“This was a replacement product, for one that met an untimely end due to some cack-handedness on my part. Let this be a lesson to all that read this:
I was measuring some voltages on the GPIO header pins and was surprised to find the 5v a bit out of tolerance (I think it came up at 5.1v or thereabouts). Hmm, I said, I wonder if the 3.3v is the same and placed my probe across to the 3.3v pin (pin 1). Unfortunately, it also touched the 5v pin at the same time. Long probes should be banned! All went dead and that is how my old Pi board remains as the voltage circuitry on board is probably foobar.
This replacement is better than the original because it works and I am going nowhere near those pins without a Dupont cable attached. Lesson learned.
Oh and Pimoroni delivery the very next day (I just squeaked into their 2pm cutoff) whereas a certain other supplier from a Hut only managed the day after. Well done Pimoroni, you allowed me to finish my YouTube video on time (see youtube.com/ralphbacon) and it's video #122 if anyone is interested, and in which I describe all the above again!
All good, just watch out for those 5v and 3.3v pins so close together.”
“The improvements in the speed of the processor, combined with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi networks built in, this makes the 3B+ the ideal choice of board for those on a tight budget. The 3B+ maintains the same footprint as its siblings making it possible to upgrade your project by simply swapping the boards. The board also brings the ability to power the board using Power over Ethernet using an add-on board which unlike previous methods uses the RJ-45 socket on the board which links to the add-on PoE board using an additional 4-way connector on the board. Although there have been some teething issues with the new PoE add-on, this makes the design of your IoT projects easier to install as it no longer requires the project to be located near to a power source.
With the power and the connectivity, this board is perfect in my project where I am using it to link a wired network to the main wifi hub. I am also using it as a Samba based Active Directory Domain Server to control four desktop computers running Windows 7 Pro. Having looked around at the alternatives for this project, I could not find another system that could provide all of this for the same price. If you have a project that requires plenty of power, with great connectivity, and at a low price, then you cannot beat the Raspberry Pi 3B+ (well that is until they bring out the Pi 4B).”
