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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?

#71

Post by orev »

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,…

A word of warning for that customer using it for backups — pi’s have a habit of corrupting sd cards once in a while, or the sd cards just go bad. Make sure to have backups of the backups!

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

#72

Post by elfchief »

b5 wrote: post #64
mbu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They withdrew sales of the original C.H.I.P. months and months ago, without really explaining why. It's quite puzzling, because I ordered four in November 2015 and got them as promised about six months later. I guess maybe they made an initial batch, fulfilled that, then just ran out of steam and haven't made any more? It's disappointing to hear other people haven't received theirs.

Huh, weird. I ordered some CHIP Pros and dev boards in February last year, and got them in ~2 weeks. I haven't ordered from them since, so maybe they went defunct or something. I dunno. That's too bad. :(

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

#73

Post by tomjuggler »

8bitben wrote: post #7

I would bet we'll see a version with an integrated SIM card, hopping on the IoT-anywhere train. Twilio was a big first mover with their Twilio mobile service, and I can see people deploying rPi's and the like to more out-of-home applications.

Orange Pi have one, the Orange Pi 2G-IOT. It's really cheap, might be worth checking out. Supposedly runs Android or Linux.

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

#74

Post by mcmatterson »

orev wrote: post #71
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,…

A word of warning for that customer using it for backups — pi’s have a habit of corrupting sd cards once in a while, or the sd cards just go bad. Make sure to have backups of the backups!

This is a perennial problem for the handful of Pi's I have deployed around the house (homebrew DAC, weather station, boiler manager (wip), workbench terminal). They're all 'purpose built' and sit almost entirely idle while fulfilling a single, usually non-interactive task. And after 18 months or so, they all start failing the same way:

* Random userspace crashes (most recent one was a reproduceable crash in the bowels of the python runtime) happen with greater frequency

* (Usually in the process of debugging the above) strange filesystem artifacts show up (files disappearing after reboot, etc)

* Booting ends up taking 5+ minutes, if it succeeds at all.

The solution to the above ends up being 'rebuild the box on a new SD card'. This is usually on 'brand name' (Kingston, etc) SD cards bought through proper retail channels, so while they're not high end cards, they're at least not (likely) counterfeit either. I still don't have enough data to know if simply dd'ing the old card over is sufficient, or if a full ground-up rebuild is sufficient.

Would love advice on this, especially around brands of cards with known good lifetimes in similar environments.

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

#75

Post by dbuder »

mcmatterson wrote: post #74
orev wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of warning for that customer using it for backups — pi’s have a habit of corrupting sd cards once in a while, or the sd cards just go bad. Make sure to have backups of the backups!

This is a perennial problem for the handful of Pi's I have deployed around the house (homebrew DAC, weather station, boiler manager (wip), workbench terminal). They're all 'purpose built' and sit almost entirely idle while fulfilling a single, usually non-interactive task. And after 18 months or so, they all start failing the same way: * Random userspace crashes (most recent one was a reproduceable crash in the bowel…

This was recommended in a previous HN post. https://www.digikey.com.au/product-detail/en/atp-electronics... I would consider using a SBC with onboard eMMC/NAND flash, such as the beaglebone or orange pi.

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

#76

Post by Tepix »

b5 wrote: post #64
mbu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They withdrew sales of the original C.H.I.P. months and months ago, without really explaining why. It's quite puzzling, because I ordered four in November 2015 and got them as promised about six months later. I guess maybe they made an initial batch, fulfilled that, then just ran out of steam and haven't made any more? It's disappointing to hear other people haven't received theirs.

I ordered 5 CHIP in Feb 2017 and never got anything. Estimated shipping was Q1 2017.

I sent several mails and got no reply.

The email address is now bouncing mails: "Recipient address rejected: User unknown".

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

#77

Post by douglaswlance »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #50
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…

Those aren't commercial products by colloquial definition. Sure you made money, but they're not up for sale with thousands of customers.
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