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Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

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261–270 of 354 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#261
post #132

It has definitely been a crazy few months for prices. On 2025-12-18 I bought a RPi 5 kit on Amazon from CanaKit that consisted of an 8 GB Pi 5 with the official RPi 5 256 GB SSD, case, fan, 45W power supply, and some cables which came fully assembled. It was $209.99. Today it is $339.97. On 2025-09-02 I bought a Samsung 1 TB EVO Plus M.2 SSD along with along with a Sabrent USB-C M.2/SATA enclosure to use with my RPi…

In August 2025 I bought a Pi 5 (4GB) Official Black Kit for 92 Euro @Welectron. To be fair, it's now sold for "only" 143 Euro. Expected more.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#262
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Neo for $600 is the only laptop under $999 worth looking at nowadays. Apple used to be the expensive premium option and they’re basically the cheapest today. What a time to be alive.

??? Even if you're an Apple fan, surely you don't believe that the Neo obsoletes the Air. The $500-$1,000 price segment has been alive and kicking since well before the Neo.

I'm saying there is no point in buying a cheap Air. Buy the better specced ones or the Neo.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#263
post #257

PI's are expensive. But they have a very stable and well developed software eco system and are really flexible. I still buy them. And a lot of them. Because with a Raspberry Pi 5 I'm able to make amazing wildlife camera sysetems that use thermal imaging and local AI to make an extremely effective solar powered wolf detector. I have a system in the field that's been running continuously since September 29 2025, over 8…

What thermal camera are you using with the Pi?

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#264
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To drive a touchscreen and serve as a Home Assistant interface you need neither a Pi nor an N100-class mini PC. That's the job of an ESP32. 20 bucks... for a pack of 5.

(plus the screen. And ethernet / PoE variants are rare, and not as cheap, so if that's a hard requirement, maybe not for your specific use case)

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#265
post #257

PI's are expensive. But they have a very stable and well developed software eco system and are really flexible. I still buy them. And a lot of them. Because with a Raspberry Pi 5 I'm able to make amazing wildlife camera sysetems that use thermal imaging and local AI to make an extremely effective solar powered wolf detector. I have a system in the field that's been running continuously since September 29 2025, over 8…

What thermal camera are you using with the Pi?

I developed my own one out of very high quality modules from China and added the software to the Pi so all of the driver software is developed in the Netherlands from our company. Note this was no small matter. It's a product now. But currently we sell them on a project mode till we get all the scalability in place to sell them as boxed units.

https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/

Plus the run the pi in secure boot mode with encrypted drives, precisely so we can sell them as a product without loosing all our IP that goes into this. Another nice things about the Pi 5 as a platform as it's possible to do this.

The modules originally come from the company behind guideIR. Personally I think they are the best thermal sensors available. They have amazing onboard image processing so that the living things really popout in the image, you can see this in the videos.

We have photos in the banner for the website. The modules are tiny but we 3D print rain shielding enclosures for them.

We have photos of the wolf project in here

https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg...

The modules draw just 1W of power, so they are great for our wildlife camera systems. And of course, they get images day and night. And we use thermal image motion detection to trigger the local AI inference. Normal PIR triggered wildlife systems can only triggrer on largish animals quite close by (Check out the wild boar video from this morning, you could never detect this with a traditional wildlife camera that uses PIR sensors https://youtu.be/rmav8IjWxeo). We can detect animals easy in the 50-100m range and with 24/7 thermal recording we can go back in time, invaluable for behavioral research.

I'm pretty sure we have the only wildlife camera system with thermal modules in high resolutions. All thanks to the Pi 5.

(Actually, we also run this with an ultra low light visible camera, also recording 24/7. With audio in both thermal and visible stream. Running on the same platform). Videos also online with the other videos.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#266
post #257

PI's are expensive. But they have a very stable and well developed software eco system and are really flexible. I still buy them. And a lot of them. Because with a Raspberry Pi 5 I'm able to make amazing wildlife camera sysetems that use thermal imaging and local AI to make an extremely effective solar powered wolf detector. I have a system in the field that's been running continuously since September 29 2025, over 8…

What thermal camera are you using with the Pi?

BTW, I'm also from New Zealand originally. Manurewa :-)

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I had a work project a decade ago where we were evaluating SBCs as drivers for kiosks. At that time, the prevailing wisdom was that the Pi was specifically not for industry, as its main advantage was the strong community to provide support for DIYers. Competitors like PINE64 and Orange Pi were the same/better specs at half the price.

The Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms weren't meant to power commercial-grade products, nor be cost effective at scale compared to raw/custom ARM and AVR devices. However, they've become ubiquitous in education, which I imagine has impacted industry. Similar to how software companies give out free student licenses so that upcoming engineers become familiar with their software for when they start working, an entire g…

As an example, I believe the tear-down of one of the now-defunct electric scooter rental company’s units revealed it contained a RPi. IIRC, the commentary lambasted them for using it, because it’s not really rated for that kind of job. But a significant portion of the peanut gallery understood and rationalized the decision. I expect fewer folks would question this choice these days.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#268
post #257

PI's are expensive. But they have a very stable and well developed software eco system and are really flexible. I still buy them. And a lot of them. Because with a Raspberry Pi 5 I'm able to make amazing wildlife camera sysetems that use thermal imaging and local AI to make an extremely effective solar powered wolf detector. I have a system in the field that's been running continuously since September 29 2025, over 8…

What thermal camera are you using with the Pi?

We can supply camera systems in resolutions 385x288, 640x512 and 1280x1024.

The 1280x1024 modules are out of this world, but very expensive. Here is a video from one of those.

https://youtu.be/-QSkPBqTZh8?si=kEc18Ji2cxOpIEsJ

Later when scalability is in place then also 256x192.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcenter doubled the price of the 500+ kit shortly after I bought one. Still $90 cheaper than Adafruit, unsurprisingly.

> unsurprisingly I'm unsure what is meant here. Does Microcenter usually have very cheap prices, or the opposite for Adafruit?

There are generally lower-cost alternatives for sourcing the third-party products they carry. Their first-party products are usually more expensive, but they're of higher quality than the competition and come with better documentation and guides.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM

#270
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original vision IIRC was to provide a cheap computer for students in low-income families. You could plug into your TV at home and start learning. Then the hobby community got wind of it and proceeded to buy out all the stock on every release (myself included, I still have one of every first 3 versions sitting in my cabinet)

The concept of a cheap new computer like an RPi for poor families is a 1st world solution that doesn't understand markets. Used computers are way more popular in countries where the price of new computers are out of reach. It's a supply chain problem, n

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