V12 of our Raspberry Pi image is more than just a minor bugfix release. There are also some quite big changes and new features which we will outline for you here.

 

1. Support for USB (Ethernet) gadget mode on the Raspberry Pi Zero

This feature has been requested and discussed by some of you guys for a quite some time now.

Now that it's implemented, this mode finally allows you to connect your Raspberry Pi to the PC using only a single USB cable for both power and data.
No more Wifi required!

Also big thanks to stanoba for helpting by actually contributing to the GitHub project! :)

Note: To make this work you will also have to configure a few things in Windows.
We've written up a guide over here.

2. Utilizing OverlayFS

Now while this is quite a big change on how things are handled in the background, it's also one that you should actually not notice when normally using the image.
(However, it made the configuration process quite a bit more difficult to handle for us)

If you don't know what OverlayFS is, you can read up on it here if your're interested in the technical explanation.

What we gain be using it:

  • greatly extends the lifespan of your SD card, as there are no more write operations
  • greatly reduces the risk of data corruption in case the Pi is not shut down properly (e.g. just cutting the power)

Note: as a consequence of using OverlayFS, making custom changes to our image via the console (SSH) now requires an extra step as explained over here when installing a custom display driver.

3. New 'Advanced customization' step

We've added a new 'Advanced customization' step to the configuration wizard that is geared towards more advanced users and allows you to:

  • Overclock the Raspberry Pi 1, 2 and Zero (W) without console interaction
  • Disable the newly added OverlayFS for custom use cases where its not needed or wanted
  • Enable log file persistence for debug purposes
  • Make custom additions or overrides to the 'config.txt' file

 

 

Other features/changes

  • Driver for the official Raspberry Pi 7" display is now included on the image
  • New MoBro splashscreen instead of console log on boot
  • Added a cleartext toggle button for the wifi password field
  • Extended the exposed Rest API with a new endpoint for hardware stats
  • Now waiting for Wifi to re-connect after a connection loss instead of instantly opening the configuration hotspot again
  • Some styling adjustements

Bugfixes

  • Raspberry Pi acting as DHCP server in the connected wifi network under rare condition

 

And as always, we are of course looking forward to your feedback and additional ideas :)