21–30 of 270 posts
Certainly agree that the Raspberry Pi's SD card is unsuitable as a boot device if you have any issues with power failures or voltage regulation. You can boot from a USB but by the time you pay for the USB drive you are in the same price range as other Micro computers.
Common MLC media is good for 5,000 writes before end of life. SLC media can take 100,000 writes, and is available in SD card form (but it is more expensive).
I often end up giving the opposite unpopular opinion: RPis are overkill for a lot of DIY IoT uses. Want to have something that opens your curtains or flashes some RGB lights in your hallway or whatever? Pick yourself up an Arduino / ESP32 with built-in WiFi, often an Ethernet port, tons of GPIO. It consumes milliwatts of power, boots in under a second, and is cheap enough to be disposable.
Something like ESP32 is much more reliable at controlling hardware. It will never miss on a triggered limit switch in time because memory ran out for some reason and it started swapping.
Why am I getting a cloudflare error? Visiting from India via Chrome. Msg: I got an error when visiting set-inform.com/2021/08/24/unpopular-opinion-dont-use-a-raspberry-pi-for-that/. Error code: 1020 Country: IN Data center: fra08 Timestamp: 2023-03-22 13:33:46 UTC
Here is archive: https://archive.is/HmDQz
Sure, buying one now is (relatively) expensive for what it is, but I bought my Pi's back when they were MSRP ($45-54 USD for RPI4 4GiB and $35 USD for RPi3B+). Nothing can compete at that price point. While there are cheaper options or more powerful options for a bit more, none of them have the same support the Raspberry PI has.
As for reliability, dropping ~$25 USD for a drive enclosure and having it boot from that is doable with the Raspberry Pi 4 (and the 3 but I've never tested it).
If you don't need GPIO, then you don't need a RPi. They are useful, but an old laptop can do most things a Pi can do, and putting them to use keeps them out of the landfill longer.
A laptop would consume significantly more power than an RPi.
And instead of buying more powerful hardware you can try to get the always free oracle VPS (4vcpu ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage), do your compute stuff there, and keep the RPI as pi-hole/home assistant only. It will save you on electricity bill as well.
> free oracle VPS (4vcpu ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359 Just because you haven't been bitten yet, does not in any way mean you won't be, and crucially: it doesn't preclude others following your advice being bitten.
Just Google which ones are actually always free. Didn't have any problems personally.
The second is most of the comments here, declaring that novices should just learn embedded programming and use an arduino for everything! If you're in this camp, you should consider _why_ people chose to use raspis for project. and watch your ass because an EE is about to arrive to drag you for not just using a 555 timer in your projects.
If you don't need GPIO, then you don't need a RPi. They are useful, but an old laptop can do most things a Pi can do, and putting them to use keeps them out of the landfill longer.
And includes built in battery backup
And instead of buying more powerful hardware you can try to get the always free oracle VPS (4vcpu ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage), do your compute stuff there, and keep the RPI as pi-hole/home assistant only. It will save you on electricity bill as well.
> free oracle VPS (4vcpu ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359 Just because you haven't been bitten yet, does not in any way mean you won't be, and crucially: it doesn't preclude others following your advice being bitten.
I was about to give Oracle free tier a try for some hobby projects.
Do NUCs have GPIO or do I have to stick to a SBC for those?