Raspberry Pi 3

Today I got my Raspberry Pi 3. One day after the official presentation I am installing and configuring the latest single board computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. You need the latest version of Raspbian released on the 26th of February 2016. The latest version of Raspbian is supporting the Raspberry Pi 3 and all old models. The Broadcom BCM2837 used by the Raspberry Pi 3 is a 64-Bit chip but the latest version of Raspbian is still a 32 Bit operating system. This is the reason why the old modules are support by this version as well. The power supply could be the same as used for the Raspberry Pi 2. The Raspberry Pi foundation recommends a power supply with 5V and 2.5A but I used one with 2.0A and it works perfect for me.

I used a 64GB micro SD card to install the latest version of Raspbian. After booting up the Pi I logged into the graphical user interface. Everything looks as usual. Then I started the raspi-configuration tool to expand the file system. After a reboot I configured the onboard WiFi module as described in the next chapter.

Raspberry Pi 3

Table of Contents

Raspberry Pi 3 WiFi module – setup

The Raspberry Pi 3 has a WiFi module onboard. No need to search for a USB WiFi module which is supported by Raspbian or Linux any more. The onboard WiFi module works out of the box. You only need to install the latest version of Raspbian “2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie”. Boot up the Raspberry Pi with a keyboard, mouse and monitor connected. Then go into the right upper corner of the menu bar and connect the RaPi with your WiFi network and password. After a few seconds your are online and connected. That’s all you need to know about the WiFi module and the configuration of your WiFi connection. That is very cool and totally easy!!!

Update / Upgrade – Raspbian

After the successful configuration of my WiFi connection I updated and upgraded Raspbian with the following commands.

Command:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

The speed of the onboard WiFi module was very good and I felt no difference to my 8 € USB WiFi module I normally used for my Pi’s. I need to test module to get a more detailled information yout the speed with a bench mark.

Then I started the firmware update as well with the command below.

Command:

sudo rpi-update

Raspberry Pi 3 – CPU benchmark

After all upgrades and updates where installed successfully I started the sysbench CPU benchmark. First I need to install the sysbench benchmark. To install sysbench please use the following command.

Command:

sudo apt-get install sysbench

I started the cpu benchmark with the following command. I hope everybody could run the benchmark and compare the results with my results.

Command:

sysbench –test=cpu –cpu-max-prime=20000 run

The picture below shows the result of the sysbench benchmark for the Raspberry Pi 3. From interest is the “total time: 520.4365s” compared with another Raspberry Pi module.