Raspberry Pi 4 Model B – for powerful 3D-Scans

Today the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Release of Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. The Question is: Does it work with the FabScanPi. The answer is yes it does. But there are a couple of things to note.

Power Consumption

First of all like the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ the new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has a higher power consumption. That means that you can not use the V7805-2000 Step-Down anymore. Because the V7805 does only supply 2000 mA max. So if you plan to use the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with the FabScanPi then you need to remove this step-down from your setup. Instead of the V7805-2000 you can use two power supplies or another Step-Down voltage regulator which will supply about 3000 mA.

We are already working on a new version of the FabScanPi HAT which will bring a step-down circuit on board which will fit the power consumption of the current versions of the Raspberry Pi.

More RAM

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B will be available with up to 4 GB of RAM. That sounds pretty good, because the swapping can be disabled by using the 4 GB version. By the way deactivating swapping will increase the lifetime of your SD-Card and image processing would be even faster.

If you don’t have the 4GB version of the new Raspberry Pi model 4, don’t worry you can use it like you used it before Raspberry Pi 4 Model B by letting swapping activated.

More CPU Power

The new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B also comes with more CPU power. The Foundation changed to a 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU. This is the most powerful CPU in the age of Raspberry Pi. But it brings only 4 cores like the models down to the Raspberry Pi 2.

Firmware Trouble?

If your Raspberry Pi 4 model B does not boot follow the instructions behind this link.

More detailed information.

That is all you need to know about the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B related to the FabScanPi by now. You can find a detailed blog post on the official Raspberry Pi blog. There are still no tests with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with the FabScanPi. Hopefully we can get one in the upcoming days. If you are one of the lucky persons who already owns one of the new Pi’s feel free to share your experience in the FabScanPi Forum.