RS Components Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Motherboard

I bought this for my son as a Christmas present and he loves it . To be honest even though I am a decently tech savvy person I wasn't really sure what a Pi is used for . My son on the other the other hand had a half a dozen ideas for what to do with it before we had even finished Christmas dinner . He said that his flatmate uses one as a "brain" for a robot he is building and another friend at school has one that serves as a multimedia streaming and gaming device that he mounted on the back of a TV . So , I would call this the perfect gift for that smart kid that you have trouble buying presents for . I have seen a multitude of accessories and gadgets here on Amazon that are specifically designed to be used with a Pi for all sorts of projects . I know that there are many companies out there make a similar tiny motherboards but according to my son this the one to buy .

I decided to setup Pi-Hole on my network. Pi-Hole is basically a DNS sinkhole (DNS "server") that blocks ads and tracking network wide without needing client side software. It can also improve the security/privacy of DNS requests.For my setup I am using:- Raspberry Pi 3 B+- Samsung 64GB Evo Plus microSDXC card- iUniker Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Case- Mackertop 5.25V 3A Micro USB Wall Charger AC AdapterThe only problem I ran into was trying to use a charger I already had which was supposed to support 5V 3A but the RPi would constantly report low power, about every 2-5 seconds. It seems the RPi 3 B+ (especially) is picky about the power supply used. The one I listed above and the CanaKit 5V 2.5A supply both worked for me and had no issues delivering enough power. I chose the power adapter I am using as it fit better on my power strip and had some additional juice.I installed:- Raspbian Stretch Lite- Pi-Hole- cloudflared (for DNS-over-HTTPS aka DoH)Once installed and configured, which didnt take too much effort or time, I had Pi-hole running of this RPi and not only blocking ads and tracking network wide across all of my devices but also encrypting my DNS requests using DoH.I added all the ticked lists from Wally3k's site, increasing the number of domains to block from the out-of-the-box ~120k to almost 800k.This RPi 3 B+ handles it with ease. CPU usage is so low that often I wonder if the readings are correct, usually sitting in the 0-2% range if I am not interacting with the web GUI too much. RAM usage was ~7% with the default ~120k domains to block, which went to ~12% with the now ~800k domains to block. CPU temps sit in the mid 40c, peaking at about 49c which is well under the thermal threshold for throttling (which is 70c I think).Granted this is not being used on a corporate network, but I am amazed at the performance of such a low powered and cheap machine. Very glad I got it and would highly recommend both in general and for my specific intent, as a Pi-Hole server.

I just received this today. It came in a new box, sealed, but no anti-static bag. ??? I added a chip and plugged it in and it works. It complains about low voltage. I tested the voltage on a Raspberry PI GPIO Extension board and get a reading of 4.97 volts from the 5 volt pin to the ground next to it. I also get 3.27 volts on the 3.3 volt pin.Seriously?!!?? It's tolerance is less than 1%??? It's no wonder pretty much every power supply sold for the device has negative reviews about "low voltage".As for using it, I did find one USB cable that could not hold up to the boot of the RPi. The rest work, but the Pi complains on all but one. It's a short cable that came with my WD Passport and it's much thicker than all my others. It works and I don't get voltage complaints.The system boots up 2018-11-13-raspbian-stretch just fine. It asked for the WiFi user name and password and did the updates. It took a while to update, so I fixed supper and it was done when I got back.It appears to be doing well. I have tried two tutorials, both of which start by having me use "git" to install software for the tutorial. Both time, Git could not find the packages. I suspect that the tutorials are a little old, so I'll keep plugging at it tomorrow.I used it on an Ethernet direct connection and on WiFi. I turn off my WiFi when on the Cat-5 because I don't know what it does with it when it's also wired.When I bought the PI, I thought it was another micro-controller like my Arduino. I didn't realize it's a full computer running Linux. I see it is good for Ham Operators (that's me! ;) so I'm sure I'll find something to put it to the test with.So far, other than the low voltage, which I seemed to have overcome with the low-loss USB wire, I don't have any complaints. I'm looking forward to playing with it and hopefully, running a little SDR.

This thing boots up so fast I can barely see the splash screen. I've had my 2 B+ for a few years, mostly just used for tinkering with command line projects, but then I branched out into a new project that needed full screen graphics and it just didn't cut it. With a simple move of an SD card, I was up and running in seconds on the 3 B+, and it runs so much faster that my new project works perfectly on it. I may be back for more of these.