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Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

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Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#41

Post by dbuder »

mangecoeur wrote: post #22

Most of the comments so far seem to have missed the point of the RPi specifically, which is that it was always intended more as an educational tool than commercial solution. The idea of the RPi foundation is to promote experimenting and hacking by selling a board cheap enough that you don't care too much if you ruin it. This was explicitly a response to the rise of smartphones(/smart-whatevers) which turned computing…

They have recently warmed up to the RPi being used in commercial products. No one else in the space gets the volume/goodwill discounts the RPi foundation does and the Chinese SBC producers are yet to provide decent software support and might have to raise their prices if they did.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#42

Post by nottorp »

fhood wrote: post #26
noonespecial wrote: post #20

"MAX PER CUSTOMER: 1" It really doesn't matter where else they "go" until they fix that right there. (Why? Because on my workbench right now is the pi, instead of a pi; and that makes all the difference.)

Do they still enforce that? When I was working with Pi's a few years back I never had any trouble getting 5 or 6 at a time.

I had trouble getting more than one zero at a time when it was new. Maybe it's still the same in some places.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#43

Post by aurailious »

mangecoeur wrote: post #22

Most of the comments so far seem to have missed the point of the RPi specifically, which is that it was always intended more as an educational tool than commercial solution. The idea of the RPi foundation is to promote experimenting and hacking by selling a board cheap enough that you don't care too much if you ruin it. This was explicitly a response to the rise of smartphones(/smart-whatevers) which turned computing…

But just because its primary purpose is education doesn't mean it will/would/should always be that. Its sort of like curb cuts, something that starts out trying to fix one problem but then its quickly seen how many other problems it helps fix or other capabilities to enable.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#44

Post by valarauca1 »

nimbius wrote: post #19

These things are a god-send for the auto industry in my opinion...specifically professional drivers. as a lead automotive mechanic for a semi truck shop, I bought about 5 pi's for our techs. We use them for reading OBD diagnostics and doing resets or long-term vehicle observation for certain problems. Theyre cheaper than most of the commercial rent-seeking computer tools we use and if a tech accidentally crushes one,…

how do you deal with power surges during start up and shut down. I imagine the inductive loads/peak inrush would be massive?

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#45

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

mangecoeur wrote: post #22

Most of the comments so far seem to have missed the point of the RPi specifically, which is that it was always intended more as an educational tool than commercial solution. The idea of the RPi foundation is to promote experimenting and hacking by selling a board cheap enough that you don't care too much if you ruin it. This was explicitly a response to the rise of smartphones(/smart-whatevers) which turned computing…

The original point of the RPi is meaningless if the majority of the use cases are something completely different.

For me, doing embedded consulting, the Pi is a cheap, simple way to get a touchscreen and/or network capability without jumping through the hoops of Arduino add-ons.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#46

Post by dbuder »

tmm wrote: post #28
chrisshroba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off topic - The one-per-customer policy on the PiZero and PiZeroW seems very limiting to me for someone who would like to develop more than one pi-based hobbyist project (or multi-pi projects like a cheap kubernetes cluster to play around with that stack). Does anyone know if there are plans to drop this restriction anytime soon, or do hobbyists just need to accept that to do multiple projects they need to b…

I don't think it's one per customer. More like one per transaction. I buy mine from Microcenter and probably have 10 by now.

You can often email distributors and get more than one at a time, they mostly want to provide good general availability.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#47

Post by StavrosK »

noonespecial wrote: post #20

"MAX PER CUSTOMER: 1" It really doesn't matter where else they "go" until they fix that right there. (Why? Because on my workbench right now is the pi, instead of a pi; and that makes all the difference.)

That's exactly my problem as well. I wanted to hack a Pi Zero W into a presentation machine (for giving talks) and I didn't want to ruin my only Pi Zero W on account of how expensive it would be to replace (with shipping etc, it comes out to 30 euros or so).

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#48

Post by mbu »

Tepix wrote: post #38
elfchief wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of the pi zero, check out the CHIP Pro ( https://getchip.com/pages/chippro ) ... a little more expensive, but available in quantity and designed to be pick & placed (or hand-soldered!), runs linux, and does most of the things a pi can do (sans video)

Stay away from CHIP, they appear to be bankrupt and/or fraudulent, they took my money and never delivered.

Fwiw I don't think it's even possible to order anything from them at the moment. I can't figure out how to (but also have heard other stories of late or non-delivery). Seems like a cool product until you realise it doesn't exist.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#49

Post by noonespecial »

feocco wrote: post #27
noonespecial wrote: post #20

"MAX PER CUSTOMER: 1" It really doesn't matter where else they "go" until they fix that right there. (Why? Because on my workbench right now is the pi, instead of a pi; and that makes all the difference.)

I've got 3 pi's in my desk drawer not in use. There's multiple outlet's that sell more than 1 per customer.

If you could tell me where I can get z-dubs 10 at a time for the advertised $10 price with combined shipping, I'd be eternally grateful.

Re: Ask HN: How will it go for Raspberry Pi in the coming years?

#50

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

douglaswlance wrote: post #8

Raspberry Pi is for hacking. It's not really a commercial platform. You can technically use it as such, but it's more cost-effective to design your own boards at that point.

Depends.

I shipped an RPi-based project a few months ago that was a one-off. Could have been done with Arduino, but it was far easier (read: less expensive to develop) on a Pi because it needed a touchscreen UI. I'm unlikely to ever build more than one more unit like it.

I'm currently quoting a design I'd like to use the Pi on because it will need to be connected to WiFi or Ethernet and I doubt I will build more than 20 or so. No way in hell I could make back the board design cost at that quantity. Were it not for the networking, it wouldn't even need a CPU!

RPi and BeagleBone hit a sweet spot for a certain type & quantity of designs that nothing else (of that popularity) meets.

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