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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

#191

Post by phkahler »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #59
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.

The thing that tripped me up the most was concurrent tasks. In languages like Go or JavaScript it’s pretty easy to figure out how to decrement a timer or wait until x time to perform a task without having the waiting period be blocking. On an arduino, you have a few options but none of them are likely to be familiar to high level software devs. It isn’t rocket science, but there are loads of little details like that…

While we're on the general topic, let me share this Gist: https://gist.github.com/phkahler/1ddddb79fc57072c4269fdd6716...

fade a GPIO LED on/off cyclically in 6 lines of code. It should read "every millisecond or faster" but OK.

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

#192

Post by afavour »

tambourine_man wrote: post #86
afavour wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My mini PC was $150. Definitely more than a RPi but not insane.

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

#193

Post by xp84 »

paxys wrote: post #170
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.

This combined with the main article shows the exact reason why Raspberry Pi is as popular as it is. When I'm starting a new project I can either worry about Arduino or ESP32 or other microcontrollers or various NUCs or getting a board fabricated from scratch...or I can grab a RPi from the drawer and know that it will just work, regardless of whether I need to toggle some RGB lights, browse the web, or run a Kubernete…

You make a lot of sense except the part about price. Despite you being right that MSRP represents a great value for the advantages, the actual cost is way out of whack for what you get with a Pi, just due to the fact that they've been in short supply and thus mediated by 'scalpers' for 3+ years now.

I can still see how for some people it is still worth it, because, say an HP thin client decidedly isn't a good substitute if you want to, say, fit it in an outlet box and run off 5v USB power. For anything where you're not using the GPIO/"hats"/whatever though, unless size is a big concern, I would use a small older computer over a Pi.

If I am doing a project with a 'hardware' component tomorrow though, I agree with you, I'd (grudgingly) overpay for a Pi rather than those other things, because, of all platforms with interface GPIO pins that you can use to do cool stuff, the Pi is the one most likely to have "support" out there -- meaning either someone else has already made a tool to do some of the things I want, or someone else has run into the problems I'll run into and prompted a discussion about how to fix it.

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

#194

Post by oscillonoscope »

some_random wrote: post #27

I typically see two kinds of raspi hate, and only one of them is reasonable imo. The first is stuff like this article, where you can probably get something better than a raspi these days for about the same price (especially when you consider scalper pricing) or just run a docker image in a server you can make with an old computer. This is very good advice, especially now that getting a raspi at MSRP is borderline imp…

From a professional perspective, I have a general annoyance towards raspi or embedded linux more generally. I have been part of multiple projects where there was a push towards prototyping/initial release on Pis and SOMs when a simple MCU was all that was required. It enabled a metric ton of bloat that made debugging the system a nightmare and made it impossible to easily port the software to a simpler hardware setup. Software grows to fit the available hardware.

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

#195

Post by rcarmo »

SnooSux wrote: post #5

Do NUCs have GPIO or do I have to stick to a SBC for those?

There are various sorts of USB-based add-on GPIO boards these days, but often you're fine with an ESP or Pico doing some of the low-level work and reporting back via serial or USB HID.

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

#196

Post by freeopinion »

paxys wrote: post #170
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.

This combined with the main article shows the exact reason why Raspberry Pi is as popular as it is. When I'm starting a new project I can either worry about Arduino or ESP32 or other microcontrollers or various NUCs or getting a board fabricated from scratch...or I can grab a RPi from the drawer and know that it will just work, regardless of whether I need to toggle some RGB lights, browse the web, or run a Kubernete…

I guess that's true for a certain wealth target. If you consider the Pi as the sweet spot for price, have at it.

But https://pine64.com/product/pinecone-bl602-evaluation-board/ costs $4. It fits a different sweet spot for price, power consumption, etc. A drawer-full of 20 Pis could run me $2000. A drawer-full of Pinenuts would run me... well perhaps $2000 because I could fit 1000 of them in a drawer.

If I want to browse the web, PineTab probably beats Pi. And that's only considering a single vendor.

Not knocking Pi. If it works for you, that's fine with me.

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

#197

Post by outworlder »

frantathefranta wrote: post #32
soared wrote: post #7

I disagree with the author here. The vast majority of rpi users aren’t trying to purchase the optimal hardware for their project, they’re trying to tinker around with something fun. Literally all of my rpi projects have short lifespans since I know the rpi is able to do so many things, so I use it in many different projects. Rpis are almost never the optimal/cheapest/best option for a project, but they’re almost alwa…

I don't know if it started with pi-hole but one of these projects must have been the turning point for "load up an SD card and let your pi run for years at a time with nothing else". That's how a lot of people use them and especially with recent prices it's pretty wasteful. I have 2 pis and both run multiple of the programs that people usually run solo on a pi (Octoprint, MPD server and player, UPS controller, (Zig|Z…

With recent prices I agree it's a problem, but they were otherwise cheap and borderline disposable computers.

I have a Pi3 that's dedicated to Octoprint - just because I want it to have all the resources when printing and I have some heavy plugins (the Arc Welder, for one).

However, the Pi4 is running Home Assistant and several other things within HassIO, like Adguard, NodeRed, the UPS monitor, Tailscale, etc. It's a much more powerful Pi, with 8GB. I would replace it with a TinyMiniMicro if it died today. Although, given that it's currently sitting in a rack, I want to also give it control of the rack fans(heat dissipation is not a problem most of the time) and add some RGB lighting, which would be perfect for the Pi.

I'd argue that, given the current prices, if you don't need the GPIO pins, the author is correct.

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

#198

Post by outworlder »

comprev wrote: post #17
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.

A laptop would consume significantly more power than an RPi.

> A laptop would consume significantly more power than an RPi.

Not necessarily true. Even some of the TinyMiniMicros mentioned in the article have a single digit W consumption when idle (because they are basically laptop parts).

Now, when loaded this would be true. However, their higher processing power also means tasks get completed faster, so they don't stay at the higher power states for long.

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

#199

Post by sokoloff »

repomies69 wrote: post #185
paxys wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This combined with the main article shows the exact reason why Raspberry Pi is as popular as it is. When I'm starting a new project I can either worry about Arduino or ESP32 or other microcontrollers or various NUCs or getting a board fabricated from scratch...or I can grab a RPi from the drawer and know that it will just work, regardless of whether I need to toggle some RGB lights, browse the web, or run a Kubernete…

It is the software compability. Things working out of the box, without hassle. Almost nothing beats that. Almost everything is secondary.

I find the lifetime effort of an AVR/ESP8266/ESP32 to be lower than a Pi.

I’ve had AVRs (of mine) running in the house for 9+ years without being touched (and ESPs for over 5).

Things do just work out of the box on them (often easier than installing Raspian, getting it onto wifi, setting up ssh, looking up the commands to set a GPIO, figuring out cron, rc.d, etc.)

It’s way faster IME to just use the Arduino digital_write() functionality in setup and loop. (I’m a long-time c/c++ programmer, which helps a bit.) The exploitable footprint is way lower, so you pretty much never need to do a security patch. If the power fails, you’ll never* end with a bad volume; it just boots back from flash and resumes working.

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

#200

Post by ar_lan »

paxys wrote: post #170
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.

This combined with the main article shows the exact reason why Raspberry Pi is as popular as it is. When I'm starting a new project I can either worry about Arduino or ESP32 or other microcontrollers or various NUCs or getting a board fabricated from scratch...or I can grab a RPi from the drawer and know that it will just work, regardless of whether I need to toggle some RGB lights, browse the web, or run a Kubernete…

A 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 costs... $169 USD actively on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Model-2019-Quad-Bluetooth/d...).

I can find more powerful laptops for cheaper. I can get a Dell R720 which has drastically more computing power (32x RAM, much more powerful CPU) for twice the price.

RPI used to be economical. If it still cost $50 USD, I'd grab them in a heartbeat to do these types of projects, but as it is, on price, they are almost Apple levels of overpriced (if not more).

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