[HN Gopher] The Life of Pi: Ten Years of Raspberry Pi
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The Life of Pi: Ten Years of Raspberry Pi
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-02-28 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cam.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cam.ac.uk)
| szszrk wrote:
| Such page design make me dizzy. Left, right, left, right,
| scrolling a whole page to get barely a paragraph. Awkward. Blah.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've learned a lot more about Linux playing with it.
|
| Learned Python playing with it.
|
| Learned more about package managers using it.
|
| Used to to play with e-ink displays and other interesting
| peripherals.
|
| I enjoy the Pi and have happily watched as it has become more and
| more user-friendly.
| 1024core wrote:
| These days it's impossible to find Pis in any of the online
| stores at their original prices. Vendors who do have any stock
| are charging 5X.
|
| I've been looking for a Zero WH (Zero W with headers), and for
| the life of me can't find any in stock anywhere.
|
| /shakes fist at the sky
| cmehdy wrote:
| Funnily enough, as of 2022 I've been finding it impossible to get
| Raspberry Pis. I suppose it's due to shortages.. I'm in Canada
| and everywhere is sold out, when checking the US it's sold out,
| the UK too, etc. Couple resellers price-gouging at 4-5x prices do
| exist though.
|
| Here's to 10 more years of Pis, preferably with availability too!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Check stock at https://rpilocator.com - they have a Twitter you
| can follow for alerts.
| 1024core wrote:
| Every board is OOS in the US.... :-(
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Yeah but they do come in stock occasionally, subscribe to
| the Twitter and turn on alerts.
| lukifer wrote:
| It's nuts; they're 3-4x MSRP on the secondary market ($70 for
| Zero2's, $200+ for 4b's). I just broke down and ordered some
| competitor SBCs (OrangePi's via AliExpress).
| shimonabi wrote:
| I remember buying a code on eBay for a few $ with which I could
| then purchase the original Raspberry Pi from RS Components,
| because of the limited supply.
|
| It was a total waste of money, because I canceled the order and
| got it faster fron an another online seller.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I've posted about this a lot but I feel the need to evangelize
| it:
|
| The cleverest thing the Raspberry Pi can do that almost no-one
| uses is _network boot_.
|
| You don't need an SD card at all, you can setup your server such
| that you can change what OS a Pi boots into just by renaming a
| symlink.
|
| I have a bunch of Pis around my house that all network boot into
| specific tasks and it is a joy.
| htrp wrote:
| Do you have a preferred tutorial on this?
|
| This is item 1 on google (https://linuxhit.com/raspberry-pi-
| pxe-boot-netbooting-a-pi-4...) but happy to see whats worked
| for you.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I don't. But I really want to write one, because all the
| documentation on how to do it is quite poor.
| zellyn wrote:
| As I've been playing around with my Raspberry Pis, I've
| found this too. The hardware technical documentation is
| good, but, well, _very_ technical. There is a lot of very
| good information, but it's spread around in blog posts,
| forum posts (a lot of those), source code and comments,
| etc.
|
| But not a lot of how-tos for intermediate stuff.
|
| Hope to write up the stuff I'm working on once I figure it
| out :-)
| yboris wrote:
| Thank you for sharing! I looked around and found this cool
| link:
|
| https://blog.alexellis.io/state-of-netbooting-raspberry-pi-i...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I would be really interested in learning how to do this. In the
| past I've looked into PXE booting, but the tutorials all seem
| pretty opaque ("just make your router send a magic DHCP
| packet") or too specific to one configuration.
| nsteel wrote:
| Did you try this official guide? https://www.raspberrypi.com/
| documentation/computers/remote-a...
| lukifer wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, didn't know that.
|
| Similar PSA: a common Pi complaint is that SD cards wear out
| quickly under 24/7 use. Routing most logs to memory rather than
| disk _vastly_ reduces the wear on the SD:
| https://github.com/azlux/log2ram
| ars wrote:
| Running backblocks -n will often fix them (non-destructive
| read/write - it causes a rewrite of every block on the
| device).
|
| Don't do it often or you'll cause extra wear, but if you find
| yourself getting random errors from the SD card, give it a
| try.
| dundarious wrote:
| Many services log via journald, so to move those off the SD
| card, you can just add
| /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d/volatile.conf with contents
| below and `systemctl force-reload systemd-journald.service`:
| [Journal] Storage=volatile
|
| Check what your full config is with `systemd-analyze cat-
| config systemd/journald.conf`.
|
| The split file approach is very handy for Pi-s. I have a set
| of configs I install on any new Pi I get (resolved, locale,
| timesync, etc.).
|
| You can do a very similar thing with services in e.g.,
| /etc/systemd/system/example.service.d/override.conf, which I
| like to do to constrain their sandbox more than the system
| package does (ProtectSystem=strict,
| SystemCallArchitecture=native, SystemCallFilter=@system-
| service, ~@resources @privileged, etc.)
| tjoff wrote:
| And it causes me endless frustration. Because after a power
| outage the pi will boot and look for somewhere to boot mere
| seconds after power is back.
|
| But my router supplying DHCP and with info about where it
| should look takes guessing 3 minutes. And the NAS containing
| the actual files that the Pi should load is in a virtual
| machine that takes, guessing, 8 minutes for the hypervisor and
| VM to start.
|
| So by then the Pi will have timed out and sit there, doing
| nothing for all eternity.
|
| Fix? An extremely elaborate scheme of Ikea tradfri outlet
| controlled by the same server taking 8 minutes to boot to
| power-cycle the pi after it gets up (and notices that the pi
| doesn't answer to pings).
|
| Has this been fixed yet? Is it even considered a bug?
|
| Not sure about the rationale of giving up booting... Especially
| when this ought to be an extremely common scenario.
| joosters wrote:
| Change the boot order, so that network boot is after USB / SD
| card, or disable it completely?
| tjoff wrote:
| There is no SD card or USB storage attached. To my
| knowledge it is only booting from network.
| wanderer_ wrote:
| I think there's a bit in the boot boot order hex value that
| you can use to tell it to keep trying indefinitely, but
| don't quote me on that.
| blibble wrote:
| the new rom is supposed to have fixed this
|
| if it's a pi 4 you can upgrade the rom to the latest
|
| if it's a pi 3 you will have to put the rom on an sdcard (no
| eeprom on the board)
| [deleted]
| mysterydip wrote:
| Could you get a small UPS for the router? I would imagine
| it's not sucking down a lot of watts, should take care of
| momentary blips and anything less than an hour fairly easily.
| bombcar wrote:
| Can you get something that responds very quickly, even if
| only to tell it to reboot?
|
| Strange that it stops trying network boot; most of the
| systems I have will sit there and retry PXE boot if
| everything else fails.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| If your power is sketchy, get a UPS...I have one that powers
| the NAS, cable modem, switch and WiFi. (And pi hole. )
| bartread wrote:
| How long are your power outages typically? Is it short enough
| you put the router and NAS on a UPS? Maybe have a backup
| generator for core services?
|
| I'm not saying this would work for you but for some people,
| like me, a down and dirty solution might work fine. I live in
| a village and short power outages (a few seconds to a couple
| of minutes) are relatively frequent, so a UPS covers many of
| my needs... for a short period of time, which is most of the
| time.
|
| For out of the ordinary scenarios, such as the recent Storm
| Eustice, I just bought a 2.8kW petrol powered backup
| generator (not a particularly expensive one: equivalent of
| about US$500). I don't have an automatic failover yet, but
| that may be the next stage. Still, enough to run
| fridge/freezer, router, my computer, and possibly my central
| heating pumps (still need to investigate that).
|
| The problem with UPSs is that they aren't necessarily quiet,
| and this pisses me off. I don't need loads of fan noise and
| beeping: I need some batteries in a box that will output a
| pure sine wave at 230V AC without making a big fuss about it,
| which is doable, but I'd also like it not to cost an arm and
| a leg.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| How often do you have power outages?
|
| Can't remember one in the last 10 years.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| 10-15 times/year where I live now (suburb of major city)
| when you count the brownouts. even though power here is
| underground, there's enough aboveground that it still goes
| out or blinks often enough to have a UPS.
|
| when I lived on a mountain, quite a few more for sometimes
| days at a time.
|
| when I lived downtown in the major city in a high-rise, 2-3
| times/year when you counted brownouts/blips.
|
| a slack I'm on for the area had outages throughout the
| city.
|
| so, if you only get it once in the last 10 years, count
| yourself lucky. I'm on the west coast, not Texas, and there
| is quite a bit of power generation nearby.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I hadn't a single one since I'm in Munich
| (2009). I remember some planned outages as kid at my
| parents place, and occasionally we tripped the circuit
| breakers.
|
| I guess Munich has a really good grid. Everything
| underground and safe from natural disasters.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Everything underground and safe from natural disasters.
|
| Well, until stuff gets digged out for construction... I
| was affected by the arson attack in Berg am Laim last
| year, took about twelve hours for power to get back.
| tjoff wrote:
| Home, very seldom. This is in a summer cabin where the
| infrastructure is really bad (and under reconstruction)...
| Getting much better but sill one every other month and
| since it is a summer cabin it can take quite a while before
| I can do it manually.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Ok, that puts me at ease :D
| wrycoder wrote:
| We get a clock resetter about every other week, and > 20
| min outage maybe twice a year in New Hampshire.
| smilespray wrote:
| What? Do you reset clocks deliberately by cycling the
| power, or is it a description of an outage so long it
| will reset clocks?
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I think they mean the latter. When I lived in rural
| Wisconsin we'd get those at least once a month in the
| summer, usually from thunderstorms. The lights would go
| out for a second, and the clocks would start flashing
| 12:00. Haven't seen it happen since moving into town
| though.
| fps wrote:
| I think what they meant was an outage so short that it
| will reset the clock on the microwave/stove/bedside alarm
| but that you don't notice it otherwise. In the northeast,
| these happen frequently overnight, usually due to minor
| weather events or grid maintenance.
|
| Most of my clocks are internet connected and battery
| backed, so the only ones left in my house that are
| affected are on kitchen appliances.
| nsteel wrote:
| can you use this option?
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/config_t.
| ..
| franga2000 wrote:
| I haven't used any of the latest generation, but are they still
| using that custom PMIC that gets fried by the most basic of
| mistakes but that they completely refuse to sell you for repair?
| I remember trying to fix some Pis that died for unknown reasons
| and seeing nothing but anti-repair nonsense from the staff on the
| official forums. No schematics to be found and even the people
| who go through the trouble of diagnosing an issue and try to buy
| a replacement component (because it's custom for some reason) get
| the standard response: "the Pi is only sold as a unit and is not
| intended to be user-serviceable".
|
| It's sad that even the cheapest knockoffs from china (like Orange
| Pi) are more open than the RPi (you can get schematics and all
| the components are available from the usual places) - I really
| hope that's improved in the last few years...
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I'd love to purchase a few Pis for the following purposes:
|
| - Build a 3 or 4 Pi cluster to practice DevOps stuffs
|
| - Use a Pico to learn ARM assembly (However I have a TIVA board
| for that purpose, although I prefer something simpler)
|
| Nowadays they are all off from the online shops!
| zellyn wrote:
| If you ever manage to find any for purchase, I wrote up some
| brief documentation on how I got a k3s cluster set up:
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/12TT49VgyPRSH7F4b_oC5rOv1...
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Thanks! I'll take a look.
| nereye wrote:
| Apologies if am misreading the last paragraph, assuming it
| meant that it's hard to find the Pico, that was the case for a
| while but the situation is now much better, e.g. Adafruit has
| 56 in stock: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4883
|
| Admittedly, this is $1 more expensive than the $4 baseline
| board since it also comes with headers.
|
| Just checked and DigiKey has about 17K in stock ($4 Raspberry
| Pi Pico): https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-
| pi/SC09....
|
| And that's leaving aside the slightly fancier boards that have
| the RP2040 and cost around $10, e.g. Adafruit Feather RP2040
| etc.
|
| The chip itself is not in any shortage, e.g. DigiKey and Mouser
| have tens of thousands/thousands in stock, etc.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Oh I forgot to mention that Picos are quite available :D It's
| the Pi4s that are rare. I actually found some in local but
| they are in kits. I prefer just boards.
| beardyw wrote:
| It got me (back) into electronics. Hooking stuff up to the pins
| was great, but I soon worked out that an AVR chip could do more
| or less the same for under PS1. So the pi got neglected :(
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I know a number of people who bought a Pi, figured out how easy
| it was to hook up software to some GPIO pins, then got into
| microcontrollers and basic electronics afterwards.
|
| It's also funny to see how many Pis out there in the world are
| doing a task using 1-2W of power continuously for years, where
| a little microcontroller and a sleep could do the same task
| using a few mW :D
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Sure, but if dev time for the microcontroller was
| significantly higher it could still lose out overall.
| beardyw wrote:
| It would depend on what you are trying to do, if you are
| familiar with C etc. In some ways it is simpler, because
| your program is all there is.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I remember the early years the Pi was more focused on children's
| education and the same sort of path the OLPC (One Laptop Per
| Child) took...
|
| But the great thing was they could quickly scale up the
| manufacturing to the point where these $35 computers _were_
| available to almost anyone, and since that time a huge ecosystem
| has flourished, and still grows, even after wave after wave of
| clones has appeared.
|
| I remember the Asus Tinkerboard being the first clone board that
| I thought could _really_ make a dent... but then Asus basically
| put it on life support. Pine64, BananaPi, Orange Pi, Radxa, et
| all often make some pretty decent hardware, but the fact that
| it's often as hard today to get my projects working on those
| boards as it was with all SBCs back in 2012-2014 means I still
| stick to Raspberry Pi-branded boards for most things.
|
| Though I hate the closed source bits that power the Pi's Broadcom
| SoC, and how some of the hardware details can be locked behind
| restrictive NDAs, I'm happy Broadcom seems to have continued
| interest in feeding the project over the years.
| treesknees wrote:
| I was worried early on about availability. They started with
| the goal of getting into classrooms, being cheap so kids or
| low-income schools can afford them, but then you also had for-
| profit businesses buying hundreds of these to power kiosks and
| digital signage. I'd almost describe it as "taking advantage"
| but perhaps that's too harsh. I was a little put off at first
| that these educational tools were being snatched up by
| businesses trying to save money.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I suspect that was an initial concern too, until they came to
| terms with the idea that e.g. Cisco's requirements in a
| Raspberry Pi were both achievable and also help underwrite
| production of more imaginative things.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _I 'd almost describe it as "taking advantage" but perhaps
| that's too harsh._
|
| It is, especially when you consider economies of scale with
| things like computer production.
|
| Building 50 boards is expensive. Building 500 is cheaper.
| Building 5 million? That's now custom equipment dedicated to
| the project, and costs just plummet per unit.
|
| I also like the Pi4 model in which the "higher end" versions
| seem to be more profitable, subsidizing the lower cost/RAM
| models.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > I was a little put off at first that these educational
| tools were being snatched up by businesses trying to save
| money.
|
| I think the RPi's attraction for commercial users is less the
| price point and more the size of the community around it.
| It's by far the most approachable system to work with when
| you need a small linux device with cameras and gpio.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Before the Pi I'd bought a number of BeagleBoards over the
| years.
|
| I still have a few BeagleBoard xMs and original BeagleBones
| sitting around. The bone specifically was super neat in that it
| had a ton of IO (PWM, A2D, encoder inputs, SPI, UART, etc.)
| that could be controlled by either the CPU or microcontrollers
| embedded in the SoC.
|
| Problem is at this point I have no idea what to do with any of
| them. ARM CPUs got so much faster in such a short span of time
| that it feels like arm boards from a few years ago are kind of
| just junk today. There are many dirt cheap boards that are way
| faster than a 1 GHz Cortex-A8 (or the 700 MHz armv6 core in the
| OG Pi) available today.
| blippage wrote:
| I've never owned a Beagle. I discovered earlier this year
| that they were open hardware and even had real-time
| capabilities. It struck me that this is what the Pi should
| have been.
|
| Then I saw the price. So I'll be sticking with Pis.
|
| It would be a master-stroke if the Pi gained real-time
| capabilities.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| The BeagleBone Black was $45 at launch (10 years ago,
| ouch), which was $10 more than the Pi B. At this point they
| certainly seem to have abandoned that price point.
|
| The first BeagleBone (the 'White') was $85, but it had a
| JTAG debugger embedded in it so you could actually single
| step through the Linux kernel if you wanted.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > I remember the Asus Tinkerboard being the first clone board
| that I thought could _really_ make a dent... but then Asus
| basically put it on life support.
|
| Right -- it had potential but it also had problems they were
| seemingly unwilling to fix.
|
| > Pine64, BananaPi, Orange Pi, Radxa, et all often make some
| pretty decent hardware, but the fact that it's often as hard
| today to get my projects working on those boards as it was with
| all SBCs back in 2012-2014 means I still stick to Raspberry Pi-
| branded boards for most things.
|
| This is something the Raspberry Pi Foundation people will
| stress when people snark in comments about specs when they
| launch a new machine. The total picture matters much more than
| specific, minor, things.
|
| Even when it comes down to something like pi-gen, which is
| obscure but enormously useful for tinkering with distribution
| builders. Or the Raspberry Pi Imager app for desktops.
|
| Eben Upton credits Eric Schmidt with providing the motivation
| to make computers even cheaper, rather than pursuing better and
| better Raspberry Pi machines, and in the grand scheme of things
| it's hard to ignore that Raspberry Pi is better when they do
| focus on choosing their own constraints with stuff like the
| 2040 and the Pi Zero 2W.
| megous wrote:
| > This is something the Raspberry Pi Foundation people will
| stress when people snark in comments about specs when they
| launch a new machine. The total picture matters much more
| than specific, minor, things.
|
| Total picture is that I can't still run mainline Linux on
| Rapsberry Pi 2B without losing a bunch of basic features,
| while I can run it on almost all my Orange Pis. This makes
| Raspberry Pi very annoying to use. I wanted to use Rpi 2B as
| a networked sound card for a room. Nope. No audio support
| mainline after like 7 years after release.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I'm talking about the foundation's total picture,
| obviously.
|
| The Pi isn't mainstream hardware, is it?
|
| Their total picture includes OS distribution and support
| that eclipses all the other mini-SBC-type ARM machines.
|
| Ubuntu has a mainstream distribution supported by the Pi
| Imager, and it should support sound, if you have the right
| boot parameters set?
|
| (edit: not sure this supports as far back as the 2B; I
| might have to test that)
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| I read an interesting counterpoint in the IpFire forum. Among
| other points
|
| >Now, everybody is looking for a cheap ARM board with performance
| and loads of features. The Raspberry Foundation is a charity that
| pays probably no tax at all, but somehow is selling lots and lots
| of boards at an absolutely "amazing" price.
|
| >Amazing because nobody else in Europe can compete with them.
| Paying no taxes helps. The second step is that they have almost
| completely outsourced their software development. They call it
| Open Source-ed, but that is not the same.
|
| >Over many years, there has never been a release of that piece of
| hardware that was supported by a mainline kernel. Neither Linux
| nor any other of the *BSDs. They simply do not care what software
| runs on it.
|
| https://community.ipfire.org/t/arm-sbc-support-discussion/26...
| Post number 4
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I thought the organization was split in two, a Raspberry Pi
| foundation/non-profit that was tasked with the original mission
| (cheap computing for all people of the world), and a Raspberry
| Pi company with CEO (Eben Upton), board, etc. driven to be a
| successful company that produces the Pi.
|
| Here's the foundation: https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/
|
| Here's the company: https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/
| user_7832 wrote:
| In my view, the biggest advantage of the Pi (and the Arduino too)
| wasn't just the devices themselves, but rather the large-scale
| acceptance and adopting of ARM boards in specific, and
| microcontroller boards in general. You could be using a Teensy or
| a Pro Micro for a task, but DIY electronics is _much_ easier and
| more accessible than many years ago. How much of this is cause
| and how much is effect, may be tough to say but I 'm happy that
| electronics (and moderately complex projects) are far more easily
| accessible than they were some years back. Open source
| software/Git/GitHub too deserves credit.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The Pi and Arduino being _cheap_ helped their acceptance for
| DIY projects I think more than anything. An alternate reality
| Raspberry Pi identical to our Pi save for a MIPS CPU instead of
| ARM would have been just as popular. The magic of a Pi isn 't
| the ARM CPU but the $25 price point for a Linux computer and
| the ability to use memory cards, power supplies, input devices,
| and monitors people already own.
|
| They're cheap enough to play with yet really flexible. Even if
| you never finish a "project" using a Pi it can still be a fun
| little emulation machine, Kodi player, or bang around system
| for kids. Even the Arduino isn't all that useful outside of
| "projects". Even when a Pi is vastly overpowered for some DIY
| project powering some LEDs it's still not much more than doing
| the same project with much more limited but project-specific
| hardware.
| johnny22 wrote:
| Wasn't the esp8266 similar to the arduino in that regard? It
| used a totally different chip design from expressif, but even
| so, it was still popular because of the features for the
| price!
| zwieback wrote:
| I'd worked with "serious" embedded systems when the Pi first came
| out so I was skeptical. Fast forward to today and I have multiple
| Pis doing various things for lab experiment automation and so do
| many others around me. I think the main contribution, similar to
| what Arduino has done, is giving us a mass market standard that
| seriously drove down prices.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I still remember the giddy feeling of paging through coffee table
| magazines at various places, seeing them mention a $35, credit
| card sized computer. I also remember trying to explain what it
| was to my parents, begging them to buy me one even though it had
| to be shipped from the UK. The biggest memory, though, was
| opening that box on Christmas day and finding the Raspberry Pi 1
| (Revision 2) nestled inside. The rest of my gifts didn't matter:
| I ripped the mouse and keyboard out of my desktop PC, plugged
| them into the Pi and co-opted our DirecTV HDMI cable so I could
| see it in action. Words can't quite describe the magic of booting
| into Raspbian back them, especially as a budding young computer
| enthusiast who thought _any_ of this stuff qualified as sorcery.
|
| Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and the
| Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat (the Pi
| Zero is still neat, though). In any case, I can't help but
| recommend them whenever I hear someone talk about dabbling in
| Sysops. I get that giddy feeling again, hoping that it might
| spark someone else's fascination with Linux and wild hardware
| form factors.
|
| Thank you for all you've done, Raspberry Pi foundation. I'm sure
| there's more people like me who grew up alongside one of your
| devices, but I can only hope that the future is even brighter for
| the next generation of young computer enthusiasts.
|
| (For those of you wondering: yes, my Pi does still work a decade
| later)
| Shared404 wrote:
| > I'm sure there's more people like me who grew up alongside
| one of your devices...
|
| Hey it's me!
|
| My first computer that I had root on and didn't need to share
| was a Raspberry Pi gifted by my grandfather (an old school
| developer, I should get him to write some about his work).
|
| The Raspberry Pi was my introduction to Linux/non-Windows OS's,
| I really owe a _lot_ to my experiences with it.
|
| > Words can't quite describe the magic of booting into Raspbian
| back them, especially as a budding young computer enthusiast
| who thought any of this stuff qualified as sorcery.
|
| So true! I still have massive nostalgia for the color splash
| and then boot sequence with the Raspberry logo up in the top!
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and
| the Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat
| (the Pi Zero is still neat, though).
|
| Has it? The Pi 4 is incredible value for money. Barely needs
| any compromises. Stick it in a case (Argon Neo!), stick it on
| top of a UASP disk caddy... a whole emergency desktop computer
| for really almost every normal use.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| By the time you've added enough components to make it fully
| functional, it's up to the price range of a used machine off
| eBay or even some new chromebooks
| jsight wrote:
| That's true, although I think it is also getting to the
| point that it is at least as powerful as some of those
| cheap Chromebooks. Most of those don't even have 8 GB of
| RAM like the latest Pi 4.
|
| It seems like whatever Pi comes next might pass some of
| these.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The 8gb Pi 4 is crazily good value for money, but one of
| the striking things about the Pi OS is that you barely
| need the 8gb ever. The 4gb machine is fine for almost
| everyone, as is a PS5 case, PS10 UASP caddy and a PS20
| 120gb SSD.
|
| And _then_ if you don't have stuff lying around, you go
| onto eBay looking for bits. Mice, keyboards, whatever.
|
| At some point I need to upgrade my secondhand MacBook
| Pro. In the back of my mind I always the idea of _" which
| is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency
| if I haven't been paid?"_
|
| Now the cheapest machine I can get by on is an 8gb Pi 4
| and the monitor and keyboard I still have lying around. I
| know because I've done it.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these
| basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on
| packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself is so
| cheap. I frequently see old mini-PCs with i3s and it's for
| ~100EUR. Even a 4th gen i3 is going to be way more powerful
| than a Pi, the only thing going for the Pi is probably
| newer faster memory.
|
| IMO the best use case for the Pi is buying 10 Pi-zeros at a
| discount and putting them on a moderately-heavy task that
| needs them to run off a battery.
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