Raspberry Pi 500 - Azerty FR - 8 Go

PI500 - a 8 GB Raspberry-Pi keyboard computer ready to use

This product comes in AZERTY FR version and includes a 32GB SD card

The Raspberry Pi500 is the successor to the Pi400, it embeds a Raspberry-Pi 5 8 GB in an official keyboard of the foundation.
All in white, which distinguishes it from its predecessor (pink and white), the Pi 500 brings in a keyboard the extra power offered by the Raspberry-Pi 5.

The Pi 500 is faster (2.4 GHz), has high-performance USB3 ports (5 GBps simultaneous) thanks to the RP1 and Gigabit Ethernet (900Mb/s). Still in Quad Core, the Pi 500 is this time equipped with 8 GB of very high-performance LPDDR4 RAM.

The Pi500 will therefore be well suited for Internet browsing and more intensive tasks. The Pi500 will offer even better flexibility of use than the Pi400.

The keyboard is from a new manufacturer! Still identical to the Pi400's one, this new manufacture will make it easier to replace the keys in the event of an key ripoff (I never had this problem).

The feet have also received improved anti-slip pads, which improves stability on the desk.

For those who likes tech info:

• The SoC is now a BCM2712C0 (identical to Pi5 but smaller die)
• The RP1 used for high rate transfert with USB3
• The PI5 PMIC (Power Management IC) for start/stop operation.
• User LED
• The keyboard is managed by a RP2040 microcontroler
• Same WiFi chipset than Raspberry-Pi 5
• Case closure with screws

We do have the following ports on the back:

• Ethernet Gigabit connector
• 2x USB 3 (great for SSD and high speed peripheral)
• 1x USB 2
• 2x micro HDMI connector
• GPIO connector (essential for prototyping)
• MicroSD connector (push-push connector, press on the card to eject it).
• WiFi and Bluetooth.
• Kensington anti-thief
• 1x user LED

Like its predecessor, the Pi500 also has a power button directly accessible on the keyboard. Here we find the famous PMIC of the Raspberry-Pi 5.
The keyboard has a user LED. As its name suggests, this LED on GPIO 123 is freely controllable by your own Python scripts.

Note: This product is delivred with  AZERTY FR layout

Pi 500 and cooling

The PI500 is based on the Raspberry-Pi 5 so, it also generates more heat than a Pi 400.
Tests conducted by the Raspberry-Pi team did not reveal any overheating. The operations remain within standards temperature even with passive cooling.

The Raspberry-Pi team placed a giant heat sink under the entire surface of the keyboard to compensate the heat dissipation.

After several hours of operation under normal operations, the PI500 does not exhibit any significant heating.

Looking to the future

As mentioned, the two parts of the Pi500 are no longer clipped together but assembled and held with screws.
This allows easy access to the Pi500 internals where you can see unpopulated footprints on each side.
Without a doubt, one of the footprints will be used to connect an NVMe drive while the other located next to the Ethernet connector suggests a future PoE support.

No doubt the Pi500 will see other variants.

Prototyping with the Pi 500

It is clear that the Pi500 is not intended for the creation of an embedded platform but will be perfect for all STEM learning and discovery cycles.

The Pi500 will be a great device for learning electronics and create various projects thanks to its GPIO. A simple GPIO cable adapter will allows you to use Hats in a confortable way (eg: sense-hat, PiFace Digital 2, etc.).

Note: This product is shhipped with an AZERTY FR layout

You can also use the Pi400/500 expansion board that we highly recommend for your electronics experiments. Affordable and super convenient with labeled pins!

Content

For each order, you will receive one Raspberry-Pi 500 with AZERTY FR layout fully assembled and tested.
The PI500 includes a SD Card preformated with the Raspberry-Pi OS

To use this product, you will need:

• 1x Raspberry-Pi PSUi (USB-C)
• 1x microHDMI to HDMI cable (or two of them to make it running with two minitor)

Legal documents

• DoC : Document of Conformity (pdf)