenuous.

In reality, the mouse will be on the right, and the cable will have to cross over top of all cables except the ethernet and usbc power. For such a beautiful form factor, it will look like a mess.

NoOneNew2• 6 years ago

It's a laptop minus the screen... that's all it amounts to. It's a keyboard with the proc and memory underneath it. I don't understand how any of this is revolutionary or special. Hell, it doesn't even have a battery.

diehunde• 6 years ago

I was talking to some friends who are teachers about remote learning the other day. They were saying many of their students (they work in rural areas) had the devices but no access to internet. It's a very complex issue now with all the restrictions.

azernik• 6 years ago

Different students have different challenges. In urban areas, hardware access can be the limiting factor.

Robotbeat2• 6 years ago

Starlink has just started beta service (without requiring an NDA like the pre-beta service did). ~100Mbps and a competitive 20-40ms latency (although I think sometimes you can get worse as the constellation isn't yet fully deployed... some satellites that have already been launched still haven't fully raised themselves to operational orbit, but this is still a Beta service, so that should be addressed within weeks). It’s spendy at $100/month (which is comparable to other, FAR worse, satellite internet options... and some non-satellite broadband in the US costs this much for worse service), but rural folk should qualify for the rural broadband subsidy which should help a lot.

This post shows some unboxing of Starlink: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48297.msg2...

I’m really excited about these LEO satellite constellations just solving the rural/urban digital divide. As launch costs continue to go down (SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9 has already made a massive difference in making this feasible, about a quarter the marginal launch cost per kg, and Starship should enable an order of magnitude improvement on that) and competition increases (OneWeb has been brought through bankruptcy but is starting to launch again, plus Amazon’s Project Kuiper and the potential of launching on the partially reusable New Glenn), it’s an exciting time for the ending of digital poverty in rural areas.

JorgeGT2• 6 years ago

During the past lockdown my University sent students without internet SIM cards with data contracts so they could use their cellphones to tether. IMHO in an emergency situation a public good like the radioelectric spectrum should be commandeered by the authorities --- mobile operators should provide free data service to students in need.

JohnJamesRambo• 6 years ago

You've reminded me of my anger about telcos promising to Congress to connect the USA shore-to-shore to the internet and then they just gave up and said "phones will be good enough." No, no they aren't.

https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61B...

"Using the Bells own words and filings, by 2000, approximately 50 million homes should have been rewired with a fiber optic wiring to the home, capable of 45 Mbps in two directions, which could handle over 500 channels of video and was totally open to competition. About 86 million households should be wired by 2006."

Still waiting on that fiber optic connection to my home in 2020...sure would be useful to all the kids that are trying to learn remotely via a damn phone right now.

ja27• 6 years ago

My makerspace has done a program with Title 1 schools, Girl Scouts, etc. where we give kids a Pi with keyboard, mouse, display and teach them a little electronics, coding, etc. The biggest learned lesson has been that many of them do not have internet access at home other than via a smartphone. So we started loading the Pi's with as much free educational content as we could.

asdff• 6 years ago

When schools were first closed 17% of LAUSD didn't have internet access. Not just a rural issue.

cactus20932• 6 years ago

The district couldn't secure all of the necessary Chrome Books, and some students have been left attempting remote learning via their parent's phone, or simply left behind. A cheap mass market device has some truly amazing potential to fill in these gaps at the same time that it enables more advanced S(T)EM learning than you could get with a typical cheap Chrome Book.

How many households in this situation have an extra monitor lying around to plug this into, or even a proper desk to have a desktop computer set up on? Plus they'll need a separate webcam (and I'm guessing finding one that just works out of the box on Raspbian without fiddling around with drivers and such could be non-trivial). This new Pi form factor is kinda clever but surely a $200-$300 chromebook or tablet is still significantly more accessible.

And how does a desktop enable more advanced STEM learning than a laptop?

jvanderbot• 6 years ago

Oh, I don't know if it takes a lot of imagination to see how a desktop like this one enables more advanced stem learning. The I/O ports, low form factor for portability, the raspbian ecosystem and so on.

sbuk• 6 years ago

I'd assert that TV's are commonplace. This, just like the BBC Micro, ZX80/1 and C64, can easily be used with a TV.

citrusybread• 6 years ago

a pi running linux enables more advanced STEM than a laptop running a locked-down chrome environment.

you could just use the pi camera for a webcam, since the port is still there?

centimeter• 6 years ago

Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US.

moron4hire• 6 years ago

Hopefully, people will figure out that a lot of 2nd hand stores have a lot of used monitors for sale that just sit around forever.

JohnBooty• 6 years ago

    How many households in this situation have an extra monitor lying around to plug this into

You just need a television. In a single household it wouldn't even necessarily need to be an extra television, unless it's some kind of truly abusive household where the kid's not allowed to pre-empt the family TV to attend school.

Of course, in a multi-kid household, yes - one screen per kid would be needed.

    plus they'll need a separate webcam

Yes. Though, I'd be shocked if drivers were much of a hassle.

    This new Pi form factor is kinda clever but surely a
    $200-$300 chromebook or tablet is still significantly 
    more accessible.

Surely, but is the extra money more accessible?

    And how does a desktop enable more advanced STEM learning 
    than a laptop?

It's not the form factor. It's the OS. A fully-open OS, versus a locked-down OS.

Of course, whether or not this matters depends on the kid and the curriculum. If all the kid's doing is some web-based online curriculum whose needs are perfectly serviced by a Chromebook, then yeah - an RPi device isn't magically going to grant them magical STEM learning powers by osmosis.

code4tee• 6 years ago

Most people’s TVs at this point are basically a 1080 monitor hooked up to a computer (cable box) so I don’t see this as a big challenge. If a monitor is needed they are quite inexpensive at this point compared to what they used to cost.

gameswithgo2• 6 years ago

if anyone needs a free monitor let me know, I got some spares.

ineedasername9• 6 years ago

1) You can hook this up to a TV.

2) Webcam isn't strictly necessary: You'll be able to "see" your teacher, type in chat, virtually raise your hand, etc.

3) This enables more advanced STEM (The "T" portion, really) not because it's a desktop but because of the built-in 40-pin connector opening it up to the massive catalog of projects that exist for the Pi platform already.

4) Perfect is the enemy of the good: You're complaining this isn't a perfect solution for those lacking resources. It's not. But it is significantly better than nothing, or a phone with a 5" screen and no keyboard.

teh_infallible• 6 years ago

The pi lets you work without google spying on you. That’s why I want this as an alternative to a Chromebook. My kids can learn computing without feeding data to google.

sergeykish3• 6 years ago

Or used notebook, 6 years old Dell Latitude E7440 costs $230. It is built like tank. Price of the latest model starts from $1600.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/latitude-14...

asdfman123• 6 years ago

They're poor, not desert nomads. Monitors and desks can easily be found for reasonable prices. Lots of people have random desks and old computer monitors sitting around.

jeffxtreme2• 6 years ago

Even for non-STEM students, the Pi setup seems fairly accessible.

From a quick online search, I could find monitors for $30 - $50 and webcams $20 - $30 which is pretty price competitive with a $200 - $300 Chromebook. The Pi community would help with any driver installation issues, and the Pi setup seems powered up enough to run Zoom with no issues.

Though I do see even cheaper Chromebooks in the same price range, so I wonder why / how districts are not able to provide these to students.

ponker• 6 years ago

You're focusing on the wrong stuff like the monitor and the webcam. This is a completely open computing platform... a Chromebook is a thin client for Google services. They couldn't be more different.

dzhiurgis3• 6 years ago

My biggest beef with RPI is how much effort it takes it set it up as headless machine. Expectation was just plug USB-C cable and shell away. Nope. Connect to Wifi first. Then to use it's serial ports there's ton of conflicting info that I've gave up after spending days on it.

Finally no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS.

It's good computer for r/iamverysmart type of people, but not to be actually productive hacker.

socialdemocrat2• 6 years ago

My impression of a lot of poor areas, is that one of the first things they invest in is a TV. So they likely have a TV already. Switching between different usages of the TV they have is probably doable. Use the computer connected during day time for work, and use the TV functionality in the evenings for recreation.

I agree tablets and laptops are more accessible. But I think when it comes to really learning how to use a computer and realize its full potential you want a proper desktop computer with mouse, keyboard, connection ports. I think it is useful to learn how to plug in different USB devices, monitors etc.

Unlike a Chrome book or Tablet, a "real" computer give you a chance to learn about how a file system works, organizing files into folders. Using multiple programs to work on a collection of files. The single task orientation of tablets make them very user friendly and low threshold but that also limit you in how far you can go.

My kids started out on tablets but now I try to push them more onto using a regular computer.

macjohnmcc2• 6 years ago

Yeah Chromebook has more but cost 2-3 times as much and also the quote indicates that they couldn't get the chromebooks.

zoomablemind• 6 years ago

I understand the value proposition of Pi platform. It's definitely popular with quite educated audience in developed countries.

However, is Pi offering indeed reaching out to the developing countries? Are there any sources that substantiate the adoption of Pi platform in such communities, especially whether there're any lasting effects beyond the inaugural opening and ribbon-cutting, so to speak?

It's tempting to seek the BBC Micro effect from Pi platform, and I hope it can be achieved. Still, one needs to keep in mind that such effect largely was a result of a government policy which supported wide adoption.

dleslie2• 6 years ago

Leaving aside developing countries for a moment; I know, personally, multiple game developers who have switched to using RPi4 and Pinebooks as their personal computing devices.

They hit this sweet spot of just enough power to be useful, yet totally silent (with a Flirc case on the Pi).

The RPi3b just wasn't quite there yet in terms of speed, but the 4 can easily drive dual monitors and provide enough oompf to be useful in a game jam. Quite a nice little device for hobby development.

colordrops• 6 years ago

Does zoom work with the pi? If it came with a camera it would sell like hotcakes.

geerlingguy10• 6 years ago

Yes, it's not perfect (mostly slow, and sometimes you have to try a few times to get both camera and audio working), but I got it working with my Logitech C920, and also with a Pi-zero + HQ Camera webcam that I set up using https://github.com/geerlingguy/pi-webcam

baq2• 6 years ago

...I don't know.

I mean, I've had an Atari 65XE myself when I was a kid, but tvs are much bigger nowadays, less accessible and HDMI cables are much more difficult to run through the room (stiffness and length limits are real issues); OTOH keyboards and mice are easy to come by. The hard part of the Pi is the display. The kit also doesn't include a cam nor a headset, nor even a mic. This is super important for online learning. Maybe you could fit in a mic in the keyboard somewhere?

A Pi all-in-one (iPi if you excuse me) or a Pi-book in an affordable price range would be revolutionary. I have an old VGA-only monitor but guess what - no D-SUB on the Pi 400 and a proper dongle would be another... $30?

As is, nostalgia value is super-high but I don't feel it's as practical as one would hope without any kind of display.

pharke• 6 years ago

I don't know if the monitor is as big of an issue, a quick search on walmart.com yields their cheapest option at $69.99 for a 19". That's if you have to buy one new. I'm sure the local craigslist would have second hand TVs with HDMI in. A lot of households already have multiple, cheap flatscreens. If we narrow the discussion to only those who cannot afford or do not have any of the above then I think we're also talking about the same group of people that would not be able to afford the Pi400 at its current price. It would be more beneficial (and probably cheaper) to focus on making aid available for them to obtain what they need rather than redesigning the system.

The webcam is a different issue, there doesn't appear to be much for a plug and play option for the Pi. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

If these were to be used as an option for remote education, I would hope that the same organization promoting them would also sell a kit with the system preconfigured to use an included webcam.

esclerofilo• 6 years ago

A Pinebook is probably the closest you can get to a Pi-book, and it already exists.

cbozeman• 6 years ago

My first computer was a CRT monitor / tower bundle from Sam's Club (back when it really was a warehouse club). 15" CTX monitor with a Pentium 75 mHz CPU, 8 MB of RAM, 540 MB hard drive, and I believe a 2 or 4x CD-ROM. Of course, it had a 3.5" drive.

$1499. In 1994.

evo_9• 6 years ago

Regarding the price you mentioned... this is awesome because it reminds me of the old Atari/Commodores you could buy at a store like K-Mart for $200-500 bucks. Which, granted, back then was a lot more than $70 now. I wonder how many programmers lives this thing will start like those old 8-bits did back-in-the-day.

samstave• 6 years ago

A couple things - I worked at intel during the time we were trying to prove a sub-$1000 PC was even possible (hence celeron)....

But you know what would be really interesting with these guys - is if they would auto-hive once online - and would just have access to whatever apps were avail - say, you pick a role or profile (switchable) for the unit...

"e-learning box" or "games" or "news" or "community" such roles/profiles

And it would join that hive and then auto pkg whatever apps it needed to to provide access to those communities or content...

an_opabinia• 6 years ago

Old iPhone hardware probably has a BOM less than $100.

Giving students a $100 phone + $10/mo of cell internet access for 9mos out of the year pays bigger dividends.

Besides the longest essay you have to write on the ACT, SAT or AP tests is about 300 words. You can do that on a phone - kids do it now on paper.

What if kids cram tests on their phones for a few hours then read books the rest of the day? Maybe take your phone outside. Sounds like a decent enough curriculum to me.

Anyway my point is you don’t really need a keyboard in education. And with that the logic of this stuff as an educational policy kind of goes away.

gmadsen• 6 years ago

That seems horribly misguided.

and education should really be separated from the entire phone mobile ecosystem with all the behavioral manipulation that it entails

garyrob• 6 years ago

"I'm also old enough to remember when you'd be hard pressed to find a desktop computer for under $1000, perhaps $1500 adjusted for inflation."

I'm old enough to remember buying a 40MB hard drive for $4,000 (about $9,600 after adjusting for inflation).

dheera• 6 years ago

I wish it had a trackpoint device in the middle instead of a separate mouse. That way everything would be in one box. One less thing to carry around.

yellowapple• 6 years ago

Or better yet, a built-in trackball like on some IBM/Unicomp keyboards.

thom• 6 years ago

Are there patent reasons this can’t be the case?

tlrobinson• 6 years ago

I wonder if they’ll come out with a tablet or laptop form factor.

Remember OLPC? It was painfully slow, but that was more than 10 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO

musicale• 6 years ago

I wonder if they’ll come out with a tablet or laptop form factor.

Seems like you could just repurpose a cheap android tablet...

Remember OLPC? It was painfully slow, but that was more than 10 years ago.

OLPC may not have been a hit itself, but it seemed to usher in an era of inexpensive low-powered-but-still-useful PCs.

rhizome• 6 years ago

There was a stretch when you had Gateway, eMachines, Dell (et al) in competition that could have resulted in machines that cheap if the market for desktops hadn't died (relatively). But even now Dell's lowest-end desktop is $350, and that's with an i3.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's an engineered price point because lesser hardware at lower prices can't even be shipped and make a profit. And frankly, if I remember back 10-15 years, there were $350 boxes back then, too, so maybe it's a minimum price/rule of thumb that was calculated a long time ago.

paulryanrogers• 6 years ago

There's also the second hand market. My first PC was a used Compaq. Weighed about 50 lbs too.

socialdemocrat2• 6 years ago

Back in 1988 or so in Norway when me and my brother got our first computer an Amiga 1000, that costs about $2200 adjusted for inflation. And salaries where lower then. It would have been impossible to buy without a generous "donation" by my grand parents which had quite some savings.

And back then salaries where much lower even adjusted for inflation. That Amiga had 256 KB of RAM. This Raspberry is just a beast in comparison to what me and my brother had and it costs 31x LESS, in a world where salaries are higher than back then.

I can see this opening up a lot of opportunities for families and schools in less affluent countries. Maybe even businesses. I can imagine various famers and small businesses out in the countryside in Africa or India could benefit from a computer like this to lookup market information for crops, plan budgets, savings, purchases etc.

the_arun• 6 years ago

Well timed release for Christmas!

bane• 6 years ago

The original vision of the rPi was to stimulate education in the way that the original 8-bit microcomputers did. Those machines were pretty much this exact form-factor, a keyboard with a computer stuck underneath.

I really like how this is the same thing, and cheaper than the ZX Spectrum ever was.

ralph87• 6 years ago

It really has instant appeal to me as an adult, but I'm not so sure about target market any more. Kids these days are all glued to their mobile phones, it seems if you want to blow a kid's mind, something that turns their phone into a magic box they can tinker with would be so much better. Something maybe like a combo keyboard with IO breakout ports funnelled over bluetooth, and some matching software development environment closer to GWBASIC or maybe even VB3 than the usual Android toolchain

I'm also concerned this doesn't mention much about how accessible the internals are. Can a kid crack it open?

Meanwhile, totally digging the nostalgia factor. Probably won't buy one, but damn I'd love one

tcbawo2• 6 years ago

The thing that made old 80s computers so compelling for kids was the simplicity: fewer choices for peripherals, less things to connect, cartridge system for easy launching, easy to restore to a known state if you mess something up (typically just power cycle). What made a particular platform successful was the games available. There were many platforms out there, but kids wanted systems that played the best games. Being able to tinker and poke around, while learning something in the process was a happy side effect. Kids have no shortage of systems for gaming these days, but I'm thinking about getting one of these for my 11yo kid. I like the idea of gentle, friendly introduction to technology, just for tinkering and gaming without the distraction that comes from a multiuse (eg school) machine. Although, I don't want it to become yet another YouTube client, so I'll have to curate the content and supervise him.

throw_m239339• 6 years ago

That product makes no sense to me.

I use the RPi for tech projects like a micro PC so I need to be as small as it can be and no bigger than a smartphone.

This is thing, at that price, makes no sense when people can either get cheaper netbooks or cheaper tablets. This is basically an expensive netbook without a screen.

nell• 6 years ago

It’d be cool if it can be used as as a regular keyboard that morphs into a computer on the flip of a switch.

myself2483• 6 years ago

You can use the USB Gadget framework to make it enumerate to another machine as a keyboard:

https://www.google.com/search?q=usb+gadget+keyboard

You'd still have to wait for the pi to boot, however.

Micheal_McL• 6 years ago

Beautiful

gwbas1c• 6 years ago

I haven't followed Raspberry Pi very closely...

Just curious, what kind of software can these run? Does it have a functional web browser? Can it run GMail? Google Docs?

MarcScott5• 6 years ago

Yes. The Pi 4 and 3+ can run Chromium pretty well, although earlier models will struggle a little. All of G-Suite runs, although video conferencing is a little laggy in my experience. Often if you spoof your browser agent you get better compatibility with a lot of applications. I tend to tell sites that I'm using Chrome on ChromeOS, and things just tend to work. A tonne of FOSS software works, and the only real limitation is whether it has been compiled for ARM chips or not.

AlanYx3• 6 years ago

In addition to all the standard FOSS software you can think of, Wolfram has made the full commercial version of Mathematica available for free for Raspberry Pi users. (It's a huge 600mb+ download.) It's a phenomenal thing for kids who are into math.

zajio1am2• 6 years ago

Although i grew up in era of home computers like ZX Spectrum, i think that this form factor has no real advantage today, compared to some miniature brick form factor (with external keyboard), like NUC (or brick with Rasberry Pi). I see several reasons:

- External keyboards are super cheap, there is wide variety of designs to choose based on personal preferences, while when integrated in computer you are stuck with one design.

- Keyboards are vulnerable to destruction by toppled cup of tea, so it make sense to not put full computer inside.

- It is easier to manipulate with keyboard when there is only one cable coming from it instead of 5+ cables.

- When moving between places, it is easier to take smaller brick than keyboard-sized computer, while keyboards are interchangable and widespread enough to get one at destination.

rahoulb• 6 years ago

So that's a normal Pi in a case then?

vngzs• 6 years ago

Laptops are basically computers inside keyboards, and people still buy them.

zajio1am2• 6 years ago

Laptops have key advantage over ultra small form factor PCs (e.g. NUC) that they are fully self-contained computers that could be used anywhere without any other component. For many people, such advantage can be more important than other disadvantages.

This is clearly not true for this kind of keyboard computers, they require monitor a and power like ultra small form factor PCs or other desktop PCs. So my point is that i do not see any advantage for them to outweight disadvantages of such setup.

mark_l_watson• 6 years ago

I love it. I would buy one instantly if it supported USB-C monitors. It has been years since I owned a HDMI monitor.

Several years ago, as I was leaving a consulting gig in Singapore to return home, the team there gave me a Raspberry Pi as a gift. As an experiment, I used it as my only driver for three of four days (I still owned a HDMI monitor back then).

Mister_Snuggles• 6 years ago

A long time ago I had a Commodore VIC-20 which was a gift from my cousin. The IBM-compatible PCs were firmly entrenched by this time, so the VIC-20 was obsolete but still functioned.

I spent many hours playing with it. Once I discovered the User I/O port, I realized its true power. It wasn't a powerful computer on its own, but the fact that it could easily interface with the real world gave it abilities that the PC clones of the era didn't have.

This Raspberry Pi PC reminds me of that VIC-20. Like the VIC-20, it's got a User I/O port and encourages tinkering. Unlike the VIC-20 I had, this is a modern computer that can be used for everything that we expect a modern computer to do.

I hope this encourages a new generation of tinkerers!

tachyonbeam• 6 years ago

That's what I was thinking about as well when I saw it. It's very reminiscent of the VIC-20 and C64. A tinkerer's computer. It's really cool that products like that exist again today, and are so affordable. Almost anyone can buy this for their kid for Christmas!

I guess Python is the modern BASIC? I feel like what it's missing is an easy to use graphics package for drawing lines, circles and other basic shapes (kind of like the JS canvas, but more oriented towards beginners). I wonder if there's a pip package that does this well (and doesn't require installing a bunch of dependencies)?

I'm also thinking this computer could be further made easier to use for beginners by having a kind of breakout board that plugs into the GPIO and has written labels, makes it easier to connect things (screw terminals?).

vopi• 6 years ago

There are easier libraries, but turtle [0] and tkinter (tcl/tk) are both included in the standard library that could be used for graphics. Turtle especially is geared towards beginners its similar to LOGO.

[1] https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

jlarcombe• 6 years ago

pygamezero is good, does have dependencies i suppose.

seek3r• 6 years ago

Looks good. Suggestions for some nice portable monitors to pair with this?

billpg2• 6 years ago

Will they be making one with an integrated monitor like a laptop?

blhack• 6 years ago

Edit: I was wrong. This ships with raspian. Very cool :)

(I ended up on this page: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/?..., which didn’t list the SD card).

ben_w3• 6 years ago

Given they’ve sold way more than they expected, so I am confused by your criticism.

Also note that the original use case was close to “The BBC micro for schools helped a generation learn software and hardware, but modern computers are rubbish at enabling that, because the software is not designed for kids and the hardware is expensive - nobody wants to risk kids bricking an expensive computer.”

mikewhy• 6 years ago

The page clearly lists the kit version comes with a pre-loaded SD card.

vorpalhex• 6 years ago

You are almost certainly going to buy a kit when you first start, and that kit is going to come with a preinstalled SD card, a well known power adapter and often times a basic mouse and keyboard.

jonp8883• 6 years ago

Did you actually read the article?

"The Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit is the “Christmas morning” product, with the best possible out-of-box experience: a complete PC which plugs into your TV or monitor. The kit comprises:

- A Raspberry Pi 400 computer

- Our official USB mouse

- Our official USB-C power supply

- An SD card with Raspberry Pi OS pre-installed

- A micro HDMI to HDMI cable

- The official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide "

sdenton42• 6 years ago

Holy $4!+, it's a cyberdeck. I understand everything now: 2020 is the gateway to the cyberpunk dystopia.

lkxijlewlf• 6 years ago

I love this, but I do have some concern about the keyboard. I am not a true keyboard snob, but I am pretty picky.

alfonsodev• 6 years ago

I'd love to have a mod kit to convert my ZX Spectrum +2k (the larger one with cassette) enclosure into a pc, with cherry Mx keys.

gfodor• 6 years ago

I wonder how easily one could rig this up to VR wifi streaming - 3d floating desktop, no monitor.

1MachineElf• 6 years ago

I hope the legends on that keyboard are dye sublimated. Color legends on white plastic is an ideal combo for dye sublimated printing. If it were, then it would have more longevity than most keyboards on the market today. Do that, and you'd probably start seeing these things pop up as kiosks in lots of places.

Obviously I wish it was a cool programmable ergonomic custom mechanical keyboard, but this is a great start on it's own.

zeristor2• 6 years ago

How does this deal with the Raspberry Pi 4' thermal issues?

Have they done something different, or will it just overheat and slow down?

cnr• 6 years ago

Are there any plans for 8GB RAM version? I couldn't find any information on the matter.

moonbug3• 6 years ago

nice to see a User Port.

nojvek• 6 years ago

Is anyone building a RasberryPi powered cellphone? Basically something that has a battery + solar panel + touch screen. A device that is fully operational without any need of peripherals.

Or I guess a more useful device would be a laptop. A chromebook equivalent but powered by rasberry pi and is hopefully kid-proof rugged

_joel• 6 years ago

I have seen some designs, not sure how much to fruition they've been brought (afair they were still in crowdfunding stages). You'll still never own the baseband though, but would have some degree of freedom and/or learning experience. Pitops exist for laptops and there's also some peli case style solutions iirc

jdofaz• 6 years ago

Computer in the keyboard? I'm having flashbacks to my Atari 800XL

whywhywhywhy• 6 years ago

Still no power button? Which is ok on the bare board but when you productize it like this it's an oversight.

phamilton42• 6 years ago

This is really cool!

I'm going to pick one up just to have a linux box on my desk that's separate from my laptop and not a VM.

It's a little unfortunate that you can't pick a 8GB option, but 4GB is PLENTY. I remember my first RPi had 256MB!!

gcc42• 6 years ago

Do it. I have a cheap Linux server (non pi) running in my home, and it's immeasurably useful. It functions as a combination of a backup server (with an attached 8tb drive), Plex server (another 2 Tb media drive), PiHole host and MITmproxy etc.

Today I figured that I need to setup periodic email backups from my Gmail, and guess where that cron is going! I use Windows + WSL as my home machine so having a pure Linux machine locally SSHable is a godsend.

I though of getting a Pi but I'm just doing too much with the server.

phamilton42• 6 years ago

I'm thinking it would be a great little all in one for making my gradual transition to linux from windows. For 100 bucks, I'm sure I could buy an OLD laptop, but I like the RPi route!

I was about to buy a rpi-zero-w with a KVM or remote into it but tbh the more powerful rpi4 sounds like a better option. It has the gpio headers and keyboard built in!

After years of programming professionally, these little things still excite me. :)

onesun• 6 years ago

My only wish for v2.0 of this would be an integrated touchpad so I don't have to use a separate mouse. Similar to a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard. I don't know how many times I've been in a situation where it's challenging to find a surface to use a mouse on when I'm working on a Pi project. Workshop, electronics bench, just doing something real quick on my lap, etc.

kiddico2• 6 years ago

If we're making a wishlist for v2 we may as well put "full sized hdmi ports" on there.

m4632• 6 years ago

I agree. That seems like a wasted opportunity for the form factor change -- at least one full-sized hdmi port would have been a great idea.

rplnt2• 6 years ago

My wishlist would be no HDMI at all. Proprietary and licensed, while we have as capable (if not more) options available.

pricci• 6 years ago

I know it's a niche, but I would love to have a trackpoint on it.

tcbawo2• 6 years ago

Is there a games/app market like Steam available for non-iOS/Android ARM-based devices? I would love to be able to set this device up for my younger kids, allowing them to play Minecraft and Oregon Trail-style edu-tainment type games while leaving the device open for exploration and tinkering. The walled gardens from the major players are blocked off, and distro-based package managers aren't really suitable. IMHO, one of the best solutions to the fragility of storage would be cloud install/save. Maybe the ecosystem is too fragmented, but hopefully something pops up.

marcthe12• 6 years ago

Almost none(prob some Foss one). Using qemu-user you can run amd64 code on arm. Opengl is going to be a issue though.

thealienthing• 6 years ago

Wow. Now you really can get rid of the damn chrome books that kids are stuck using when learning at home. Cheap, powerful hardware without the google data mining and influencing children.

Firehawke4• 6 years ago

It rather reminds me of the old TRS-80 Color Computers I used to use, though the keyboard on those old beasts was far better than this.

It might be neat to get one to turn into a C64/CoCo/etc emulation box that you "just plug into the TV" like the old days..

egypturnash• 6 years ago

Oh damn, this really feels like it is nailing exactly the gap that the Pi was kinda designed to fill in the first place, IIRC: the small, cheap computer that a kid can dive into, and which a few future titans of the industry will fondly look back on as what got them started.

cardiffspaceman2• 6 years ago

To hook this up to monitors that are sitting on shelves, it needs a Display Port or VGA output.

mark-r• 6 years ago

I'm a little disappointed that the mouse appears optimized for lefties. The port is on the left side and the cord is short enough that it will result in restricted movement if moved to the right of the keyboard.

callumprentice• 6 years ago

This reminds me of my first computer in 1980 - the Acorn Atom. It only had 2K of RAM, 0.5K of which was usable but I remember setting it up and playing with it straight for 2 days. Magical times.

elchief• 6 years ago

Reminds me of the Timex Sinclair 1000 I had as a kid...just much, much better!

xbar• 6 years ago

Brilliant.

Makes me wish GPIO was more available on run-of-the-mill PCs and externalized on keyboards and such.

Zenst• 6 years ago

Does this power button (function F10) just hard power off or does it do a scripted shutdown?

twodave• 6 years ago

This is cool. I only wish they didn't skimp on the keyboard. If this were in something like a DAS Keyboard and it could also be used with another PC (as a regular keyboard), that would make this an auto-buy for me.

Edit: yeah, I know, it'd be more expensive, but I'd gladly pay $250+. And I also realize that cost is one way they're attempting to differentiate--it would just be nice to have the option.

cko• 6 years ago

This is what I've always wanted. Been searching for years for DIY solutions on getting a raspberry pi into their official keyboard. All of them are Raspberry Pi Zero boards or require lots of cutting.

TheMagicHorsey• 6 years ago

Is it possible to use the Raspberry Pi OS without a mouse? It would be pretty good training to grow up learning how to use the keyboard shortcuts for everything. I'm so much faster in programs where I know enough shortcuts to not have to take my hands off the keyboard.

peatmoss3• 6 years ago

Does anyone have any good recommendations for resources / projects for a computer-interested 12 year old? I was thinking of buying a Pi4 for my niece who is “getting into computers” but I fear my tastes in what constitutes interesting or age-relevant content might be out of touch.

I also, look at the various books that they sell on the Raspberry Pi site, and worry that they’ll be out of date pretty quickly.

If anyone has recommendations for educational materials or projects that I could help my niece with, I’m sure others on this thread are looking for similar ideas. This new all-in-one device really feels like a well timed gift with lockdown and holidays.

ampdepolymerase• 6 years ago

The key is to follow up. It is not about which present you get them. No amount of Raspberry Pis or Lego MindStorms are useful if you are not willing to spend time to guide her through it. Interest and passion is only helpful if there is nothing else. Children now have iPads and countless sources of entertainment/distraction. A Raspberry Pi to a Gen Z kid is not the same as an Apple II from your childhood to you.

peatmoss3• 6 years ago

Yeah, I figure that will be the case. I assume I’ll have to do some work to see what is resonating with her and what is boring. I am hoping that someone will have some recommended starting places though—I feel like there are probably some things that are likely to be interesting to her that neither of us have any knowledge of. I guess I’m trying to figure out some candidate activities that might help fire her imagination.

Fuzzwah• 6 years ago

The raspberry pi foundation put out an excellent magazine

https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/

peatmoss3• 6 years ago

I hadn’t seen the magazine, but this looks like a great idea to keep abreast of current and curated activities. Thank you for that pointer.

MarcScott5• 6 years ago

Have a look at https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en We have Raspberry Pi projects, as well as simple Scratch projects, Python projects, HTML & CSS.

Out two latest Scratch pathways are:

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/look-after-your...

and

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/protect-our-pla...

Which are designed to provide a progression in Scratch.

crb002• 6 years ago

Hoping Apple takes note and smashes their surplus A12/A13 chips into keyboards with 16G RAM as the new mac ultramini :)

moralsupply• 6 years ago

I wonder why they didn't release a version with 8GB RAM

b20000• 6 years ago

forty times as powerful as the original pi and still a few orders of magnitude slower than some asian SoCs.

muterad_murilax• 6 years ago

Is the Raspberry Pi 4 capable of running (ARM-based) macOS? If so, this thing may very well be my next Hackintosh. :)

peter3033• 6 years ago

The $70 doesnt include a monitor. But many figital TVs will suffice.

zabardasth• 6 years ago

This form factor reminds me of the Commodore 64 and old school retro computing. Long live the user developer! :)

peter3033• 6 years ago

It blows my mind that for $150 (adding monitor) I can have a general purpose UNIX computer more power than VAX 11/780s and Sun-3s I did my PhD research on in the 1980s. ($150 = $40 1980s dollars).

Zelphyr• 6 years ago

This reminds me so much of the Commodore-64 I had as a kid.

peter3033• 6 years ago

I attended the Stanford Linear Accelerator Homebrew Computer meetup where the two Steves introduced the Apple I computer motherboard 44 years ago. The spirit of homebrew computing has ebbed and waned over the intervening decades. The Raspberry Pi series is a worthy descendent of this tradition.

acd• 6 years ago

This reminds me of home computers like the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. That you get all that you need in a ready to go package! Great idea!

newbie789• 6 years ago

This looks really nice! It's a beautiful form factor. My only gripe is that I'd like the option of getting their 8GB model in this, but I suppose they must have a good reason for only offering this SKU.

codezero• 6 years ago

This is cool, but I think it's a pretty big omission not to include a trackpad/nub or something to make this fully integrated (I use a Logitech K400 with my RPI 4 and having the trackpad on board is huge) - it's not really that fun to do default NOOBs/Ubuntu with no mouse, and having an attached USB mouse while, say, sitting on a couch, is a bit lame.

The 80s systems with this form factor mostly didn't have mice, and the joysticks were just as lap-able as the keyboard.

That said, this was a timely move, and should only help them get folks up and running.

I got a full RPI 4 kit for my team for the holidays last year, and getting it all assembled and running was a huge hurdle for technical adults who've never used linux/built a computer.

codebolt• 6 years ago

Cool. Now can we please get this thing with Norwegian key layout ASAP?

taf2• 6 years ago

These would be great in a school environment for learning how to program.

mixmastamyk• 6 years ago

I recommend Ubuntu Mate for a Pi desktop, it is more refined than the standard rasbian install. There’s support for the 4 now as well.

ddingus9• 6 years ago

I want one. Let's start there.

Form is a big deal. I expect these to be quite successful.

All things come full circle. Home computer that plugs into the TV.

Love it.

FPGAhacker• 6 years ago

Seems like it might be fun to pair with a smallish eink display.

ugh123• 6 years ago

Surprised they haven't ditched the caps-lock if a good chunk of their target market is kids. Most Chromebooks have done away with this and it seems to have helped my kids ability to log in

theodric• 6 years ago

Too expensive, too little RAM, no camera interface. Pass.

erichocean• 6 years ago

Why isn't Amazon a "Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller"?

karmakaze3• 6 years ago

I thought this should be called the Raspi 400 as a nod to the Atari 400 computer, my first.

Tiktaalik• 6 years ago

They should definitely build a small little matching monitor to match this.

sergiotapia• 6 years ago

Just bought this for my daughter, thanks!

Keyframe• 6 years ago

I wish there was an 8gb model. I have two already, but that would be an insta-buy.

zeristor2• 6 years ago

The ZX81 came out forty years ago for the £69.95, albeit 1981 pounds.

All we need now is a 16Gb RAM pack that wobbles whenever you type on it.

GeorgeTirebiter• 6 years ago

One thing I do NOT like is their continued reliance on SDcards -- after a while of 'normal' use (maybe a couple of years?) I've found the SDcards in my RPis tend to go south. It seems to be it would have been so much better to just have one USB 3 slot dedicated for a USB3 Flash thumb drive, which could be slipped inside. Another small thing: it would be nice if the kbd had a ThinkPad 'stick' mouse --- which is much more convenient than having to have an external mouse. But, hey, nobody is stopping 'somebody' from doing that, eh?

LeoPanthera• 6 years ago

"Endurance" SD cards, usually sold for use in dashcams, last a lot longer.

martin1975• 6 years ago

Call me a dreamer, as much as I love RPi, I would love to see a RISC-V SBC soon. I happen to believe RISC-V will do for hardware what Linux did for the OS.

rickspencer32• 6 years ago

I can't wait to replace my rpi 4 that I use for my Arduino projects with one of these.

anonytrary2• 6 years ago

That's the sexiest advertisement video I've ever seen I think. The sounds, the close-ups, the cup at the end ... brilliant marketing team!

danielEM• 6 years ago

Since there is no real completion on this market my 7y/o laptop worth nearly nothing today is 3 times faster than this 100$ RPi. Sad, but true.

petejames• 6 years ago

I'm thinking about getting these for my nieces and nephews. What apps/bookmarks should I install for them to explore easily from the desktop. So far I'm thinking: - Scratch - Khan Academy - RetroPi - what else?

punnerud2• 6 years ago

Most important is an easy way to fix it if they “break” it. Them them explore/hack Linux and try stuff out.

tgerdin• 6 years ago

It looks slighly smaller than my Amiga 600..

punnerud2• 6 years ago

Connected to iPad with USB-C, and you have a full blown computer with hacking capability.

gigel82• 6 years ago

The geek in me is very excited about this device; but on more practical terms, you could pick a nice, compact, significantly more powerful x86 device like [1] for $100 more, and that opens up the world of possibilities in terms of software compatibility.

[1] https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/10/27/chuwi-larkbox-pro-mi...

kovek2• 6 years ago

This computer-in-a-keyboard is very cool!

I think that in the future, we might be comfortable bringing around our tablets and connecting them wirelessly(or wired) to monitors at our home, office or PC cafe, and do presentations, code, etc.

This is almost possible today with tablets.

This keyboard almost achieves this vision, but it doesn't provide you with a screen, so it's not possible to show anything while you're on the go... Though I wonder if someone could do some work with keyboard-and-headphones only?

EDIT: Carry an android tablet, and this keyboard, with a battery pack, and you can show the keyboard's view onto the android tablet: https://youtu.be/PZLEUOG9k4Y . It might be nice

walrus01• 6 years ago

My primary concern about using this as a desktop PC with a GUI (perhaps for educational, very cost-sensitive, or developing nation environments) is microSD card write wear leveling problems. Even if you use a "expensive" industrial microSD card, it's still going to suck compared to even a cheap $45 consumer grade SATA3 MLC SSD. And ultimately fail much earlier.

known2• 6 years ago

Could RISC-V Processors Compete With Intel, ARM, and AMD? https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/01/0127253/could-r...

1vuio0pswjnm7• 6 years ago

The comments in this thread appear to focus on form factor. What makes this offering interesting IMO is that this a PC sold without a HDD and without an OS pre-installed. Although the "kit" may supply an SD card with a "recommended" OS, there is no obligation to use it. There are plenty of other options. Users can use multiple OS on the same computer without the inconvenience of "dual-boot".

Although some of the first personal computers, e.g., the ones advertised in the back of Popular Science, did not come with software, that flexibility did not last and bundling/pre-installation became a corporate strategy. User choice of OS is something no "Big Tech" company today will ever allow. Their business relies on being able to make this choice for the user and all the power that control over the OS allows. Imagine buying a computer without a Microsoft, Apple, Google or Amazon OS pre-installed.

Aicy• 6 years ago

That is all true, the reason people aren't mentioning it is that it was true for all former raspberry pi PC's - the form factor is what's new.

known2• 6 years ago

Reminds me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube

hymnsfm• 6 years ago

How does one become a dealer in Canada?

benlumen• 6 years ago

Can anyone tell me if the 400 supports Kali with frame injection, as they say the Pi 4 does? Thinking of a Xmas gift for a security student.

akhilkg• 6 years ago

This is so very tempting!

Asmod4n• 6 years ago

Can this be used as a keyboard for a PC?

fithisux• 6 years ago

Why not 8GB? Shouldn't it Rpi be swappable?

mrlonglong• 6 years ago

Bring on the Raspberry Pi 800 and 1600 !

sniglom• 6 years ago

I really wish they would have gone for at least one full size HDMI port with the 400. There is room on the PCB for it.

m0zg• 6 years ago

It's irrational how much I want this. I don't need it. I already have an absurd number of computers, even more absurd if I include all the SBCs scattered around. And yet I want this anyway.

newdude116• 6 years ago

Great idea. I predict it will fail.

There is reason why we moved beyond the "bread case" computers. I don't see any problem that this "desktop" solves. A RPi with a keyboard would be the same price.

renaudg• 6 years ago

Now that the ARM build of macOS is days away, could this Raspberry Pi be the ultimate Hackintosh ?

lukicdarkoo• 6 years ago

Can we use it as an actual keyboard (plug it into our PC)?

chrisdew• 6 years ago

Does the Pi 400 PCB allow a future 8 GB model?

sleepybrett• 6 years ago

I'm not clear, did they leave the connector for the camera exposed inside the case, or is that just gone?

calin2k• 6 years ago

I wish it had a full size HDMI port, there is space on the back. MicroHDMI connector si so fragile.

tracker1• 6 years ago

Reminds me of the old Comodore 64, BBC Micro and other computers that were designed for youth interaction... and I think it's a very nice successor in that vein.

This is a way better option for many and should have much broader support. Aside, could make a good 1080p chromiumos option for seniors as well.

edit: build in usb3 to 2.5" sata drive would have been really nice too.

ruslan• 6 years ago

I have been wanting a PC like this for years, I even found a couple of them (x86 based) on AliExpress, but they were too large for my needs.

Suggested improvements for Pi 400: 1. Add a couple more keys to the layout: PGUP, PGDOWN, HOME, END - these are needed for seamless web browsing without a mouse. 2. A small touch pad would be great to have. 3. A MIPI camera interface and two more USB ports. 4. LiPO battery.

tomcam2• 6 years ago

Canakit had them in stock when I ordered yesterday. This reminds me of the excitement I felt when I got a Commodore 64.

fomine3• 6 years ago

I wonder sometimes Google start providing ChromeOS for RPI officially.

alsargent2• 6 years ago

I'll make two bets:

1) PC makers start coming out with their own keyboard computers with a similar form function within the next 12 months.

2) A future Mac Mini has this same keyboard form factor. (Perhaps with a "keyboard + magic trackpad" form factor.)

Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

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