RPi HardwareHistory

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Hardware & Peripherals:

Hardware - detailed information about the Raspberry Pi boards.

Hardware History - guide to the Raspberry Pi models.

Low-level Peripherals - using the GPIO and other connectors.

Expansion Boards - GPIO plug-in boards providing additional functionality.

Screens - attaching a screen to the Raspberry Pi.

Cases - lots of nice cases to protect the Raspberry Pi.

Other Peripherals - all sorts of peripherals used with the Raspberry Pi.

Board Revision History

Find out your board revision with the following command:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

You will see your device data including:

 Hardware	: BCM2708
 Revision	: 0003

If you see a "1000" at the front of the Revision, e.g. 10000002 then it indicates that your Raspberry Pi has been over-volted, and your board revision is simply the last 4 digits (i.e. 0002 in this example).

Revision	Release Date	Model	PCB Revision	Memory	Notes
Beta	Q1 2012	B (Beta)	?	256MB	Beta Board
0002	Q1 2012	B	1.0	256MB
0003	Q3 2012	B (ECN0001)	1.0	256MB	Fuses mod and D14 removed
0004	Q3 2012	B	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Sony)
0005	Q4 2012	B	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Qisda)
0006	Q4 2012	B	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Egoman)
0007	Q1 2013	A	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Egoman)
0008	Q1 2013	A	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Sony)
0009	Q1 2013	A	2.0	256MB	(Mfg by Qisda)
000d	Q4 2012	B	2.0	512MB	(Mfg by Egoman)
000e	Q4 2012	B	2.0	512MB	(Mfg by Sony)
000f	Q4 2012	B	2.0	512MB	(Mfg by Qisda)
0010	Q3 2014	B+	1.0	512MB	(Mfg by Sony)
0011	Q2 2014	Compute Module	1.0	512MB	(Mfg by Sony)
0012	Q4 2014	A+	1.0	256MB	(Mfg by Sony)
a21041	Q1 2015	2 Model B	1.1	1GB	(Mfg by Embest, China)

ECN0001

ECN0001 is the request to not fit D14 and replace F1 and F2 with 0 ohm.

D14 Removal

D14 can interfere with some CEC devices if the Pi is left plugged in and unpowered. The benefits of having it are minimal so it was removed.

F1 & F2 Replacement/Removal

F1 & F2 can cause problems with some USB devices which draw high current. In particular due to the recovery characteristics of the Poly-fuses, it can take a while to recover their low resistance state afterwards, adding additional problems for other devices (lower voltage on the USB bus).

Model B Revision 2.0

Based on a new PCB layout that includes previous build fixes from ECN0001 such us removal of the poly-fuses in series with the +5V power for USB devices, and other fixes reported by the community such as the erroneous connection of the LAN9512 VDD18CORE pins to the +1V8 power plane, addition of the 8-pin P5 header (non-populated) for extra GPIO pins, addition to the 2-pin P6 header (non-populated) for a RESET button, and other changes and improvements reported in more detail .

Colour Variations

A Chinese (Non-FCC) RPi variant full production board (Model B Rev 2.0)

The vast majority of the Raspberry Pis produced have a Green PCB, but Pis produced by Egoman_Technology_Corp (only available in the Far East) have a Red PCB, and RS Components produced a limited edition of anniversary Pis in Blue.

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Announced on 2nd Feb 2015 Full announcement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The Raspberry Pi 2 features a Broadcom BCM2836 SoC, with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and a VideoCore IV dual-core GPU; 1 GB of RAM with remaining specifications being similar to those of the previous generation model B+. The Raspberry Pi 2 retains the same US$35 price point of the model B+.

Raspberry Pi Model-B+ Full Production Board

The RPi full production board (Model B+)

Announced on 14th July 2014 Full announcement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Raspberry Pi Compute Module

The RPi compute module

Announced on 7th Apr 2014 Full announcement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation

The compute module contains the guts of a Raspberry Pi (the BCM2835 processor and 512Mbyte of RAM) as well as a 4Gbyte eMMC Flash device.

This is integrated on to a small 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector

Raspberry Pi Model-A Full Production Board

• As of Feb 2013, available from distributors in Europe but not North America
• Board has 256Mb of RAM rather than the originally planned 128Mb
• The Foundation produced a small Beta batch before handing manufacturing over to RS and Farnell
• The ModelA boards actually use the identical Revision2.0 PCB as ModelB boards, just with a different selection of components fitted (full details available from the schematics). AFAIK no ModelA boards using the Revision1.0 PCBs were ever publicly available (or indeed ever made?).

Raspberry Pi Model-B Full Production Board

The RPi full production board (Model B Rev 2.0)

• Announced: April 2012, first orders sent out June 2012.
• Manufacturing and Orders will be made through RS and Farnell
• This means a much higher volume of units will be produced and made available.
• Additional detail is available about the manufacturing and distribution agreement here video interview between Eben Upton and SlashDot here (28/02/12).
• Announced: September 2012, Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2.0 is now manufactured at Sony's manufacturing plant on Pencoed, South Wales. Full announcement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Element14 announcement on Raspberry Pi discussion board.

Raspberry Pi 1st Production Board

• Announced: 29th Feb 2012 - Start of Sale Only
• Credit-card Format
• Initial 10k Batch (All Model-B's) Manufactured in China (Jan/Feb 2012)
• Should look identical to the Raspberry Pi Beta Board below (except different SDCard holder).
• The board has a yellow RCA connector, rather than the black one used in the Beta's.
• Nokia/Qt Development group has donated vouchers for 400 RPi units for developers
• The batch was delayed several weeks due to the RJ45 network connector being substituted for the wrong part and also so the board could undergo compliance testing

Raspberry Pi Beta Production Board

• Announced: December 2011
• Credit-Card Format
• Manufactured in UK
• Produced 100 PCBs
• Characteristic feature of hand-modded correction to PCB
• See the blog post which includes a video explaining how the production units will differ from the beta boards.

• Pre-production board (beta board) PCB, topside
• Pre-production board (beta board) PCB, underside
• Pre-production board vs credit-card

eBay Auction

10 of the completed Model-B boards were auctioned on eBay (Started on 1st Jan 2012) )

SerialNo:	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10
Date:	11-Jan-2012	11-Jan-2012	10-Jan-2012	10-Jan-2012	09-Jan-2012	09-Jan-2012	08-Jan-2012	08-Jan-2012	07-Jan-2012	07-Jan-2012
Sold For:	£3,500	£2,150	£2,257	£1,550	£1,040	£1,000	£989	£1,020	£930	£1,900

Board #7 was anonymously (and generously) donated to Centre for Computing History (also spotted here..)!

Board #8 Owned by Tech Blogger, Paul Maunders, see his blog for details

Raspberry Pi Alpha Board

RPi Alpha Board

• Announced: August 2011
• Large Format for debugging (Model-B)
• Populated with headers for GPIO, JTAG, DSI, CSI, as well as switches and LEDs for I/O testing.

• Alpha prototype board, underside

Raspberry Pi USB Prototype Board

RPi USB Prototype Board

• Announced: May 2011
• The "Computer On A USB Stick" Format
• Included built-in camera
• HDMI one end and single USB the other
• Introduced the RPi Foundation to the world (any earlier links appreciated), featured by BBC Online Video.
• Known internally at Broadcom as the MicroDB

‎

Raspberry Pi Concept 2006 edition

Raspberry Pi Concept 2006 edition

• Vero-board Prototype & PCB Version
• Atmel ATmega644 microcontroller clocked at 22.1MHz

See Also

Video

• BBC iClick's Peter Price asks whether a £15 computer can solve the programming gap (6 minutes, 3 June 2011)
• Raspberry Pi's David Braben talks to BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones (2:28 minutes, 5 May 2011)
• Raspberry Pi community tutorials on YouTube

Audio

• Podcast of a phone interview with Eben about the project and the motivations behind it (15 minutes long.) (3 June 2011) Transcription here.