91–100 of 354 posts
I really struggle to see where this fits in to most use cases. The appeal of the Pi back in the first iterations was being a relatively cheap linux computer with GPIO.
It's useful if you need GPIO but not $350 useful. Nowadays you can get used office mini PCs with a 10th gen Intel and 16GB RAM for like $200 and they'll come with an SSD. No idea why anyone would buy an expensive Pi.
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)
At this stage I think the way to realize this "cheap computer" vision is in unlocking smartphones. Either with an OS that behaves like a real computer that you can put on an old/cheap commodity phone, or with an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS.
"an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS": Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) on newer Android versions provides a hypervisor and a hardware-accelerated graphics (VirGL) for AVF virtual machines, allowing users to run an isolated Linux GUI desktop with low overhead.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal fave RPi, the Zero W, is still $15 from Adafruit.
I really wish they made a new Zero that doesn't use ddr2 ram to ensure that it can still be made far into the future. As far as I'm aware, nobody is making ddr2 anymore
My home cluster is built from surplus Dell Optiplex desktops that I got from BYU Surplus and added some RAM (before RAM price went totally bananas) and SSDs to. I spent less than the cost of one of these Pis to acquire all of them together. I later added a large machine that I used to use as a Linux desktop, with a GPU and 64GB RAM, which I use for generating OpenStreetMap tiles.
Before RAM went crazy, the Pi 4 was $75 for *8GB and $125 for 16GB.
Another consideration is heat and power consumption, I have an OptiPlex micro (also surplus) and power consumption is 8W-90W (standby versus peak), 5x-10x more than a Pi 4.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Search Aliexpress for ESP32-C3 Development Board for Arduino
Search arace.tech for Radxa or Milk-V boards.
Kicking myself for not buying the Q6A at the beginning of the year (I wanted three and arace would only sell one per customer, but one would've been better than none).
It's worth mentioning you're paying a $45 Adafruit tax here. Adafruit charges more for Pis.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/#:~:text...