241–250 of 354 posts
So strange. I can probably sell my 4GB Pi 5 for about 40% more than I bought it for... 3 years ago. This isn't how computers are supposed to work, let alone Pis. I get what's happening, but it's strange to see it happening. Actually, could I sell it for ~10% less than someone would buy it new? Is there a market for used Pis? Maybe 30%, I don't know. That I can sell it for what I got it for at all is wild.
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Some people seem to think raspberry pi is a consumer tech company and whenever a new model is released, the old one will be discontinued. They will complain about the product being changed and the company robbing them of a cheap SBC. I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still ma…
While you can still buy a pi 3, you'd be kicking yourself for not using something faster.
Raspberry Pi as a company does ~$325M in annual revenue. But I can’t understand what are the use cases to be selling 73M units. Would anyone mind sharing what are the broadly applicable use cases, because selling 73M units is well beyond hobbyist fun. https://investors.raspberrypi.com/
off the top of my head: ip kvms, keyboards, 3d printers, home assistant, cameras, zwave or zigbee. Their moat is superb software support and established ecosystem. I think their most challenging competition would be ESP32s or mini pcs. Source: my ahh
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They’ve been selling much more to industrial customers than hobbyists for the better part of a decade.
Consider that entire product lines for random widgets you see in every day life in the dozens or hundreds have Pis inside now. A lot of "smart" things are just the thing plus a Compute Module. There are smart parking garage lights, smart inspection cameras, smart golf ball dispensers... all these things have enough margin they can absorb a 100-300% component increase, though I'm sure they don't like it.
Pi - 73 million sold
ESP32 - 1 billion sold
STM32 - 13 billion sold
For every 1 Pi sold, there’s almost 200 STM32s sold.
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I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to understand. If you're using the Pi as a microcontroller that you can run Python on, then just get the cheapest Pi that meets your needs. If you're using the Pi for computationally expensive tasks then pay more money and get the fast one. Personally I have a Pi 5 and it's perfect for me because I want small size but high performance. People say "just buy a real co…
N100-class minipcs are better at everything the pi 5 is doing except perhaps a bit of idle power and gpio.
So strange. I can probably sell my 4GB Pi 5 for about 40% more than I bought it for... 3 years ago. This isn't how computers are supposed to work, let alone Pis. I get what's happening, but it's strange to see it happening. Actually, could I sell it for ~10% less than someone would buy it new? Is there a market for used Pis? Maybe 30%, I don't know. That I can sell it for what I got it for at all is wild.
We just aren't making enough stuff to keep up with demand.
This kind of thing has happened before.
Some computer-oriented highlights from the memory hole: An epoxy plant burned in 1993 that had supplied ~60% of that stuff for semiconductor packaging which caused widespread issues, there were aspects of RAM shortages in middle 90s (mostly because Windows adoption increased demand), we had Thailand floods that screwed up hard drive production, we had the crypto boom affecting GPUs in a big way from ~2016 to ~2022. There were covid-era chip shortages (which had been rationally predicted years before the covid scramble) while the Chia crypto bubble also ate up storage devices around that time.
It sucks for consumers (read: buyers) when this stuff happens, but it's been pretty normal for a really long time.
The current shortage is due to hugely-increased demand in the datacenter space and that's a new problem, but it's just one in a long list of problems that had been new when they surfaced. :)
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Anyway, yeah: When prices are high, it becomes time to go through the pile of hardware and sell some stuff.
I need the 16GB RAM, but I do not have these money anymore. Medical bills.....
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N100-class minipcs are better at everything the pi 5 is doing except perhaps a bit of idle power and gpio.
Can a N100-class minipc” be installed inside of a wall with a touchscreen and serve as a PoE powered Home Assistant interface? Can it be used to build a portable battery powered smartphone like PC (Compute Module 5)? Raspberry Pi’s biggest strength is its form factor and low power draw.
Yes. Generally only requiring a $10 PoE splitter like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134500605396
Some N100 class machines draw more power, but many don't, and there are more capable PoE splitters for a few dollars extra.
Use a USB touchscreen.