Today, Raspberry Pi announced an update to their popular Power over Ethernet (PoE) HAT, Raspberry Pi PoE+ HAT. This update that brings a more generous power supply and cooler running for your Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Raspberry Pi 4.
The Raspberry Pi PoE+ HAT is a response to many issues. The global chip supply issues have not hit the Raspberry Pi itself but the older PoE HAT is being hit by a short supply of silicon and this is one of the factors that forced Raspberry Pi to announce PoE+ HAT ahead of its early June release. The other factor being to give industrial customers, time to migrate to the new board.
PoE+ HAT fits atop the 40 GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi 3B+ / 4 and it also connects to a 2 x 2 PoE header only present on those board. When used with a compatible HAT, such as the PoE, those four extra pins can request power from the switch and via an onboard regulator the 37-57V can be dropped down to a Pi friendly 5V to power your Pi. Using a compatible PoE network we can draw up to 5V at 5A (25W) for our Pi, powering it without the need for a separate PSU. This is double the original PoE's 5V at 2.5A and with a larger available power source we can now power USB devices such as hard drives / SSDs so this should be good for your Pi Chia farm. The onboard fan keeps your Pi cool, and hopefully doesn't sound like a bee trapped in a soda can. Speaking of noise, the first revision of the original PoE HAT had an interesting coil whine issue with the transformer that was later fixed. For the PoE + HAT Raspberry Pi are using a Bourns planar transformer which eliminates that issue while looking rather futuristic.
The Raspberry Pi PoE+ HAT will be released in early June, with a retail price of $20 (£18).
