61–70 of 145 posts
This would be hilariously satirical if it were not true and it highlights much of what is wrong with tech. A benture capital subsidized micro mobility startup pulls out of a major city ostensibly because threshold for potential profit has been crossed and they’ve determined they cannot adjust their pricing to get the right numbers on their spreadsheet (note: this likely part of the reason why so many of these compani…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there so much of a shortage of hardware engineering talent that these startups really need to be using hobby hardware? I am not formally trained in electronics, but I managed to learn enough in the last year to design and manufacture my own PCBs for respiratory breath analysis with Atmel microprocessors. Essentially, they're like Arduinos but I also attached an off-the-shelf SD card reader and a bluetooth module.…
What makes the RPi "hobby hardware"?
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>RPIs are out of stock because they're useful - this company found a use for them. While I sympathize with this sentiment, it should be noted that their use case could have been most likely accomplished with something like an ESP32, which is only slightly more difficult to work with but boasts a bulk price of $1-3 a pop. Using a Raspberry Pi 4 for this is a bit like flying a private jet to get to the grocery store.
developing for esp32 is way more difficult than developing for raspi. raspi lets you basically treat it like a normal computer, you can use standard python and sqlite and install whatever nonsense you want from pip and basically assume it will run whatever your laptop can. it means you can hire kids straight out of school, or outsource to india, and whoever you get can work on it without really any concern - it'll ru…
This would be hilariously satirical if it were not true and it highlights much of what is wrong with tech. A benture capital subsidized micro mobility startup pulls out of a major city ostensibly because threshold for potential profit has been crossed and they’ve determined they cannot adjust their pricing to get the right numbers on their spreadsheet (note: this likely part of the reason why so many of these compani…
Is there so much of a shortage of hardware engineering talent that these startups really need to be using hobby hardware? I am not formally trained in electronics, but I managed to learn enough in the last year to design and manufacture my own PCBs for respiratory breath analysis with Atmel microprocessors. Essentially, they're like Arduinos but I also attached an off-the-shelf SD card reader and a bluetooth module.…
Make-versus-buy decisions abound in product development. If you aren't a full stack electronics and firmware designer, then you have to manage the design project with its uncertainties, including schedule. A buy-in gets you moving right away, to address other project issues that require a prototype. You can always design it out later.
Dealing with complex chips often involves discovering bugs in the docs, and a second board spin to fix them. Then you'd better have a good scope and some real knowledge.
Despite its hobby orientation, the RPi is legit.
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I dunno. I think you have to build a lot of units before the NRE cost increase beats the BOM cost decrease. Anyone that knows Python can write software that runs on a Raspberry Pi. Getting someone who knows embedded systems is going to cost you a lot more than that. Let's say you pay your Python engineer $200k a year and your embedded systems expert $350k a year. By hiring the Python engineer instead of the embedded…
Where do you live that embedded systems folks cost more than a generic Python dev? Everywhere I've ever heard of, ES is on the low end of the pay scale for software. Python is usually in the middle somewhere. That's definitely true in Seattle as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno. I think you have to build a lot of units before the NRE cost increase beats the BOM cost decrease. Anyone that knows Python can write software that runs on a Raspberry Pi. Getting someone who knows embedded systems is going to cost you a lot more than that. Let's say you pay your Python engineer $200k a year and your embedded systems expert $350k a year. By hiring the Python engineer instead of the embedded…
Where do you live that embedded systems folks cost more than a generic Python dev? Everywhere I've ever heard of, ES is on the low end of the pay scale for software. Python is usually in the middle somewhere. That's definitely true in Seattle as well.
This would be hilariously satirical if it were not true and it highlights much of what is wrong with tech. A benture capital subsidized micro mobility startup pulls out of a major city ostensibly because threshold for potential profit has been crossed and they’ve determined they cannot adjust their pricing to get the right numbers on their spreadsheet (note: this likely part of the reason why so many of these compani…
There’s nothing wrong with this, RPi is a great platform for hardware startups because it’s one of the very few platforms with a good, well-documented Linux distro, a million HATs for easy prototyping, and a community to help you out. It was never meant just for education and hobbyists, Raspberry Pi Foundation absolutely supports the commercial use case, and their newer products like CM4 even more so. I’d wager you n…
I'd wager most people go with a RTOS
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>RPIs are out of stock because they're useful - this company found a use for them. While I sympathize with this sentiment, it should be noted that their use case could have been most likely accomplished with something like an ESP32, which is only slightly more difficult to work with but boasts a bulk price of $1-3 a pop. Using a Raspberry Pi 4 for this is a bit like flying a private jet to get to the grocery store.
developing for esp32 is way more difficult than developing for raspi. raspi lets you basically treat it like a normal computer, you can use standard python and sqlite and install whatever nonsense you want from pip and basically assume it will run whatever your laptop can. it means you can hire kids straight out of school, or outsource to india, and whoever you get can work on it without really any concern - it'll ru…
I'm still upset that Raspberry Pi was focused on ensuring institutional customers (like these electric scooters) could order thousands of Pis, while leaving hobbyists trying to order single-digit quantities scrambling through years-long waiting lists and listings which get snapped up in seconds ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aL9V0JsQQ&t=564s ).
A bit of a first hand experience - my father in law runs a small manufacturing firm in the US. In the past few years they've designed a new hardware item with a Pi at the core. When the supply issues happened, they were concerned about not being able to manufacture the devices. That's a multi million dollar investment at stake not to mention the employees and customers that would be impacted. Luckily they figure out…
I think the argument is that there shouldn't be a Pi at the core