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Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

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Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#81

Post by LaputanMachine »

retrocryptid wrote: post #4

I know that you didn't ask, but my $0.02 is that yes, RasPi's are unreliable. If you use one for as an unattended remote server, it will do you well to include a hardware watchdog that power cycles the device after it hangs. But modern NUCs seem to take MINUTES to boot the BIOS. I had been using various BeagleBones and found them more reliable than RasPi's and faster to boot than the NUCs in the office. But depending…

As long as you use a good power supply along with Ethernet instead of WiFi, Raspberry Pis are rock solid in my experience.

Regardless, I'd also recommend setting up the hardware watchdog just in case. It's saved me in the past when I overloaded my Pi with a bad cron job.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#82

Post by gravitronic »

nippoo wrote: post #10

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.

I don't see it mentioned in the thread, so I'll link to ESPHome. It is an incredible platform when you just want to read some sensors or put some relays or switches onto the network, integrates with Home Assistant. One of the most enjoyable firmware installation procedures I've ever encountered.

https://esphome.io

Most of the use cases I've seen have them report to Home Assistant or something similar, but I think some people use them directly without a host.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#83

Post by rubenbe »

rrosen326 wrote: post #69
gaudat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhhh stop spilling our secret to the software people... The semiconductor shortage is bad enough already... That said though, programming embedded devices like Arduino and ESP32 needs a completely different style of thinking than with high level languages or web stuff. Things like MicroPython reduces the friction just a bit to make it easy enough to get on board.

This is so true! I just programmed an Arduino for a diy attic fan controller. Was it hard? Not really. Was it a bigger pain in the butt than programming for home assistant? Oh gosh yes. And quite limited in comparison. It really made me appreciate zWave plus python plus home assistant plus appdaemon. High level coding - use it if you can!

I did use esphome for something similar. It uses a yaml file to generate C++ code for you and it works like a charm (in 99% of the cases). Very easy integration in home assistant and it has support for the usual home automation peripherals.

https://esphome.io

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#85

Post by DeathArrow »

nippoo wrote: post #10

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.

ESP32-C3 is cool if you want to play with RISC-V for cheap.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#86

Post by tambourine_man »

afavour wrote: post #76
tambourine_man wrote: post #58

If your alternative to RPis are used NUCs or laptops, than you lost me. I want reliable and quiet. I have RPis running for more than a decade everyday with not a single crash. In what conditions are those used PSU? Who knows. I'm also not a fan of bringing other people's dust and keyboard grease along.

Many NUCs are whisper quiet and just as reliable as an RPi. Often more so given the number of folks that run everything in their RPi off an SD card without considering the lifespan of them. I didn’t replace my RPi with a NUC but I did get a Celeron powered mini PC. It’s basically silent and has been happily running Ubuntu under my desk for over a year now.

If new, sure, but then you're in for a lot more money than the Pi.

If it's used, I'm not interested.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#87

Post by DeathArrow »

don-code wrote: post #31

My homelab, up until the beginning of last year, consisted completely of Raspberry Pi's - gen 1 through 4. Because they're so resource constrained, adding new services in my homelab meant adding more Pi's. Pi's themselves then became near-impossible to buy, which meant I couldn't expand anymore. I bought a set of four 10-year-old HP rackmount servers instead - 56 cores, 88GB of RAM, and 12TB of storage total (note: I…

I think Pis are good for fun and for tinkering cheaply with ARM architecture. Server hardware will always better once the workload is heavy enough.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#89

Post by DeathArrow »

geocrasher wrote: post #11

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.

> but an old laptop can do most things a Pi can do, and putting them to use keeps them out of the landfill longer.

But you'll lose Internet points.

Re: Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That

#90

Post by snitch182 »

yeah, you can use an old refurbuished pc for most of it. But running on 5W .. no. Putting it literally into the wall, no. Arduino is to much overhead upfront. It is the ideal middle ground.

I went with rockpi because of the shortages .. works just as well and has a little more punch.

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