Raspberry Pi Forums

(edited for clarity - case of the Mondays anyone?)

It might be a bit far along to change things even if people agree, but I think the 3A should provide microUSB OTG to support USB device use. You could then use the Pi as a fancy WiFi adapter that could do security processing, and unlike most USB adapters it would come up as a standard network class device, preventing driver worries.

(Also if it made the board cheaper, using the zero's mini-HDMI port would potentially make the board thinner - perhaps a 'thin' build option without analog audio and GPIO pins would sell?)

In any case the 3A will be huge, aside from the massive increase in CPU power, adding WiFi+BT will add a lot of flexibility, making the single USB port a much smaller drawback for a lot of uses! (edit: Eben said the same thing in the podcast... that I hadn't listened to yet)

I *think* what you are asking for is not microUSB (which is just a connector size), but USB OTG, which permits something to be either a USB device or a USB host under software control. The Pi Zero has that and it is a not unreasonable request for the Pi3A. I don't know that it requires a microUSB connector to implement. One would hope not.

OTG does require micro USB with the 5th pin for OTG_Sense. Maybe they could add a second micro-USB like on the Compute Module IO Board - then you'd have a choice of sockets, just don't try to use both at once.

Edited to add: put the USB-A & micro-USBs so close together on the PCB that it's pretty much impossible to plug in both at once.

gregeric wrote:OTG does require micro USB with the 5th pin for OTG_Sense. Maybe they could add a second micro-USB like on the Compute Module IO Board - then you'd have a choice of sockets, just don't try to use both at once.

Edited to add: put the USB-A & micro-USBs so close together on the PCB that it's pretty much impossible to plug in both at once.

Someone is sure to pull it off and then complain about the results...

The 3A will presumably be exactly the same as the 3B without the USB hub, 4 USB ports and Ethernet socket. Same as 1a+ and 1b+.