Pi Day

For years, I've assumed Raspberry Pi Ltd would release new versions of the Raspberry Pi on Pi Day (March 14. Aka 3.14) But for the past few years, I've been disappointed. We were introduced to the Raspberry Pi Pico and some new software, but no new Raspberry Pi.

Probably just a case of a constricted supply chain, I thought. As soon as chip makers get back online, we'll see a new version pop up.

It's not Pi Day, but Raspberry Pi has just revealed the reason we haven't seen anything up until today. Say hello to the Raspberry Pi 5, a supercharged workhorse in the Raspberry Pi family of products.

What's So Special?

Simply put, the Raspberry Pi 5 is a souped-up version of the Raspberry Pi 4. Pretty much everything is faster. If you're using it for a desktop computer you'll notice the difference. Graphics are snappier. Gimp processes images faster. This board is ready to attempt video editing.

There are a lot of under-the-hood reasons for this increase in speed and I'll avoid nerding out about the specifics. What's important is how that increase in speed supports more features.

Two Cameras

This is an interesting change. Right behind the ethernet port is where the camera connects. Actually, this is where the cameras connect. There are now two ribbon sockets labeled CAM/DISP 0 and 1. Which indicates a capacity for two cameras. Or two displays. Even more interesting is support for the MIPI standard (Mobile Industry Processor Interface). Look that acronym up and you'll find it's an upcoming industry standard used in smartphones, IOT, and (really interesting) cameras designed for automobiles.

MIPI also supports displays. To be clear, the Raspberry Pi 5 already supports two HDMI video ports, so this is two more. What could you possibly want with four displays? Like every other time we've asked "who could possibly want ..." - we're going to find out.

Real-Time Clock

Yep - just add a battery and you have an on-board real-time clock. You could always add one through the GPIO, but by including it on the board developers can assume it will be available and deal with one fewer support issue.

This is important for remote applications with no access to internet time servers. Recording data about events requires a dependable time stamp - now you can guarantee one in the Raspberry Pi environment.

Power Button

Over on the side of the board is a small connector labeled PSW. That can only be where you plug in a power switch. The documentation isn't clear on how this will work - but it is a frequent request .

Fan

With great power comes ... great need for cooling. A while ago, I showed how to attach a fan to the Raspberry Pi through the GPIO. Now the connection is formal - in the upper right corner is a connector labeled FAN.

No More scrot

The Raspberry Pi 5 implements Wayland in place of X-Windows . If you've been using scrot for screen captures, you'll now need to use grim instead. See a follow-up article for how to do this.

Compared to the Raspberry Pi 4

It's informative to compare the Raspberry Pi model 4 to the new Pi 5. Here's a photo of the RPi model 4 - compare it to the photo at the top of this page.

You'll notice many new connectors. Do you see:

• UART
• FAN
• PSW
• BAT
• POE

What you don't see is any (potential) changes to the GPIO or speed changes. Stay tuned for more updates.

Documentation

While I'm writing this pre-review I only have a press kit and a sample version of the RPi 5. There are all sorts of sockets and connectors I'm itching to connect to - but for the sake of letting out the magic white smoke (aka: shorting out the circuits) I'm going to wait for documentation. As I learn new tidbits, I'll pass them on.

Need more information?

Subscribe to this newsletter for my take on this new model. In the meantime, Here's the Raspberry Pi website . Here's my course on Raspberry Pi Essentials . Here's my course on the Raspberry Pi GPIO .

#raspberrypi #piday