In case you hadn't noticed, ALL Raspberry Pi processor boards cost the same. Why? Because the price is fixed and controlled by the Raspberry Pi organization. I'm not complaining about this, but it does beg the question as to why you would pick one supplier over another.
The key differentiators are:
1. Power Supply - is there one and how good is it? The official power supply is designed to plug into virtually any outlet on the planet. Consequently it's huge. The one included in this kit will allow you to plug other things into a duplex or quadruple outlet (like I have in my shop).
2. Enclosure - is there one and how good is it? I like the 'official' enclosure slightly better than this one for one reason - it is a bit more modular, but this one is decent quality and may provide better ventilation than the original. Originally I thought that I couldn't install a GPIO cable and put the cover on this one, but happily discovered that there is a gap, large enough for the cable, between the top and the side of this enclosure. A RaspberryPi 'Hat' should fit ok, but I personally haven't tried that.
3. Price - as I mentioned, the Processor price is fixed, but the add-ons aren't. This kit is about the lowest price I've seen for what it includes.
4. Extras - this is where this kit really shines. It includes a short cable that you insert between the power supply and the Pi. The cable has a switch that toggles the power on and off and an LED to show you that the power is on - useful when starting up and you don't want to plug in a powered cable to your Pi. I haven't seen this in any other kit, certainly not at this price. If you've used other kits, powering off your Pi requires physically disconnecting the microUSB connector or unplugging the wall wart - either way, not as convenient as simply pressing the switch.
Updated: to fix comment about ribbon cable.
There are many ways and lots of places to buy what's needed to get a Raspberry Pi operational but this kit has to be one of the easiest. All necessary instructions and parts are included - just add your own keyboard, mouse and HDMI monitor. Good value too - one might be able to purchase the parts separately for less and if you want a hundred that would make sense but just to start with a Pi this is a great place to begin.
There's no point in my reviewing the Pi itself - thousands of others have done that already.
What i can to say: It's perfect ^_^. I'm gamer, a retro gamer in majority, after thinking and thinking about a classic console, i choose to do my own console, using a raspberry. As advanced computer user, it's not so hard to understand the world of raspberry. Well, ok, now about the product: This kit is all u need if u begin into raspberry world, why? have all accessories may you need after, case, heatsinks, adapters & in-line switch, u’ll need a microsd as hdd to the raspberry, nothing serious. After doing some...modifications ( i know i know, that fan wasn't there XD), and installing it behind a 16" hdtv, the result is a powerful retro console w/display, & maybe a desktop computer to little projects, Why not Zoidberg? If you want a little computer to enjoy other world far from windows and MAC, and a retro console at the same time, where you can play nes, snes, n64, ect ect ect....go ahead and order this kit! Enjoy guaranteed. CanaKit, thanks so much O_^ from Costa Rica.
I have been using a Pi -B and Zero until now. Didn't realize just how much more powerful the 3+ is. Almost could be used as a person's daily desktop if it had a bit more onboard ram. But, it is a great little device for programmers and experimenters. Wifi just pops up ready to use without having to hack through the old method of driver finding and loading. (Although if your network is secured, which it should be, there is a little work to get the password into wpa_supplicant, but vastly easier than the old method of using wrappers.). If you are used to standard Debian, there are some gotchas in the Raspian desktop that will cause puzzlement for a bit, but you won't get stuck. The Raspian desktop is too Windowish - tries to tell you what you ought to do. Apt-get XFCE if you want a familiar Debian GUI.
But for a command line junky, it is great. Hack all day and if you bomb it, just flash the microsd again and boot up. With the Etcher flash utility, it takes about two minutes to get your little machine back online.
This high quality CanaKit gives you all you need to get started, except for the SSD. Be sure and purchase a wear-leveling chip, as a Pi with this power will probably burn out an older microsd card in less than a year. Sandisk Extreme is one brand.
Recommended.
I use these to teach programming classes to inspire the next generation of programmers. What can I say - these CanaKits have it all (except a memory card). 4 cores of processing power is crazy in such a low-cost board. My original Raspberry Pi has shown its age. These B+ 3rd gen units boot in ~20 seconds vs the 4 minutes from the original Pi.
The unit stood up to regular abuse: 30 Chromium tabs, 4 terminals, and compiling java code. Handles these tasks wonderfully which makes teaching programming that much easier.
I even picked up a second for myself as run RasPlex on it. Huzzah - DIY computing as its finest;
Feature Product
- Includes Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (B plus) with 1.4 GHz 64-bit Quad-Core Processor and 1 GB RAM
- CanaKit 2.5A USB Power Supply with Micro USB Cable and Noise Filter - Specially designed for the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (UL Listed)
- Dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN, Enhanced Ethernet Capability
- Premium Clear Case, Set of 2 Aluminum Heat Sinks
- CanaKit Quick-Start Guide
Description
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you see a rainbow splash screen with a lightning bolt symbol, this indicates you are NOT using B+ compatible software. NOOBS 2.7.0 or later is required for operation of the B+.
An exclusive kit from CanaKit that includes the fastest model of the Raspberry Pi family - the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (B Plus)!
The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is the latest production Raspberry Pi 3 featuring a 64-bit quad core processor running at 1.4 Ghz. It incorporates built-in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity with enhanced dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2/BLE and faster Ethernet.
To take full advantage of the improved power management on the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and provide even support for even more powerful devices on the USB ports, a 2.5A adapter is recommended.
The power supply included in this kit incorporates a noise filter to provide the highest stability and comes with a 5-foot cable. This power supply can power the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and other USB accessories (such as most portable hard drives) without requiring an external powered USB hub.
The kit also includes a premium quality case specially designed for the Raspberry Pi 3 B+.
Kit Includes:
Everything went well overall, I used a build that will drive a SDRPlay RSP2 Pro software defined radio. The Raspberry Pi thre, even with heat sinks will require an active cooling solution without getting throttled. Under high demand applicationsI also had problems getting the top lid on the case and so I am going to have to retrofit the whole thing in a new metal case with a large heat spreader and micro fan that will tie in to the GPIO header to get 5v DC power. Running a software defined radio and driving a waterfall display that does Fast Fourier Transform graphics is very demanding on that little ARM Cortex processor. I had to cryocool the chip using an upside down can of “air duster” to provide liquid refridgerant on the heat sync to maintain smooth consistant performance. Passive cooling with the tiny heat sync will work for most purpouses but not this one. The Pi 3 B+ become a very capable computer that needs to be built like an industrial SBC if you want it to perform like one.
Decent kit otherwise and it will get you started. But if you want a better case you may as well get a nice metal one with active cooling, the Pi Single Board Computer, and then buy a power supply. You will pay about the same, and get a better quality build.
Bottom line I started with just the SDR, a mini keyboard, a 23 Amp Hour USB battery bank that can pump out 3 amps, and a Micro SD card. With the addition of the kit, and a free version of Linux ended up with a USB battery bank powered computer and 5 inch monitor with a SDR radio that rivals other my ham radios in frequency range as well as global HF reception in less than an hour. It was more of a challenge getting the operating system binary properly written to the MicroSD card.
Although I did receive one defective mother board, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the latest Raspbian Stretch with desktop and recommended software (November, 2018) is better than ever. For the defective mother board, the power light wouldn't even go on (tried with several 5 V 2.5 A power supplies that worked for other Raspberry Pi 3B+ mother boards) and the monitor always displayed "No Signal", but Amazon provided me with a return shipping label and the replacement that I ordered worked fine. I enjoy learning Mathematica that comes with it. Octave, a powerful numerical mathematics package similar to MATLAB, can also be installed. The LibreOffice 5 that also comes with it is mostly compatible with Microsoft Office except for equations. LibreOffice 6 does a much better job handling equations, but is not yet available for Raspbian. Installing hplip and cups lets me print wirelessly to my HP Officejet 8600 Plus printer. Installing cups-pdf lets one print to a pdf file. A Columbus V800+ USB GPS receiver displays the position using gpsmon (see my review on this USB GPS receiver). I was able to use Win32DiskImager to write 2018-11-13-raspbian-stretch-full.img to a 256 GB micro SD card to obtain 238 GB of storage. The boot root partition is automatically re-sized after the first boot. Installing dosfstools, ntfs-3g, and exfat-fuse lets one read and write to a USB flash drive with all the common formats. Installing firefox-esr gives one an alternative browser, installing matchbox-keyboard gives one a screen keyboard in case one doesn't want to use a usb keyboard, and installing scrot lets one take screen snapshots.
You get what's described. Everything came as expected, the inline switch is a nice touch. Overall, it's everything you'd want for a RPi. Some caveats though: The included CD-ROM does not have the most up-to-date version of the manual or code, and the code included on the CD doesn't always work. Get the updated version on their website. The quality of the tutorials is not great, but workable. If you know absolutely nothing about electronics you might be stuck, but if you're willing to tinker you should be able to get it to work. The most troublesome thing I noticed was the diagrams sometimes showed the wrong pins hooked up to the Arduino. However, it usually was just connected to a dead pin on the sensor, so no damage is expected. You can take it as a learning opportunity to make sure you understand what each pin does! In addition, one of the tutorials has you create a circuit for controlling an LCD, including using a potentiometer, which isn't included in the kit. Luckily, I already had one from other kit. Also: all the sensors can fit into a breadboard EXCEPT the Passive IR sensor, which cannot. I bought some female to male breadboard wires to experiment with it later.
Overall though, I still recommend it! Great value for what you're getting, and the included Datasheets are helpful. One last thing though: The code for the Digital Temperature Module is wrong in some way, there's no way my room is 60 C! I think their Steinhart function might not be correct.
This is a review for CanaKit's Raspberry Pi 3 B+ with Premium Clear Case and 2.5A Power Supply. The case is very well designed for both ventilation and protection against dust. It features a 3 piece design which does not require any tools for assembly. Cutouts were available for installation of heatsinks. The top cover can be easily removed to access headers and camera connectors.
The Raspberry Pi 3+ and the latest Raspbian (2018-11-13-raspbian-stretch.img) are very well developed. The development team for Raspbian did a superb job in ensuring that all the Linux interfaces to the hardware works and optimized. Testing the latest Raspbian on my older Raspberry Pi 2 also showed significant improvements where the noticeable lag when using the GUI is now gone. Using the VNC feature also does not show noticeable lag. Due to the 1G RAM size, opening multiple browser tabs would still show some lag but this is expected. I've used the Raspberry Pi with Repetier Server for 3D printer monitoring, NFS and TFTP. Configuration was a breeze and did not run in to problems encountered with some of the other embedded Linux distros provided by some low cost Pi-like single board computers.
This is a great way to get the Pi 3B+ with the power supply and case that you will also need. The case is well made and the Pi fits perfectly.
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