Raspberry Pi 4 is now the newest and fastest Raspberry Pi you can get, which means way more functionality than ever before. With boosted specs over the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, like up to 4GB of RAM, this new single board computer is fit for some high-flying projects. That’s why pi-top is putting it into a tiny, mobile PC, the pi-top [4].
The London-based company already has Raspberry Pi 3-powered laptop and tablet-looking devices. But the pi-top [4] works more like a portable PC, with the Raspberry Pi 4 encased in a rectangular (and colorful) vessel.
“We know that our community want to make projects that aren’t restricted to locations or are laptop based. The pi-top [4] can literally fly (see our drone project), go up in a weather balloon to conduct environmental data science, be part of an advanced rover project, automate a garden, be the brain of a humanoid robot or the heart of a sound and light machine. With pi-top [4] we wanted to liberate our maker and modder community to invent almost anything,” a pi-top spokesperson told us.
Even Eben Upton, the founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi, nodded at pi-top for being able to get the Raspberry Pi inside of a more familiar form factor.
“There are areas of endeavour that pi-top has been involved in, particularly around displays, keyboards, batteries and the like, which we haven’t explored. It’s been wonderful to see an organisation do that, take on those challenges and vanquish them,” he said in a statement.
The pi-top [4] works right out of the box. It comes with a 16GB SD card pre-loaded with the pi-topOS, a power supply, Ethernet cable and hex key, plus a one-year warranty. Right away you can control it remotely with a phone, tablet or computer. Or you can plug in a keyboard, mouse and display. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 4’s dual HDMI ports, you can run up two 4K resolution monitors off the pi-top [4].
With a Raspberry Pi 4 at its core, the pi-top [4] also has a better port selection than pi-top’s other offerings: two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port (the other is occupied) and gigabit Ethernet.
The PC also comes with 12 component modules in total, featuring programmable sensors, buttons and LEDs for connecting to a “Foundation Plate,” which the pi-top describes as “a beginner level plate that lets you connect LEDs, sensors and potentiometers to make circuits, games and electronic systems.”
For monitoring your projects, the pi-top [4] has a small OLED screen that you can program to share critical information, like sensor readings, CPU usage and battery life. The PC also has four programmable buttons on each side.
The pi-top [4] hasn’t hit shelves yet, but pi-top has already shared some ideas of what customers can do with its new PC, such as shooting and editing video and mixing music. The London-based company also pointed to projects with the pi-top [4] used for a portable photo booth and more.
In fact, the possibilities are greater than ever, thanks to the Raspberry Pi 4’s 40 GPIO (General Input / Output) pins. They support four additional I2C, SPI and UART connections for relevant sensors or peripherals than the previous Raspberry Pi.
The pi-top [4] is compatible with “most, if not all” accessories for the pi-top [2] and [3], pi-top told us. Pi-top also plans to launch a new range of accessories compatible with pi-top [4].
We’ll personally be interested in seeing if anyone crafts a way to provide some extra cooling to the pi-top [4] for faster GPU and CPU clock speeds. It already has the highest GPU and CPU clock speeds (500 MHz and 1.5 GHz, respectively) than any other Raspberry Pi, but you can overclock the Raspberry Pi 4 for even more performance.
No matter what wild ideas the pi-top [4] inspires, you can show them off on Further, pi-top’s social channel for sharing code and projects and private groups.
We’re still waiting on pricing and availability info. In the meantime, we expect the pi-top [4] to be over $320, which is the the current price of the pi-top [3]. You can stay up-to-date by signing up for updates on the pi-top [4] here.
Photo Credits: pi-top
