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News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

jeffgeerling.com

201–208 of 208 posts

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an unfair bias because I design PCBs as a significant part of my job, and switching out to USB on this board appears to be a non-issue. I have a Pico in front of me, and there's plenty of room there for a USB-C footprint and the two 5.1k resistors. Given that, I cannot reasonably agree that the "design" stage is significant. In other words, it's a change that I would make to my own board in 2-5 minutes because…

One caveat is that the pico isn't so old that micro usb wasn't a weird choice even when it came out

RP2350 and Pico 2 came out less than two years ago.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#202

I have bought an rpi at every generation. And I still have yet to find an actual use for them. Everything they do from a compute perspective is just better with a mini pc or old laptop with a mobile spec chip. Everything they do from a programmability perspective is just better with a microcontroller specific to the task. I just don't see the actual market position for these things. They were supposed to be a cheap b…

>Everything they do from a programmability perspective is just better with a microcontroller specific to the task.

The moment you want to use a dynamically linked library, you're out of luck.

The vast MCUs don't have enough RAM or flash storage. You'll have to trim everything down so it fits.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#203
post #86

My opinion is that Raspberry Pi has to release an NPU, and start/revolutionise the open source NPU communities and tech. Raspberry Pi's has to find itself useful in vision AI applications (extremely common in industries these days). Without it I think Arduino with its new Qualcomm boards will kill it.

Kinda agree. They have a big opportunity to be "the" NPU company.

The vast majority of NPUs are a poorly documented mess. The only one with good documentation is the one from AMD.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Raspberry Pi is not a good general purpose computer, but some of these criticisms are starting to feel like a pile-on with partially incorrect information. > the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. If you're trying to get maximum performance out of it all the time, you w…

> Powering something off of any old USB port means it would have to fit within the 5V 500mA basic specification, which the Raspberry Pi 3 exceeded long ago. Theoretically, devices like the iPhone have lower power consumption than that and loads of performance features like recording 4k 120fps video. Of course, an iPhone costs much more than a RPi, and has much better economies of scale, so they’re not truly comparabl…

Your iphone (or other such device) can't do those things on basic USB charging alone, it'll be topping up the power budget considerably from the battery.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#205
>When asked about why Picos use micro USB and not USB-C, he said it's a cost issue. USB-C connectors are more expensive than micro USB, while also taking a tiny bit more board space. That said, USB-C will probably happen someday.

Glad I'm not alone in caring about this. All I want from them is a Pico with a USB-C port. When using them for keyboards and arcade controllers you either need to wire up a separate port (and USB-C is awful to solder) or use someone else's variant with one on there. I have had issues in both cases. The Open-Frame1 leverless controller needed me to either pay for assembly or fail at soldering on the extra port myself (did the former for batch 1, got cocky when ordering batch 2 and didn't pay assembly, never got any of the new boards working). Flatbox rev 5 used an RP2040-Zero from Waveshare, which initially seemed fine but later turned out to have major bouncing issues. Typing on a virtual keyboard with it was nearly impossible, all the extra inputs being detected. The amount of debounce needed to be added in GP2040-CE settings to completely solve it resulted in it being much higher latency. I heard a theory that it was due to a lack of filtering on the MCU. Meanwhile Haute42 started pumping out incredibly cheap leverless controllers in all sorts of designs within a year of me building 10 Flatboxes. They're so cheap you can't really DIY one cheaper anymore unless you need them in bulk, and they have no bouncing/input issues. They even have extension ports to help deal with console auth. Their non-3d-printed buttoncaps also don't break as much, though I did eventually have one break after living in my backpack a while.

I'd like to take another crack at building a solid leverless someday. A new Pico with a USB-C port would probably be enough motivation.

Also I should note that part of why USB-C is such a big deal on a game controller is because they all use it now, and I've got lots of long USB-C to A cables connected to consoles and my PC, I can easily switch controllers at the user-facing end without having to re-run a cable. I can go from my Open-Frame1 playing Rivals of Aether to my Steam Controller playing Crab Champions to my Haute42 M16 playing Melty Blood all with the same cable routed under my desk, often without leaving my chair.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#206
post #8

> " ...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features. " Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price…

They'll do whatever they do. Maybe a tick-tock release cycle (one with new features and some speed, the next with the ~same features and more speed) is where they're headed, and maybe that makes sense. They wouldn't be the first. I'd love to see even-lower-RAM versions, though. Most of what I use Raspberry Pis for at home for is not RAM-hungry at all. My Pi4 network router has 2GB because that was the smallest/cheape…

> I suspect the Pi4 that I use as a set-top box with Kodi would be fine with 512MB.

How do you cope with high resolution videos?

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#207
post #163

Looks like the RPI5 is like $200 in Canada now. We might have lost the plot

The Steam Deck price in Canada went up by something like 50% yesterday also - it's now over $1100 for the 512GB OLED, up from just under $700.

Starting to feel like Europe over here

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#208
post #45

The raspberry pi CEO said that some of the boards will be delayed because of RAM prices. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Raspberry-Pi-discusses-Zero-3-...

As someone who has just had to migrate a project off of radxa due to ongoing supply issues... good luck getting your hands on more than one or two samples of those :/

For your interest

https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCs/comments/1tmuy3a/radxa_rock_pi...

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