[HN Gopher] Raspberry Pi Ltd is considering an IPO
___________________________________________________________________
Raspberry Pi Ltd is considering an IPO
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 339 points
Date : 2024-05-15 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.londonstockexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.londonstockexchange.com)
| jstanley wrote:
| What's the warning at the start all about? Aren't they violating
| their own terms by serving it publicly on the internet?
|
| > THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR
| DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR
| INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA,
| JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE SUCH DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE
| UNLAWFUL.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Read the next 2 paras. It's SOP for for listings in the UK
| under the FSMA.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I don't know if LSE are obligated to follow laws in those
| countries, but they may add this disclaimer to help others who
| may be obligated to follow those laws?
|
| Also I'm not in any of the jurisdictions mentioned, potentially
| there's some kind of geoblocking on the document?
| hayley-patton wrote:
| I can view it just fine in Australia. Now I'm going to
| download a car too before I get caught.
| chrisjj wrote:
| It is not a disclaimer. It is a prohibition and yes this
| distribution to US is a breach. But that's normal for LSE.
| Barmy.
| Shrezzing wrote:
| IPO announcements need to come from approved/authoritative
| organisations. This one is distributed by the UK's
| authoritative organisation - RNS news. In the other
| territories, IPO announcements also have to be made by
| authoritative organisations. RNS is approved in the UK, but not
| the other territories.
| vermden wrote:
| This is a classic disclaimer put on top of all types of
| financial documents, you can see it all the time on IPO's,
| mergers, any type of corporate actions like repurchase offers,
| shareholders / bondholders meetings etc.
|
| My understanding is that the source knows they have no way of
| controlling the dissemination of the document, and thus use
| such disclaimer to attempt to push the responsibility to any
| party receiving the doc - "ah! see our disclaimer? you should
| not have read this doc, its on you now!"
| chrisjj wrote:
| > My understanding is that the source knows they have no way
| of controlling the dissemination of the document
|
| But they do. Geoblocking.
| nottorp wrote:
| Good time to talk about the rPi alternatives?
| bayindirh wrote:
| I don't think so. I actively use some of the Pi alternatives,
| and none of them are well-polished and stable as Raspberry Pis.
|
| Also, an IPO doesn't mean that a company will go downhill from
| there. For example, when Bending Spoons got Evernote, everybody
| prepared for the worst, but it didn't happen, at least yet.
| They are genuinely trying to make it better from my
| understanding, at least for now.
|
| I think the biggest thread to ARM SBC ecosystem is Intel's N
| series systems, which can run both Linux and Windows 11 equally
| well. An N95 runs a familiar chipset & ISA with familiar system
| dynamics and standard ports with good IO performance. They can
| act as good home servers and entry level home computers.
|
| Who can deny the charm of a small box with a mSATA + NVMe port,
| WiFi6, a proper BIOS, two screen outs backed by an acceptable
| GPU?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > I actively use some of the Pi alternatives, and none of
| them are well-polished and stable as Raspberry Pis.
|
| Exactly.
|
| Pis are obviously not perfect. You can definitely find much
| better "deals" - but overall it is a very good product for
| what you're paying for.
| bayindirh wrote:
| There are some killer features _every_ Pi has:
|
| 1. Non-brickable: Either your SD Card is gone, or your
| board is broken. There's no middle.
|
| 2. Trusted OS: You can trust the OS from get go.
|
| 3. Customizable install with flasher: Spend 30 seconds
| setting up your Pi _before_ installing it to the SD card.
| Doing the same setup post install takes hours in some
| cases.
|
| 4. Seamless migration: Poweroff Pi, get the card out,
| insert to newer Pi, power on, go on.
|
| I'm not adding small yet irreplaceable features like
| undervoltage warning in the system logs.
|
| I'm running a OrangePi 5B with their original Debian image.
| While it's not doing any shenanigans from what I see, it
| needs half a day to convert it from a toy with auto-login
| to a proper home server, and the OS is finicky. Some mounts
| fail during boot causing it to enter maintenance mode.
| Adding "nofail" to boot options makes mounts _succeed_ on
| every boot.
|
| Interesting device.
| pjmlp wrote:
| 5. An alternative Amiga/Atari/Commodore/Speccy like form
| factor. :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yeah, but an N95/N100 box is not much bigger than a C64
| power brick, either, which is both fascinating and
| frightening at the same time. :)
|
| I think I can convert my spare Pi3 to a "boot to an
| emulator" system.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That wasn't really what I was talking about, rather the
| Raspberry Pi 400.
|
| For the line of thought you replied, I would be more keen
| on a ESP32 instead.
| HankB99 wrote:
| > 2. Trusted OS: You can trust the OS from get go.
|
| Mostly true. However I did experience issues that led to
| less than 100% trust.
|
| When I got my Pi 5, I ordered an NVME HAT and was
| thrilled to be able to run the Pi from an NVME SSD. Then
| one day it would not boot. The messages on the screen
| indicated that it no longer saw the SSD. Booting from an
| SD card, it also did not see the SSD. Convinced that the
| NVME HAT had malfunctioned, I initiated a return through
| Amazon and eventually acquired another. About that time I
| discovered that there were known SSDs that did not work
| with the Pi, including the one I had. IOW, a S/W update
| had caused a working system to malfunction. A different
| SSD has been working without difficulty.
|
| I was also puzzled that the imager did not list the
| current version of the OS for a Pi Zero. I asked about
| this on the official forum and my post was removed
| without notification.
|
| Also at one point, a system installed to an SD card on a
| Pi 5 would not boot on a 4B. That has been fixed and in
| fact, the 5 and 4B use different kernels. One side effect
| of this is that on `apt upgrade` the process tells me
| that a different kernel will be used on reboot. (It
| won't.)
|
| The Pi 5 is a massive shift in architecture and there is
| still (IMO) significant technical debt that the Pi
| engineers are catching up with. (But not enough to cause
| me to look elsewhere.)
| bayindirh wrote:
| We put different meanings behind the word trust.
|
| Yes, Raspbian is not 100% dependable/reliable, esp. when
| it comes to NVMe boot. They're trying to tune things
| aggresively for 5. I got three eeprom updates in two days
| in one case, when they were trying to tune temperature
| dependent clocking for RAM.
|
| However I trust the OS to not do any backdooring/spying
| shenanigans since it's mostly pulled from Debian's
| official repositories.
|
| However, even the OrangePi 5B uses almost the same repos
| with Raspberry Pi, I had to give it a purposeful dig to
| make sure.
|
| I watched Jeff Geerling's video yesterday about NVMe
| hats, and he openly said that the firmware is picky about
| SSDs. In fact signalling over flex cables is problematic.
|
| I built a BMAX-B4 N95 system for my parents to replace
| their big tower system. It has two SATA ports. One SATA
| and one mSATA. SATA port is routed to a slot via a flex
| cable, and Samsung's 870EVO sometimes initializes a
| couple of milliseconds late causing system to not to
| boot. I'll probably move everything to mSATA drive and
| let it slide, or try another brand of SSD hoping that
| it'll like the flex cable a bit more.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > an IPO doesn't mean that a company will go downhill from
| there. For example, when Bending Spoons got Evernote
|
| No that's not an example. Bending Spoons has not IPOed.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Let's change Evernote/Bending Spoons with ARM.
|
| As of yesterday, ARM's architecture powers world's 4th
| fastest supercomputer Fugaku.
| HankB99 wrote:
| > Good time to talk about the rPi alternatives?
|
| I do not think this changes anything in that regard. As a
| hobbyist I keep an eye on the competition and during Covid none
| of the alternatives appealed to me. I'm sure others came to
| different conclusions and found alternatives suitable.
|
| The situation may be different for someone producing a product
| based on Pi H/W. They were treated well compared to the
| hobbyist market during shortages and I don't care to argue one
| way or the other whether this was good overall. If I was
| producing a product that needed something like a Pi to work, I
| would always be evaluating alternatives.
|
| Once the Pi organization is publicly owned, their behavior will
| determine the need to talk about alternatives.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Once the Pi organization is publicly owned, their behavior
| will determine the need to talk about alternatives.
|
| And why do you think I ask, technical reasons?
|
| I can very well imagine the post IPO "foundation" - btw how
| does a "foundation" IPO? - making Pis unusable for licensing
| / financial reasons.
| s_dev wrote:
| Arduino?
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| Completely different beast. Raspberry pis are full blown
| computers. Arduinos are microcontrollers with a little
| supporting circuitry. Even a pi zero beats a standard arduino
| out of the water.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| How often do you need a full OS?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Are you browsing HN with an Arduino?
| whatevaa wrote:
| Do you also compare sandals and shoes, claiming they have the
| same purpose? Sounds ridiculous? Well...
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| While the Arduino can replace a Pi in many projects I've
| seen, if you're reason for dropping th Pi is to avoid the
| issues corporations bring to the table, you're not going to
| be any happier with the Arduino.
| haunter wrote:
| Depends what do you want to do but I'd say Dell & Lenovo micro
| PCs. x86, changeable and upgradable CPU, RAM, and storage. And
| they are stil very very small
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA I have severall
| Optiplex micros at home for selfhosting, playing around VMs etc
| and I love them.
|
| In Europe you can get one with a 6th gen i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and
| SSD for ~100EUR. And of course you can upgrade the CPU for
| something better, add 32 GB RAM, bigger storage etc.
|
| No GPIO pins though.
| adamjc wrote:
| Let the enshittification begin
| BizarreByte wrote:
| This was my immediate thought, it's the beginning of the end.
|
| Maybe I'm becoming bitter and cynical, but all I can see are
| things being ruined after IPOs and the like.
| nullify88 wrote:
| Arm listing in the US was apparently quite a blow to the London
| Stock Exchange. What kind of decisions drive a company to choose
| one exchange over another?
| ekianjo wrote:
| the access to investment probably?
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Generally it's easier from a compliance perspective to list in
| the same jurisdiction as your shareholders live. Otherwise
| there can be more admin work with withholding taxes etc.
|
| Also a baseline of liquidity, rule of law, and the absence of
| capital controls are prerequisite.
| kmlx wrote:
| more liquidity
| fidotron wrote:
| Way back when Arm were dual listed one of the explanations was
| that US based customers (meaning US based semi companies)
| preferred that the company was listed in the US and subjected
| to a similar regime, in addition to needed capital.
|
| To be honest, that actually makes a decent amount of sense, but
| I suspect the real reason was to enable US investors to buy
| into it so they do not then support attacking the foreign
| interloper in their industry.
| kmlx wrote:
| it is also incredibly costly and difficult to be listed in
| multiple stock exchanges.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| The biggest reason is access to capital. There's lots of
| institutional investors who are going to primarily invest in US
| equities, so if you're on the US stock market that's good. Even
| if those institutional investors do look at worldwide equities
| they're going to be limited in how much they allocate to it.
| It's also easier for investors - a single regulatory
| environment, no currency risk etc.
|
| This used to be mitigated by the fact that other countries
| would have their own pools of capital, like domestic pension
| funds but with the reforms to pensions UK pension funds are no
| longer a particularly good source of capital on the UK stock
| exchange.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > with the reforms to pensions UK pension funds are no longer
| a particularly good source of capital on the UK stock
| exchange.
|
| Surely it's the other way around? The UK pension system has
| been reforming recently to _encourage_ more equity holdings,
| especially of UK-based companies.
| boringg wrote:
| That's dissapointing. I was hoping they'd be happy getting enough
| revenue to stay private. What do they need to raise capital for?
| s1k3s wrote:
| They can't keep up with demand so that's one problem that could
| be solved with money.
| ActionHank wrote:
| Man, I can't wait for there to be 7 variants of RPi 6 all
| with some nondescript name and none of which actually offer
| exactly what I need, because they had to flood and segment
| the market.
|
| They should stay private and build on the quality brand they
| have rather than trying to grow because reasons.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If they can't keep up with demand people will go elsewhere.
| Focusing on brand and perception instead of fulfilling
| demand is not a fundamentally good strategy.
| sircastor wrote:
| This is what market theory says, but there are a lot of
| competing products at attractive price points and it
| hasn't happened yet. The lack of community, software, and
| examples makes the competitors less attractive. The same
| thing happened with Arduino. There were a lot of
| competitors that offered more capable silicon, but the
| community and software libraries were the real appeal.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It _is_ happening. It started years ago.
|
| In 3D printing in (say) 2019, for instance: It was
| ridiculously common to use a Raspberry Pi with a printer
| -- for all kinds of reasons. They were cheap (enough),
| and they worked well (enough), and they were available
| (enough).
|
| Few, if any, questioned whether the Raspberry Pi was the
| right thing to use, for it was ubiquitous and well-
| understood.
|
| But when Pis became more expensive and/or less available
| in 2021 or so, people didn't just stop doing stuff with
| their printers.
|
| They instead found alternative platforms to do things
| with: They bought used corpo mini-PCs, repurposed cheap-
| shit Android TV boxes, used old Android phones, and (of
| course) trudged through the weeds getting things working
| various other SBCs.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Not just market theory, but practice and common sense.
| People buy what there is. Companies can ride some brand
| recognition for a bit (I personally waited for them to
| get new components available) but it won't last, and any
| customers new to the idea won't wait. They'll pick of the
| available options.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > I can't wait for there to be 7 variants of RPi 6 all with
| some nondescript name and none of which actually offer
| exactly what I need
|
| So you think with fewer variants, one of those few is more
| likely to meet your needs? Doesn't having more variants
| make it more likely that one will suit you, or at least get
| closer?
| noselasd wrote:
| For me it always lead to confusion, indecision and not
| buying anything when there's too many choices
| al_borland wrote:
| This is the paradox of choice. If there is 1 option, a
| person gets it and it's not perfect, but it's fine. They
| know what they're getting and make it work. If there are
| a bunch of variants there is a greater expectation that
| one of them will perfectly fit the need, and they are
| always left wondering if a different one would have been
| better, and are thus left feeling unsatisfied.
|
| Some choice is good. Too much choice is problematic.
|
| This TED talk probably explains it better. https://www.te
| d.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choi...
| regularfry wrote:
| > So you think with fewer variants, one of those few is
| more likely to meet your needs?
|
| Yes, because being over-specced doesn't matter if it's
| cheap enough.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yes, I'm looking forwards to being able to choose from the
| Pi 6 Power, the Pi 6 Pure, the Pi 6 Play, and the Pi 6 5G,
| each product being actually a completely different product
| with completely different branding depending on which
| continent you're shopping in, and with the process being
| reshuffled annually.
| s1k3s wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand what this has to do with what
| I said. I understand this decision upsets you for some
| reason, but it has nothing to do with the discussion.
| ActionHank wrote:
| The point is just because there is demand doesn't mean it
| needs to be met at the cost of the product or brand
| itself.
|
| Literally throwing the baby out with the bath water.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If it's a problem to be solved with money, it's likely they
| could do so with higher prices or loans. Even if they raise
| money through stock, it will end up with higher prices to
| make returns for investors. Public companies have higher
| regulatory overhead and will be at the will of the investors
| to make more money.
| sircastor wrote:
| Have their production issues been a function of money? I
| assumed it was components (pandemic related) and maybe
| manufacturing capacity (because they manufacture locally
| instead of China, for instance)
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Another way to keep up with demand is to jack up prices until
| the demand meets the supply. That's what I fear. They have
| the brandname recognition to pull it off.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| That's what debt is for.
| Etheryte wrote:
| They haven't been able to keep up with global demand for what,
| half a decade now? That's a problem that you can easily throw
| money at and make it go away. This gap in supply and demand has
| led to many clones gaining popularity too, and while that's
| good for the end user because more choice, it's bad for their
| business.
| glenstein wrote:
| They don't have to agree that it's their job to change the
| fundamental mission of the business into one of being
| accountable to shareholders.
|
| They can, of course, but it's by no means a forced choice.
| tjoff wrote:
| Sure they have, the pandemic was a huge, but temporary,
| issue.
|
| Something more capital wouldn't necessarily have helped with
| either.
| jsheard wrote:
| Supply hasn't really been an issue since the Pi5 launched,
| PiLocator shows that nearly every official vendor has both
| variants in stock right now.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The Pi Hut even ran 10% off deals a few weeks back, it's
| not something you do when demand is higher than supply. I
| think they seriously overestimated the amount of Pi 5s that
| would be sold.
| ta988 wrote:
| And their RP2040 was a huge success so they may want to go more
| into producing their own chips.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Now we just need a 5V version of it while everyone continues
| to produce parts that don't work with 3V signals nor level
| shifters. Looking at you WS2812 and analog sensors.
| ta988 wrote:
| I doubt this will ever happen they may do 5v tolerant
| inputs but outputs? Highly unlikely. Already the RP2040
| uses its own regulator to make 1.1V for itself. The smaller
| the process and higher the frequency the lower the voltage.
| So the future is clearly not moving toward 5v.
| politelemon wrote:
| Does it feel like this was inevitable anyway? I had heard that
| the company was already focusing on OEMs and delivering their
| products to those companies first. Whereas in the early days the
| RPi company was positioning themselves as having an educational
| focus (and the hobbyists). I don't know how true this is, but is
| what I had read explaining the inability to get RPI4s and RPI5s
| over the past year.
|
| It is quite sad though as they will now have an incentive to
| profit over 'provide', and it will be nice while it lasts.
| mlyle wrote:
| > but is what I had read explaining the inability to get RPI4s
| and RPI5s over the past year.
|
| RPi5 never really had a shortage; there was the couple of
| months of "preorder" during launch.
|
| During the post-COVID extended Raspberry pi shortage, a big
| percentage of production went to keeping OEMs happy to avoid
| screwing customers that had designed in RPi products.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > big percentage of production went to keeping OEMs happy to
| avoid screwing customers that had designed in RPi products.
|
| To avoid screwing /a selected subset/ of customers that had
| designed in RPi products.
| deelowe wrote:
| I called this back in 2012. Despite all their talk of being a
| non-profit and changing the world, it always felt this was more
| of a "feel good" thing than their actual mission.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Their "do no evil" phase lasted pretty long at least compared
| to places like OpenAI at least. At the end of the day are there
| any significant companies that managed to maintain a mission
| that wasn't "make tons of money for already rich people"?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi Foundation is still a non profit, isn't it?
| deelowe wrote:
| This filing makes no mention of it and appears to state quite
| the opposite.
|
| > Raspberry Pi has a strong track record of revenue growth
| and profitability. For the year ended 31 December 2023,
| revenues were $265.8 million, with gross profit of $66.0
| million, and operating profit of $37.5 million, as well as
| adjusted EBITDA of $43.5 million.
|
| The filing goes on to provide various forward looking
| statements regarding growth and profitability. I find no
| mention of the original mission.
| MarkCole wrote:
| The filing mentions the Foundation multiple times?
|
| > Raspberry Pi is a subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi
| Foundation, a UK charity founded in 2008, with the goal of
| promoting interest in computer science among young people.
| Raspberry Pi has distributed approximately $50m in
| dividends to the Foundation since 2013, which has been used
| to advance its educational mission globally.
| deelowe wrote:
| I have first hand experience with not being able to get
| RPis for educational purposes while the employers I
| worked for were ordering them by the 1000s.
|
| These discussions are missing the larger point which is
| that it feels the .com side of Rpi is eating away at the
| original mission of the company.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > the .com side of Rpi is eating away at the original
| mission of the company.
|
| Fun fact. E Upton long ago resigned from the board of the
| original (charitable) Raspberry Pi company and set up the
| commercial company now known as Raspberry Pi.
| MarcScott wrote:
| I think you're confusing Trading with the Foundation. Go and
| have a look at the websites to educate yourself on the
| difference.
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.org
|
| There's pleanty of information in the 'about' pages.
| deelowe wrote:
| I don't think so. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I distinctly
| recall when the Pi was first created, there was only one
| entity and it was non-profit.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Correct. There was a split. E Upton resigned and created a
| new commercial company which then confusingly changed its
| name to Raspberry Pi Ltd.
| chrisjj wrote:
| The R Pi commercial company dropped "Trading" years ago.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I'm pleased to see another British company actually stick to the
| London Stock Exchange. Many are starting to list themselves on
| the US stock market, Arm being at the top of my mind in terms of
| tech. I think I remember them losing 30 PS100M+ companies to the
| US exchange last year including some big really big names. I know
| this phenomenon isn't isolated to the UK either. With all the
| issues in Hong Kong over the last few years, companies have fled
| there too.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I understand the rationale. High interest
| rates, dwindling pension funds, executives wanting wages closer
| to US execs, fewer high-performing tech companies, Brexit
| isolation and a lack of committed domestic investors have all
| contributed to the LSE's downward spiral.
|
| It just seems everything in the business world is becoming more
| centralised around the US. I don't think that's good for anyone,
| including US folks. Monopolies do as monopolies do; extract all
| the wealth they can from the system. The only people who benefit
| in a scenario where 95%+ of stock trades go through the NYSE is
| the NYSE.
| doublesocket wrote:
| It hasn't gone well for several UK companies listing through
| SPACs on US exchanges recently. Think that's given plenty of
| reason for a rethink.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I'm not sure, but there are other ways of listing besides
| SPACs, like ADRs
| piltdownman wrote:
| I can't think of a SPAC, regardless of nationality, that
| actually succeeded other than Cellebrite. SPACs in their
| current usage are basically vehicles to circumvent securities
| fraud and generate wild amounts of money based on hyperbolic
| slide-decks via PIPE and NAV offerings pre-DA - the amount of
| EV and Quadcopter plays that were obvious vaporware getting
| traction in 2020-2022 was insanity.
| pavlov wrote:
| I've been tracking SPACs as a curiosity. The only ones on
| my list that are above the $10 starting price are
| DraftKings, Hims & Hers Health, and Grindr.
|
| In other words: gambling, erection medication, and gay
| hookups.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Lynk Global are merging with SLAM this year to list
| publicly which is the only other one I'd watch out for -
| decent business model, first to debut the satellite to
| unmodified phone tech in a commercial fashion. GENI will
| probably recover as well.
| jeffparsons wrote:
| Lynk Global will competing against Starlink -- which is
| already manufacturing and operating at scale, and is
| vertically integrated with their launch provider... which
| will soon be lofting _much_ larger and more capable
| satellites on their new launcher. I don't see what
| worthwhile niche will be left for Lynk to play with.
|
| The cynic in me can't help but wonder if somebody is
| hoping to cash out via whatever investors haven't yet
| noticed the writing on the wall.
| pavlov wrote:
| I think the lesson in the past couple of years of SPACs
| is that all the companies that sounded obviously
| important and useful turned out to be massively
| overvalued and built on sandcastles of hopes and dreams.
| Lynk does sound like one of those.
|
| And what those few companies that were actually
| successful -- the "gambling, erection medicine, gay
| hookups" of my previous post -- have in common is that
| they operate businesses that might have some trouble
| raising money through the gatekeepers of a traditional
| IPO.
|
| (Logical conclusion: if I ever invest in a SPAC, it's got
| to be a drug-dealing furry porn site for crypto traders
| at minimum.)
| candyman wrote:
| Off the top of my head out about DraftKings $DKNG and
| Vertiv Holdings $VRT. Huge successes there.
|
| True that the majority have been major disappointments but
| you can find some good ones.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think of SPACs the same way I think of Regulation
| Crowdfunding [1]. If the company could have reasonably IPOd,
| they would have; if they're opting for a reduced process
| method, it's likely because they wouldn't look good in the
| traditional process, and it's best to avoid them.
|
| OTOH, it's not like I'm investing in individual stocks
| anyway, I'm on team Boglehead, and everything is in index
| funds, other than equity based compensation which I don't
| have at the moment.
|
| [1] https://www.investor.gov/introduction-
| investing/investing-ba...
| justin66 wrote:
| I'm sure those reasons are valid, but just the simple fact of
| the US stock market having much higher valuations than the UK
| market right now makes me wonder why they'd do an IPO in the
| UK. They'll get more money for the shares they sell in the US.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| From memory at my previous company, that was on LSE AIM, the
| discussion around LSE wasn't about Brexit or anything like
| that, it was the amount of investment capital available in US
| exchanges. The US has definitely got something right with
| incentivising investment.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The US has definitely got something right with
| incentivising investment.
|
| Vacuuming retirement savings of tens of millions of workers
| and piping the funds directly to Wall Street? I think that
| captured investor-class who pony up billions but don't vote
| at AGMs has led to excesses that are negative to society as a
| whole.
| wanderlust123 wrote:
| Brexit has had an impact on the amount of investment capital
| that would park itself in UK exchanges. Investors seeing
| dimmer prospects in the UK would rightly park their cash in
| the US
| edh649 wrote:
| There's an excellent book just out about this and how the US
| has taken over the UK business world:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199503848-vassal-state
| username332211 wrote:
| > Monopolies do as monopolies do; extract all the wealth they
| can from the system. The only people who benefit in a scenario
| where 95%+ of stock trades go through the NYSE is the NYSE.
|
| What's the risk here? That if the NYSE establishes a monopoly,
| it could extract a 0.5% tax on every trade?
|
| I feel the theoretical possibility of wealth being extracted
| from you is somewhat insignificant compared to the actual
| extractions you are subjected to in the UK.
| sigwinch28 wrote:
| > What's the risk here?
|
| A monopolistic stock exchange could, off the top of my head:
| increase fees, engage in rentseeking behaviour, impose unfair
| rules, discriminate (against companies and traders) or reduce
| the quality of service.
|
| Listing on different (or multiple) exchanges ensures that
| they engage in proper competition.
|
| > compared to the actual extractions you are subjected to in
| the UK
|
| An apt example of why it's healthy to have competition. A
| working professional or business could relocate to a country
| where less of their wealth is taken from them.
| FredPret wrote:
| But your parent comment's point is that the harm from lack
| of competition among exchanges is a possible future thing,
| while the harm from being domiciled in a business-
| unfriendly jurisdiction is far greater and happens right
| now.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > What's the risk here? That if the NYSE establishes a
| monopoly, it could extract a 0.5% tax on every trade?
|
| Whilst shares may be listed on the NYSE, they don't have to
| trade there - there's a number of alternative
| exchanges/ECNs/books/pools/brokers that will happily buy and
| sell NYSE listed shares cheaper/quicker than NYSE.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| What if there was a large scale fraud on the exchange, and
| shares that were supposed to be owned by a person or fund
| were "owned" by several different people at once.
|
| Or can someone provide a reason that's impossible?
|
| Bearing in mind I've personally seen screwups with processing
| thousands of credit card transactions with a software update.
| lxgr wrote:
| Trading becoming centralized in the US is a different thing
| from trading happening exclusively on the NYSE.
|
| As far as I understand, we are so far away from that reality
| since Reg NMS that we are facing the opposite problems, if
| anything: A proliferation of markets that brokers are obliged
| to trade at in the interest of providing "the best price", the
| combination of which has created a giant industry of latency
| arbitrageurs.
| vasco wrote:
| > Don't get me wrong, I understand the rationale. High interest
| rates, dwindling pension funds, executives wanting wages closer
| to US execs, fewer high-performing tech companies, Brexit
| isolation and a lack of committed domestic investors have all
| contributed to the LSE's downward spiral.
|
| Those might be factors but I'd wager the dominating factor to
| choosing to list in a US exchange is the monthly volume of ETF
| flow on the indexes you join. In the current world I think this
| factor dominates many others.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Could you or somebody else explain to the ignorant why that
| should matter to a corporation? If I want to buy or sale
| shares of my company once a month or less, why should it
| matter to me how many millions or billions of ETF flow
| through any particular index? How does that affect the equity
| of my company?
| nemothekid wrote:
| Key piece is "ETF flow on the indexes you join".
|
| Any ETF that a company is a part of increases demand for
| the stock which will increase the share price.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I'm willing to expose my complete ignorance by
| questioning this wisdom.
|
| I get that a startup wants a high stock price so they can
| raise as much money as possible while giving up as little
| control as possible. Of course there are other
| circumstances where corporations' best option for raising
| cash is to sell shares. So in those circumstances, this
| reasoning still holds.
|
| But what about when I've gotten past funding shortages
| and I'm a successful company and I want to invest in
| myself and take back some ownership? Now I have to pay
| some premium because of something that has nothing to do
| with the value of my company?
|
| Or what if I'm ok not taking back ownership. I'm content
| to just stay with 60% ownership or whatever? Why do I
| care what the share price is or what volume of sales is
| occuring on the stocks around me?
|
| In short, high stock prices only benefit me when I'm
| selling. So this reasoning baffles me for anybody with an
| ownership mentality.
|
| I admitted upfront that I was exposing my ignorance. I'm
| willing to learn from anybody who will show me a bigger
| picture. But I dread a bigger picture that assumes that
| future success at any level can only be obtained with
| leverage.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Now I have to pay some premium because of something
| that has nothing to do with the value of my company?_
|
| The value of your company is decided by the market
| participants with supply and demand. There's the academic
| idea that your company can be valued by your profits and
| losses, but the truth is, those more less to do with with
| the value of your company than the potentially demand for
| your shares. In other words being in an ETF may be more
| relevant to your stock price than the debt on your
| balance sheet.
|
| >* Why do I care what the share price is or what volume
| of sales is occuring on the stocks around me?*
|
| _You_ might not care, but the other 40% might. It 's
| tempting to think the other 40% is just amorphous group
| of shareholders, but it's likely it includes your
| business partners, or employees who will want to see the
| stock rise so they can eventually sell. And those
| partners and employees, upon learning that you aren't
| maximizing their shares may choose to leave, ultimately
| damaging your business.
|
| In other words, once you have multiple owners, as long as
| the green line goes up, everyone is incentivized to
| continue doing well.
| vasco wrote:
| > Why do I care what the share price is or what volume of
| sales is occuring on the stocks around me?
|
| Like it or not, your job as a manager in a company is to
| run that company for the people that own it, same as if
| you manage a local grocery store for your neighbour Jeff
| that owns it. Jeff will be happy if his store appreciates
| in value the same way the shareholders of the corporation
| (its owners) will be happy if it goes up in price.
|
| So as an employee of the company (the CEO is one too),
| you care because your job is to care, and in the case of
| senior management you also have a legal duty to care and
| the company can be sued if you don't.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| Put another way: the US investors put a lot of net new
| capital every month.
|
| Theoretically, more capital means, higher demand for
| equities and hence better prices for the stock. Of course,
| this does not apply to all equities equally.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| ETF's generally have a buoying effect since the ETF just
| passively buys shares in your company depending on demand
| for the ETF, not demand for your company specifically. It
| also gives a mild proximity effect, where all star
| companies will attract dollars to ETFs that you are also
| part of.
| logifail wrote:
| > ETF just passively buys shares
|
| FWIW: ETFs also passively sell, too.
|
| We may all ignore that bit when stock markets just seem
| to keep on rising, but if (when) they start falling the
| ETFs will be following the crowd too.
| CapeTheory wrote:
| Dual class shares are part of the picture here. They are very
| common in the US, and allow founders to have their cake and eat
| it. UK regulators have historically frowned upon this, but that
| stance is beginning to soften.
| wlll wrote:
| Last I read (https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-
| on-finance...) companies seem to be undervalued on the LSE, it
| seems to be like if I ran a company I might be leaving money on
| the table listing there.
|
| Agree that centralisation isn't ideal.
| nashashmi wrote:
| The wealthiest and most popular exchange brings in the most
| money. Exchanges realize this and try to sweeten the deal if
| their exchange is short on a few things. It is not all about
| money on the table.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I'd argue that thinking solely in terms of potential
| investment opportunity isn't capturing the whole value of
| trading on your local country's stock exchange. It's more
| money and a larger investor pool today, but less choice and
| power over one's destiny tomorrow. These sorts of economic
| micro-decisions accumulate. Where to put a company HQ, what
| stock exchange to trade on, hiring locally or abroad, selling
| up to foreign equity funds. As individual business decisions,
| the leaders might think it's an insignificant drop in the
| pond and simply the most important thing is making revenue
| tick up, but there are consequences to that being your only
| metric of success. It's jumping ship while the rest of the
| crew is trying to plug holes and bail it out. You've
| successfully escaped the sinking ship but are now in deep,
| shark-infested waters.
|
| Perhaps I've just been reading too much on geopolitical power
| dynamics lately, but as a British person, I fear our economy
| is suffering from a death-by-a-thousand-cuts from seemingly
| "insignificant" decisions that pass on tiny parts of our
| sovereignty to other countries. In the case of companies
| trading on other exchanges, we're leaving ourselves more open
| to the whims of the investors on that exchange whose
| priorities and sentiments don't match the spirit of the
| country of origin.
| nsteel wrote:
| I would like to think it's also partly a message that this move
| isn't about profit seeking. British companies do not have legal
| duty to maximise their profit. NYSE investors might not
| appreciate this foreign idea.
| shagie wrote:
| Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. -
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-354
|
| > While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-
| profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law
| does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at
| the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-
| profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide
| variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon
| for such corporations to further humanitarian and other
| altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So
| long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take
| costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures
| that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit
| corporation that operates facilities in other countries may
| exceed the requirements of local law regarding working
| conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may
| pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason
| why they may not further religious objectives as well.
|
| There is no legal duty to maximize profit.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Thank you for your correction of the parent poster's
| falsehood.
| klelatti wrote:
| A peer comment has refuted that there is a duty like this in
| the US. For the record, it's not true in the UK [1]
|
| In any event, any such duty would be likely to be
| meaningless. There are so many possible areas of confusion or
| inconsistency:
|
| - Profit over what time period? - Profit vs shareholder
| return. - What level of risk is to be taken in generating
| this profit?
|
| And so on.
|
| [1] http://in-houseblog.practicallaw.com/fallacy-of-the-duty-
| to-...
| nsteel wrote:
| Sorry, I really should have said, there's no duty to
| maximise/provide a dividend. And I didn't provide a
| reference because I consideree it well known /fundamental
| (in the UK only, perhaps). I'm glad the supreme court
| allows "modern" corporate law in the US to offer the same
| sensible position. If I understand the reference, it was
| originally driven by companies with a religious aim, but
| extends beyond that.
| shagie wrote:
| US law has _never_ required a maximization of profit. The
| court case that went up to the supreme court set that
| down in writing. It rejected a lower court 's suggestion
| ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_St
| ores,... )
|
| > Responding to lower court judges' suggestion that the
| purpose of for-profit corporations "is simply to make
| money," the court said, "For-profit corporations, with
| ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable
| causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such
| corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic
| objectives.
|
| The meme of "duty to maximize profit" has no grounding in
| fact beyond internet comments trying to excuse
| unscrupulous behavior of a company with the justification
| that it was maximizing profits.
|
| There is a "maximize shareholder value" (which isn't
| profits) but this is also recognized to be fuzzy.
|
| https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2023/
| 03/...
|
| > Corporate law has long required directors to act in the
| best interests of the corporation and its shareholders.
| In practice, this duty sometimes translated into a
| mandate to maximize shareholder value--at all costs. But
| while some businesspeople may follow that practice, most
| recognize that promoting shareholder interests invariably
| entails protecting the interests of others, such as
| employees and customers. Corporate law accommodates this
| reality by giving directors wide latitude in exercising
| their business judgment. Rather than such an impractical
| mandate that directors maximize shareholder value, courts
| say they must act in the best interests of the
| corporation and its shareholders.
|
| > The flexibility in this framework entices advocates of
| non-shareholder interests to argue that directors owe a
| duty not only to the corporation and its shareholders but
| also to its employees, customers, and other constituents
| or "stakeholders." Although this is certainly not the
| law, stakeholder advocates urge a norm in which directors
| no longer prioritize shareholder value but feel an
| obligation to such other constituents as well. Yet if it
| would be impracticable for judges to enforce a rule of
| shareholder value maximization, it would be more
| difficult to formulate a workable legal rule requiring
| directors to optimize across such contending interests.
|
| The maximization of shareholder value was from Dodge v.
| Ford Motor Co.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
|
| > This case is frequently cited as support for the idea
| that corporate law requires boards of directors to
| maximize shareholder wealth. However, one view is that
| this interpretation has not represented the law in most
| states for some time:
|
| > Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal
| rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and
| is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a
| standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a
| legal mandate. The business judgment rule [which was also
| upheld in this decision] protects many decisions that
| deviate from this standard. This is one reading of Dodge.
| If this is all the case is about, however, it isn't that
| interesting. -- M. Todd Henderson
|
| > However, others, while agreeing that the case did not
| invent the idea of shareholder wealth maximization, found
| that it was an accurate statement of the law, in that
| "corporate officers and directors have a duty to manage
| the corporation for the purpose of maximizing profits for
| the benefit of shareholders" is a default legal rule, and
| that the reason that "Dodge v. Ford is a rule that is
| hardly ever enforced by courts" is not that it represents
| bad case law, but because the business judgement rule
| means:
|
| > The rule of wealth maximization for shareholders is
| virtually impossible to enforce as a practical matter.
| The rule is aspirational, except in odd cases. As long as
| corporate directors and CEOs claim to be maximizing
| profits for shareholders, they will be taken at their
| word, because it is impossible to refute these corporate
| officials' self-serving assertions about their motives.
| -- Jonathan Macey
| nashashmi wrote:
| Does it matter any longer which exchange things are listed on?
| I can trade any stock on any exchange regardless of where it
| is. I guess only trading hours and holiday schedule would make
| a difference.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| At volume, the stamp tax on UK stock would be significant.
|
| More fundamentally companies tend to be valued higher on the
| US exchanges, which gives companies a bit more freedom of
| action to raise capital from the market to fund their plans.
|
| I don't think UK Gov will cry too much abount RPi. They
| certainly would be leaning hard on the board of, say, Shell,
| if that corporation decided to list abroad instead of London
| (as their former CEO has mooted).
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Taxes and currency exchange factor in.
|
| US has very strong and deep capital markets. There's a reason
| New York has been the financial capital of the world for the
| last 100 years and will continue to be for the foreseeable
| future.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I'm not sure what the real disadvantage is though. Like, as a
| British person I can easily buy shares in companies listed in
| the US. If a British company IPOs on the NYSE but keeps it's HQ
| and most employees in the UK, does that actually say anything
| about the UK economy, or just a bit about the LSE specifically
| and maybe some corporate law details?
| rchaud wrote:
| The stock would be denominated in another currency, and the
| amount of your capital gains would be affected by forex
| rates.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Definitely important, but it's more a consequence rather
| than an economic indicator.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Forex would have very little impact. If company earnings
| are in GBP and that increases relative to USD, the stock
| price would also increase (in USD) which should lead to
| roughly the same GBP returns either way.
| dheera wrote:
| I just wish they would let Pi users in on pre-IPO shares like
| Reddit
| manojlds wrote:
| Hopefully the proposed British ISA will help make things
| better.
| graemep wrote:
| > I'm pleased to see another British company actually stick to
| the London Stock Exchange. Many are starting to list themselves
| on the US stock market, Arm being at the top of my mind in
| terms of tech.
|
| London has never attracted tech companies. Even when I was in
| the field over 20 years ago the combined market cap of tech was
| tiny. Only smallish British companies IPOed on London.
|
| ARM was small when it originally listed. Now it is large and
| was not British owned - why would they list in London.
|
| > It just seems everything in the business world is becoming
| more centralised around the US.
|
| Financial markets centralise for liquidity. IIRC some dual
| listed European companies are moving to London.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's (slowly) changing.
|
| Chinese companies are now considering LSE as an alternative
| to NYSE/NASDAQ for their dual-listing IPOs due to laxer
| oversight and auditing requirements, especially now that FCPA
| enforcement is in full swing and third party audits by
| Western organizations are required, which Chinese regulators
| are preventing.
|
| That said, it's hard to beat the primacy of the American,
| Chinese, Singaporean, and increasingly Indian market (at
| least 2 late stage startups ik in the Bay Area are looking at
| listing on the NSE because they want to IPO but $100-200M in
| ARR and consistent growth is not enough to successfully list
| in the US anymore).
| alangibson wrote:
| There is a lot of general flight to safety in the US, but I
| think the UK is a special case. The UKs economic decline is
| irreversible at this point. Crumbling (literally)
| infrastructure, completely isolated elites, out of the EU,
| inability to build basically anything. Why hang around to find
| out where the bottom is...
| notanormalnerd wrote:
| I think a better way would be to keep the foundation and spin off
| a company that manufactures all of that. Sell 49% of that company
| in an IPO and keep the majority stake in the foundation. This way
| they can raise money for expansion while keeping the mission in
| line.
|
| This also signals very clear to investors what this enterprise is
| about.
| Latty wrote:
| Isn't this already how it works? Raspberry Pi Ltd is a
| different company to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
| syarb wrote:
| AFAIK, yep. Jeff Geerling (hi jeff!) has a great video about
| this. https://youtu.be/hrhE6MnGi1A?si=IeHs2GKYqPjqPXSb&t=305
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Hello there ;)
|
| I would like to know how much the Pi Foundation would still
| own--could be an interesting dynamic there. And good for
| them to be able to use some of that profit for good (they
| do a lot of neat things for education / STEM).
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Hopefully the foundation still controls the majority of
| votes regardless of the % ownership stake. They do too
| much good in the world to go full-blown public corpo
| gchadwick wrote:
| This is already the setup, the foundation owns the trading
| company and it is the trading company going to IPO.
|
| From a quick scan it's not clear to me what share of ownership
| of RPi ltd the foundation would retain post IPO other than the
| foundation will be selling at least some of its stake:
|
| > The Offer would be comprised of new Shares to be issued by
| the Company and existing shares to be sold by certain existing
| shareholders, including the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Raspberry
| Pi's existing majority shareholder.
| anticensor wrote:
| Are non-profits allowed to own any stock in publicly traded
| companies in Britain?
| gchadwick wrote:
| According to this: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
| /government/uploads/... yes.
|
| Note that the foundation has had a majority stake in RPi
| ltd (as a private company) for a long time this is not a
| new structure.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes. large non-profits can need to invest a lot of money.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes, but as shareholders they must still act according to
| their 'purpose', which is a term in UK law that a charity
| can choose when it is set up as part of its charter, and
| then every action must be in accordance with.
| szundi wrote:
| Purpose of spinoff = get dividends to fund the original
| purpose
| hgomersall wrote:
| Non profits aren't generally charities.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I think a better way would be to keep the foundation and
| spin off a company that manufactures all of that. Sell 49% of
| that company in an IPO and keep the majority stake in the
| foundation. This way they can raise money for expansion while
| keeping the mission in line._
|
| Ah yes, the OpenAI approach :)
| torlok wrote:
| What are the economics of buying into a stock that has a 51%
| stakeholder, and doesn't pay dividends, outside of "line goes
| up"?
|
| I know this is kind of a standard in tech, but it still eludes
| me where the value of the stock is.
| cchance wrote:
| LOL you act like the entire market isn't "line goes up"
| regardless of 51% or not.
|
| And no its not just tech
| Jolter wrote:
| Why would they not pay dividends?
| andrewla wrote:
| Traditional answer is that there is future potential that
| they would issue more stock (to sacrifice their 51% stake) or
| at some point start to issue dividends.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Raspberry Pi has paid out about $50 million in dividends
| already to it's parent company.
| vasco wrote:
| Line goes up is the same as dividends, only financially
| illiterate people keep repeating this point as if they're
| saying something smart. If you genuinely don't know, you can
| easily find the reason why it's economically the same, while
| being fiscally more efficient to not emit dividends by doing
| a quick googling.
| szundi wrote:
| I'm not really sure you get what the smell of money does to
| most people
| tombert wrote:
| My visceral reaction to this was "well shit, RPi was supposed to
| be a non profit to lower the costs of computers, and now they're
| going to be another boring computer company", and that makes me
| sad. I know that Rapsberry Pi has been a dual for-profit and non-
| profit for quite awhile, so in theory nothing really changes, but
| it feels a bit weird.
|
| However, it appears that unambiguously for-profit companies have
| managed to make affordable SBCs (e.g. Hardkernel, Nvidia),
| without having the same constraints of trying to save the world
| associated with it. Maybe Raspberry Pi IPOing will increase
| availability and funding?
|
| Tough to say. I haven't actually used a name-brand Raspberry Pi
| for awhile, and have opted for a competitor for the last several
| years.
| vsnf wrote:
| I've tried so many times but I just can't come up with any
| compelling use for a raspberry pi. It seems well suited for
| making a NAS or plex server, but other than that, idk. Everything
| else I want to experiment with is better served by an arduino.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Not well suited for NAS at all. Too limited in IO and PCI
| lanes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Also not really suited for Plex, since the transcode
| performance would be awful.
| ta988 wrote:
| Depends so much what's on the NAS.
| StillBored wrote:
| Right, the IO perf has been bad.
|
| But IMHO, no one should be running a NAS without ECC at this
| point. It's on the "my RAID doesn't scrub the disks" level;
| it's just begging for silent disk corruption that propagates
| its way through backups and is impossible to fix with
| software solutions.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I have home automation done with rpi.
|
| They have a touch screen, speakers, and control the lights via
| gpio. I use the same thing to set timers, play the internet
| radio in the morning to wake me up, and put the lights off.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Similar issue, I have an old desktop as a server already to do
| all the heavy processing stuff. Only finally found use for RPi
| to be the brains of my 3d printers.
| borbtactics wrote:
| I use my 3B solely for adblocking via Pi-hole and it works fine
| most of the time
| chrisjj wrote:
| R Pi in a nutshell. Three sigma and proud of it! :)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think they are mostly for hobbyists and students so maybe
| being pragmatic is not the top concern.
| nsbk wrote:
| Pi-hole: https://pi-hole.net
| amatecha wrote:
| Hilariously I've spent hours troubleshooting why my Pi
| running Pi-hole is intermittently inaccessible from my
| iPhone, despite being able to connect to the Pi from other
| machines. I still have no clue why. Last night I finally
| captured a tcpdump so maybe I can see what is happening (the
| Pi is indeed receiving packets from the iPhone), but it's
| totally inexplicable. The other Pi I have always hooked up
| (music player for my speakers) has a bash script that runs
| every 5 min with cron, to ping the LAN router and restart
| networking if it can't ping it. Why? Because after a while
| the Pi would randomly drop off the network and become
| inaccessible. Countless stuff online gives various
| troubleshooting which never made any difference, until I
| employed my hackish "check the network every 5min" which has
| completely "solved" the problem. Unfortunately this didn't
| "solve" the problem for the Pi running Pi-hole, sadly.
| pzo wrote:
| I wish they could make a more user friendly rpi that is all in
| one: router, smart tv, adblock, vpn, private cloud, private
| media server, wireless charging pad, universal
| miracast/airplay/chromecast.
| lode wrote:
| I am running a hypervisor
| (https://blogs.vmware.com/arm/2023/12/15/esxi-arm-
| fling-1-15-...) on my Raspberry Pi 4. Rock solid.
|
| Currently running virtual machines: * Home Assistant
| (https://home-assistant.io/) - with USB passthrough of USB
| stick to read out my digital electricity/gas meters, Zigbee and
| Z-Wave * Homebridge (to allow my Eufy video doorbell to work
| with Homekit) * Pihole
|
| All are running from iSCSI storage served by my Synology NAS.
|
| I am running an older Pi (3) on demand in my garden as a client
| for my media server to play music on garden speakers.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Doesn't Synology support running VMs directly on the NAS
| itself?
| tetris11 wrote:
| Run an email server, send triggers on subject keywords,
| automate stuff.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| A Raspberry Pi a fairly tiny computer that can run a "real" OS,
| and that has a fair amount of GPIO that can be bought new
| somewhat-inexpensively. It has storage that is easily-removed
| and swapped (whether for good, or for bad).
|
| If all a person needs or wants is a fairly tiny computer and it
| doesn't need to be new/shiny, then there's off-lease corpo
| boxes that are faster/better/cheaper.
|
| If all a person needs or wants is some GPIO to hack on hardware
| with, and doesn't want a real OS on the back end of things,
| then maybe an Arduino or ESP32 or RP2040 or something might be
| better and cheaper.
|
| But if a person needs or wants all of that in one box, then: A
| Raspberry Pi may well be the right approach. (Some folks like
| hacking with a real OS; this is fine. We used to use things
| like parallel ports for this in the PC space but those are long
| gone.)
|
| Or: If a person needs or wants a well-tuned system that they
| can just download and use specialized images for and write to a
| MicroSD card, then: A Raspberry Pi can become desirable.
|
| ---
|
| For instance: I use a Pi 4 to play movies with over SMB. I
| could do that a thousand or more different ways, but using
| LibreElec on a Pi 4 is the _easiest_ way for me to get there --
| just download it, stuff it into an SD card, and boot it up. It
| becomes an appliance, and this appliance is similar or
| identical to many other appliances; this makes supporting it
| easy. (And if I want to do something different with that
| hardware today, it takes only a few seconds to swap its storage
| for something completely different -- and swap it back later.)
|
| Or: 3D printing. I can do what many others have done before me
| and sneaker-net gcode from the PC to the printer, or I can use
| a Raspberry Pi and a standardized Octoprint image to put that
| printer on the network instead. Now my printer is a network
| appliance.
| bityard wrote:
| Sounds like a lack of imagination to me!
|
| The official Raspberry Pi New page has a least a few featured
| projects every week: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/
|
| The MagPi has articles and a whole monthly magazine on various
| projects and use cases: https://magpi.raspberrypi.com
| graphe wrote:
| Absolutely correct. The form factor of a Pi zero (2) may be
| good in a handheld but you can easily get one from China or a
| PSP and get a great experience.
|
| Arduino? You mean the ide or the actual hardware? It's been
| superceded by esp32.
| jcronenberg wrote:
| One thing arduinos don't do is things which require a GPU. So
| if you have a project which you want to output to a display but
| you also want it very low powered, because it e.g. runs 24/7, a
| PI is IMO the best device. Something like a Home Assistant
| dashboard display or a DIY smart mirror for example.
| chrisjj wrote:
| But neither requires a GPU.
| sneak wrote:
| home assistant and small/quiet/cheap remote syncthing nodes.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| I just can't come up with any compelling use for a raspberry
| pi.
|
| The practical purposes for an RPi have diminished. They're
| still good for when you need something small, light or low
| power. But the market for refurb mini-PCs really replaces most
| of the instances where you're just looking for a cheap, but
| semi-powerful, computer.
|
| And things like the ESP-32 have reduced the Pi's practicality
| on the other end where you just need something powerful enough
| to read and transmit data from a sensor.
| meatmanek wrote:
| > And things like the ESP-32 have reduced the Pi's
| practicality on the other end where you just need something
| powerful enough to read and transmit data from a sensor.
|
| Especially with ESPHome making it so easy to integrate with
| common sensors without writing code.
|
| That said, the Pi Zero W is pretty cheap and small (similar
| in size to many ESP32 development boards) so it provides a
| nice upgrade path if you want to do more processing on
| device, exceed a few megabytes of ram, etc
| moffkalast wrote:
| And the Pi Foundation's refusal to do literally any power
| management while increasing TDP into the sky with marginal
| efficiency improvements has diminished its use for robotics
| and other battery powered applications too.
|
| This has just been one of my largest pet peeves with the
| entire Pi lineup. The Pi 5 is the worst offender that idles
| at like 3 watts doing jack shit. That's an entire 3000mAh
| battery gone in under four hours that would've easily lasted
| several days on an average smartphone SOC with twice the
| memory and speed.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| That's valid.
|
| My first reaction was "Well, the OS is open -- isn't it?
| Just set up good power management yourself and publish it
| for all to use, and it'll probably get accepted upstream
| eventually."
|
| But then I remembered: The OS is open, but the hardware is
| not (because -- in one word -- Broadcom).
|
| But maybe with an IPO, they can generate enough cash to get
| their own CPU started up. Maybe something based around
| [checks flip-chart] RISC-V or something, with enough
| documentation to allow people to fix the [checks excuse
| card] power management problem.
|
| They've certainly shown some willingness to work in that
| direction with the RP2040.
| moffkalast wrote:
| From my understanding the Pi Foundation was founded by
| ex-Broadcom engineers and some that still work there. The
| two are so intertwined that it's not unlike it being the
| Broadcom Foundation. I think it's rather unlikely that
| they'd ever move away from using their chips since they
| _are_ theirs.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Yes, the whole thing did start with some folks who were
| under Broadcom employ.
|
| Perhaps that will change: After all, how many engineers
| do you know who feel motivated to hold down regular mid-
| tier jobs at _two_ publicly-traded companies?
| rocky1138 wrote:
| I use an old 1st gen Pi Model B+ as a ppp server for my Tandy
| 1000 SX to connect to the Internet. I can telnet in and adjust
| stuff if needed. Very handy and fun to play Zork on sdf.org
| through it.
| zamadatix wrote:
| There are a lot of suggestions here for things that can be done
| on any PC rather than a particular piece of hardware (DNS
| server, VM host, email server) so to throw out the one genuine
| "something the Raspberry Pi is compelling for, not just able to
| do too":
|
| IP KVM as with the Pi KVM.
|
| It utilizes the CSI interface for the capture without needing
| to do it through USB or expensive PCIe addon cards like a
| normal PC, the USB OTG is used to act as keyboard/mouse/disc
| drive/usb ethernet, the GPIO is used to control the motherboard
| power/reset pins, the serial pins are used to provide a console
| interface in case you need to reconfigure the static IP, some
| other pins are used to drive a small LCD display telling you
| the IP and status of the device, the Ethernet and Wi-Fi give
| connectivity options to access the local webpage where the
| hardware accelerated encode helps stream the data to you. The
| local uSD storage is plenty for storing the local ISO images
| and it's a full Arch Linux system in case you ever need to do
| anything else (like wget an image directly to the device
| remotely).
|
| Not only is the hardware extremely well suited (capture, the IO
| pins, the decoder, the network interfaces, the minimal storage)
| to the exact use case but it's used in a way that doesn't
| really make sense to use an Arduino and would cost a lot more
| (in dollars, power, and space) to get a standard mini PC to do
| these things.
|
| Of course I've owned 6 Raspberry Pi boards over the last 12
| years and this is the only one I ever found to be worthwhile.
| The others were just for the novelty.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I run a Mastodon server in a VPC. It's a Rails all and sucks up
| all the CPU and RAM you can throw at it. A while back when I
| was almost at my VPC's limits and didn't want to throw a bunch
| of money at it, I spun up Sidekiq worker VMs on my RPi. That
| freed up a lot of resources I could repurpose for frontend
| caching.
| staringback wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I actually used a Raspberry Pi.
| These days there are millions of cheaper, more powerful,
| "Raspberry Pi compatible" boards that are actually stocked. I
| don't see any reason to even need one of these in 2024.
| pmontra wrote:
| I also never looked at RPi 4s and 5s but for a different
| reason. Cheaper is good but I don't need "more powerful".
|
| I'm using a 3B+ (or whatever) with a TV hat to convert free to
| air channels to IP streams that I can watch on my phone and
| tablet. The winning point is obviously the TV hat but also the
| low power consumption. It's 3.82 W right now.
|
| I'm also using an Odroid as my home server, because there where
| no RPis available and because I can plug two SATA 3 disks in
| that machine. It's using 3.71 W. Given the load I put on it I
| could be OK with a less powerful server that would consume even
| less Watts.
| theonealtair wrote:
| Raspberry Pi did a lot to revolutionize the micro board/pc
| market, they truly had an amazing influence on the industry that
| I'm grateful for. Now a days they feel overpriced and
| underpowered, and their influence spurred a new market that has
| produced much better alternatives. This IPO just confirms this
| perspective for me. Thank you raspberry pi for what you did. But
| I doubt I'll ever want to buy one again.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What are the better alternatives? I don't think any have
| anywhere near the level of software and community support nor
| stability.
| jsheard wrote:
| The situation with ARM hasn't changed much unless your budget
| stretches to Amperes stuff, but the big change is that x86
| SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten _very_ cheap, and of course
| those Just Work with any Linux distro or even Windows. The
| Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, it's actually insane how much X86_64 stuff has
| dropped in price.
|
| Yesterday I received two Ryzen 9 mini gaming computers [1],
| one to replace my old rack mount server and one to be a
| home theater PC. Each cost about $400, and they are capable
| of emulating the PS3 and Xbox 360 smoothly (I don't really
| have any new games so I wasn't able to push the limit too
| much, but still emulating those consoles requires some
| horsepower!).
|
| Maybe I'm just out of the loop (very likely), but $400 for
| a super low-power _gaming_ computer feels insanely cheap to
| me. The server one in particular will pay for itself in
| about a year due to power savings alone compared to my rack
| mount server.
|
| [1] Beelink SER6's for those interested.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > The Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price.
|
| Hard agree, I have one and I love it. Its currently doing
| the VM work of what a PS10k server did in 2012.
|
| But if I want GPIO, and or battery powered things with
| linux, then the pi is the way forward still.
|
| Anything else, and a pico/esp32 will do well.
| tombert wrote:
| Any reason you can't do GPIO with the ESP32? I've had
| pretty good luck with GPIO in NodeMCU.
| jsheard wrote:
| TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to
| use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any
| machine can be used as the host. That's pretty much how
| the Pi5 works anyway, the GPIOs are driven by the RP1
| southbridge which is more or less an overgrown RP2040.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah but why aren't there more boards with a built in
| coprocessor like that given how cheap they are now? Iirc
| only Lattepanda and the Pi Foundation make these sort of
| boards, and the former is overpriced beyond any common
| sense.
| jsheard wrote:
| Keeping the GPIO interface separate does have its
| advantages, if you accidentally explode a GPIO pin on an
| external RP2040 board then you've lost a couple of
| dollars instead of an entire >$50 SBC.
|
| It doesn't have to take up much space either:
| https://www.waveshare.com/product/rp2040-one.htm
| moffkalast wrote:
| If USB is involved you can't really make a production
| ready system with it. At least they could put some proper
| ZH or whatever connectors for UART that don't unplug when
| you look at them wrong. That's one of the things they did
| right with the Pi 5 at least.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to
| use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any
| machine can be used as the host
|
| Two separate platforms connected over USB is
| substantially more complicated, expensive, power hungry,
| and consumes a lot more space.
|
| The value prop of SBCs is that they're compact and you
| can do low-level work in a single package. Connecting an
| RP2040 to a PC and writing software for both is the
| opposite end of the complexity spectrum.
| graphe wrote:
| When do you use GPIO with Linux?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| The same things you'd use GPIO with Linux for on a
| Raspberry Pi: anything.
| graphe wrote:
| Anything is not a useful comment. When? I'm asking for a
| use case, I haven't seen anyone use them for a specific
| reason to use Linux. I'm asking about sensors and
| software that works together better than using it with an
| MCU
| ianburrell wrote:
| One example that I'm working on is GPS receiver and NTP
| server. Accuracy requires PPS signal through GPIO. It
| would be possible to wire up GPS receiver board to
| microcontroller. But still need server to run NTPd. Or
| could put GPS Hat on Raspberry Pi and have everything in
| one unit. It will run on the cheapest $35 Pi, or extra
| one in my case.
|
| Another I have thought doing is ADS-B receiver mounted
| outside. It helps to put the receiver close to antenna so
| would put the SDR and Pi in enclosure, and power it from
| PoE. Microcontroller can't run the SDR. Micro PC is
| overkill and wouldn't work in enclosure. Doesn't use GPIO
| pins.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I've used GPIO on a Raspberry Pi Zero W to talk with
| DS18B20 temperature sensors, along with an SDR attached
| with USB tuning in radio traffic and decoding AX.25
| packets in software.
|
| I've also used GPIO on a Raspberry PI Zero W to build a
| Stratum 1 NTP server with nearly spooky accuracy with the
| PPS line.
|
| Both things worked very well. They were compact,
| performant, used an inconsequential amount of power, and
| were very inexpensive.
|
| And both things were very easy for me to implement,
| largely due to the tremendous amount of software
| available in the Linux-ey ecosystem.
|
| If I were trying to bodge an MCU into performing these
| tasks without involving Linux, I'd probably have never
| gotten either of them done.
| varispeed wrote:
| What kind of GPIO you need? If you need slow (under 1MHz)
| you can easily slap some USB to GPIO device and Bob's
| your uncle.
| Marsymars wrote:
| The top-end Alder-Lake-N N305 is good too! Double the
| threads, and probably a bit worse performance-per-dollar.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Especially if you're willing to go used. 5 year old lenovo,
| dell, and hp mini PCs are all over ebay as companies dump
| them due to simply being out of the typical 5 year
| enterprise warranty. They are otherwise still very potent
| and capable machines
| michaelt wrote:
| _> the big change is that x86 SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten
| very cheap_
|
| Yes - and at the same time, the RPi has gotten more
| expensive, rising from ~$25 circa 2013 to $60-$80 for the
| latest RPi 5. Neither price including power supply and SD
| card. Of course the RPi 5 has more cores, a faster clock
| speed, more RAM, and built-in wifi so you do get more for
| your money.
|
| Once upon a time, you were looking at $25 for a Pi and $250
| for intel. These days it's more like $80 vs $180.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Don't forget the 20-40% inflation over the last decade.
| dvdbloc wrote:
| Sure if you are trying to get a cheap desktop computer,
| the Pi always made a mediocre desktop experience. But if
| you need GPIO or very low power consumption or a SPI
| connection with a community that understands its quirks
| very well I doubt you are going to be happy with an old
| Intel desktop.
| michaelt wrote:
| The low power, GPIO and SPI on the Pi are all trash
| compared to microcontrollers, most of which are also
| cheaper and better documented.
|
| But if you specifically want to run _Linux_ and have SPI
| and GPIO _on the same chip_ then sure, the RPi will do
| that.
| chrisjj wrote:
| OOI, why would any user care what's on the same chip?
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, often they wouldn't.
|
| In some cases you want to avoid your programmers needing
| to know two designs, compiler toolchains etc - a
| microcontroller might push you towards using C, and
| perhaps all your other code is in Python and you'd prefer
| to keep everything in Python.
|
| If you're making something like a high precision time
| server synchronized to GPS, you might want your GPIOs to
| trigger direct interrupts on the device with the ethernet
| port. Of course, IIRC the RPi has USB ethernet so it's
| not a good choice for a truly high precision time server.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi 4 is still good value at $35 . If your
| use case can be handled by a Pi 4, it's a good pick at
| that price range over the competitors. Most of the
| competitors are going to have similar i/o, but with a
| Rockchip RK3566 chip which is slower (unless you're using
| the NPU)
|
| The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is also very interesting for the
| size and $15 price tag. I also liked the 3A but no one
| remembers that one.
|
| They're older, but everyone else is still playing catch-
| up, and Raspberry Pi will produce them for a while. I do
| hope they have a proper $35 board to upgrade to in the
| future.
| eloisant wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi is the best if you can find it at MSRP, but
| I haven't seen that for many years now. You can only find it
| for at least double and at that price it's not worth it.
|
| There are many alternatives that, granted, don't have a
| community as big as RPi, but are perfectly valid and can be
| found at a normal price.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| They are at msrp now for large parts of EMEA
| wlll wrote:
| I did a quick Google. The pi 5 4GB MSRP is $60 I think,
| there are some available on Amazon UK for PS54.90 with
| delivery tomorrow. That's apparently $69.53, so above MSRP,
| but not terrible. There may be cheaper sources I've not
| googled hard.
| radicality wrote:
| rpi5 is at msrp of $80 for the 8gb version and widely
| available at that price in USA, just bought one few days
| ago.
| pokstad wrote:
| Intel chips are becoming dirt cheap. Intel has a lot of cheap
| dev boards that are more robust than RPi. Maybe not the same
| level of community support. Recently I bought a refurbished
| Intel micro size desktop PC to replace my RPi home server.
| haunter wrote:
| Depends what do you want to do but I'd say Dell & Lenovo
| micro PCs. x86, changeable and upgradable CPU, RAM, and
| storage. And they are stil very very small
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA I have severall
| Optiplex micros at home for selfhosting, playing around VMs
| etc and I love them.
|
| In Europe you can get one with a 6th gen i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and
| SSD for ~100EUR. And of course you can upgrade the CPU for
| something better, add 32 GB RAM, bigger storage etc.
|
| No GPIO pins though.
| II2II wrote:
| It depends upon how you look at it. Something like the
| Raspberry Pi is considerably more expensive. On the other hand,
| they started with a very low performance and weak feature set
| and have evolved into a product with good performance and a
| much richer feature set. Something like the Raspberry Pi Zero
| is much closer to the original Raspberry Pi, and its price is
| much closer to the original Raspberry Pi. Much of the price
| bloating features were a product of customer request. To be
| fair, they dropped many hints that it would increase the cost
| of the product.
|
| From my understanding, support has also improved over the
| years. Raspberry Pi always had a bit of an edge in community
| support, but they also had a push to develop free resources for
| education markets and hobbyists. The former has been
| traditionally been a high-priced add-on. The latter has
| traditionally been provided by third parties (more reasonably
| priced, but still at extra cost). None of this has disappeared,
| though it does appear to be less prominent than in the past.
|
| I think the big change is in the competition. SBCs were
| traditionally high cost poorly supported products or even
| higher cost well supported products (though you were unlikely
| to get support unless you were a business). Now we have a flood
| of low cost poorly supported products, albeit with slightly
| higher standards for support than in times past.
| Pxtl wrote:
| They've always felt overpriced to me imho - not intrinsically
| at the sticker-price level, but the workarounds needed to
| obtain constantly-out-of-stock units, get good-enough on/off
| functionality, good-enough power-supply, good-enough SD cards
| eliminated the savings of the device itself being cheap.
|
| I actually appreciate that the Pi5 has finally solved the
| on/off problem, and would be willing to pay the premium price
| for that when I'm interested in buying a new SBC.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| I think the price has stealthily increased as the required
| dressings got more demanding. Like the initial pi could be
| powered by any random phone charger you had laying around.
| But the new ones are a lot more picky and demanding. The new
| one also really demands a cooling solution, which is yet
| another cost the old one didn't have without being an actual
| MSRP increase.
|
| By the time you fully dress a pi now it's like $100-130. The
| pi itself is only like half the cost if that.
| Pxtl wrote:
| My first Pi was a 3 and even that one was picky as hell
| about its power supply.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > the Pi5 has finally solved the on/off problem
|
| Please do tell.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You pay for the OS support. Alternative SBCs are much harder to
| get working and develop on.
| pquki4 wrote:
| I think they are referring to those mini PCs -- either new
| ones from Chinese brands with Intel N100 or "refurbished thin
| clients" from HP or Dell -- that cost ~$150 but are way more
| powerful than a raspi in terms of performance and capability.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I was thinking of competitors like the orange pi, which is
| basically a raspberry pi clone with worse support.
|
| It's still works but I sent mine back with an about 3 days
| since I couldn't do all the things I could do on a
| raspberry pi.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Intel N100 or "refurbished thin clients" from HP or Dell
| -- that cost ~$150 but are way more powerful than a raspi
| in terms of performance and capability.
|
| Comparing a refurbished PC to an SBC is like comparing
| apples to oranges.
|
| I think the only people who are disappointed are the ones
| who were buying the wrong tool for the job.
|
| You get a Linux SBC if you need some combination of small
| size, low power, convenient access to peripherals (I2C,
| SPI, and so on) or other unique features.
|
| If you really only need the most powerful computer you can
| get for your budget and you don't care about the SBC
| features, you probably shouldn't have been buying Raspberry
| Pis to begin with.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I think it will be a good thing to get rid of the people
| using Raspberry Pi as cheap desktops. It was always a
| compromise before cheap little computers were available.
| Now that they are, the Pi can go back to being hobby
| computer.
|
| There are lots of projects that need a small cheap
| computer that doesn't really need display.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I agree, and I would add that I think this IPO is the beginning
| of the end of what we were used to.
|
| The company will end up the way many companies go after an IPO,
| the importance of product drops in relation to that of
| shareholder profit.
| klysm wrote:
| What are the much better alternatives? I'm not really aware of
| any
| Narishma wrote:
| > Now a days they feel overpriced and underpowered
|
| They've been underpowered since day 1. That hasn't stopped them
| being successful.
| webdoodle wrote:
| Hopefully this will give the average consumer the ability to give
| some direction as to the development of new versions. I'd very
| much like to see a new PI that doesn't have wifi, bluetooth or
| any other wireless technology.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Why? They had that with the zero... I'm guessing those sold a
| lot less.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| They have specifically limited consumer's ability to purchase
| the Zero's, so there's definately more demand for them than
| they're selling.
| Yeroc wrote:
| I don't see any connection between going public and giving the
| average consumer more input into the direction of the company.
| Making a company public means the company is beholden to
| operating in a way that maximizes return to the shareholders.
| Sure an average consumer can buy shares in the company but the
| average consumer isn't going to be sitting on the board.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Hopefully this will give the average consumer the ability to
| give some direction as to the development of new versions.
|
| Will give the average investor the ability to give some
| direction as to the development of new versions.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Makes me sad that they'll now have to increase profits forever,
| instead of functioning on their mission and doing what's right.
| This may mean moving manufacturing to China, using lower cost
| components, etc etc.
| graphe wrote:
| What is "right"? They haven't been a good value for over 2
| years.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The goal hasn't ever been about producing a device cheaply.
| It's about supporting education, encouraging tinkering and
| changing attitudes [1]
|
| [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/
| FredPret wrote:
| Every altruistic thing is easier if you're trying to do it
| with a $10 product rather tham a $100 product, all else
| being equal
| davidgnz wrote:
| Good thing they still offer a $10 product then - the
| Raspberry Pi Zero.
| raegis wrote:
| "...hasn't ever been..." is not true. Someone above posted
| an earlier statement from the archive.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Good value for what? They have never been good value as
| desktops because the early ones were too slow. Now there are
| better little computers.
|
| But as hobby computer, they are still a good value. There are
| faster boards and cheaper boards, but which ones are good?
| More importantly, which ones will be supported in five years?
| How easy it to install software? I read about distro that
| promises support, but then have to check the list of hardware
| it supports.
|
| I have six year old Pi 3. I can install latest 64-bit OS on
| it. For my plans, something small and low power is an
| advantage.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Hardkernel has supported their ARM boards for 10+ years.
| The Odroid XU3/XU4 line, for example, was released a decade
| ago and still has active development from the manufacturer
| with recent kernels and images.
| nsteel wrote:
| I was really excited about those hardkernel boards 10
| years until I got one and found I had to use their
| outdated custom version of Ubuntu and still half of it
| didn't work.
|
| I assume things have gotten better since then but they
| don't have 10+ years of good support.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah. I just don't see how they could possibly grow in a way
| that satisfies the stock market. The only way to create an
| appearance of such growth is to go Boeing and essentially burn
| down the house for warmth. For an organization like this, it's
| basically always step one on an irreversible death spiral.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| From my experience doing IT in industrial manufacturing,
| there is a ton of room for them to replace expensive PLCs
| where they aren't really needed. The company that makes the
| big fancy automated machines also make the simpler auxillary
| ones that supplement their main offerings. Since they know
| how to build with PLCs, that's what they use instead of
| sticking a Pi or some small form PC in it instead. Stuff like
| barcode readers on a manufacturing line or some simple piece
| of QA equipment at the end of the line measuring the height
| of a bottle or something. Adds thousands of dollars to the
| BoM but is complete overkill.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| There's strong diminishing returns in this sort of growth.
| With anything, you can optimize it until you can't. The
| market requires you to grow forever. How will Raspberry Pi
| Ltd still be growing in 50 years when the entire orchard of
| low hanging fruit is long since picked barren?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I don't know, how does any other company do it?
| chrisjj wrote:
| > From my experience doing IT in industrial manufacturing,
| there is a ton of room for them to replace expensive PLCs
| where they aren't really needed.
|
| From my experience with PLCs, they are hardened and robust
| to the extreme degree required by the harsh environments in
| which they are used. Last time I looked, the R Pi was the
| complete opposite. It can be crashed by just a nearby
| camera flash, and then leave its SD card corrupt to boot.
| Fine for hobbyists (apparently). Not fine for industrial
| applications.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Right, I'm not suggesting they replace critical PLCs.
| They are overused in places where those requirements
| aren't necessary just because PLCs are what their
| engineers know.
| alangibson wrote:
| Compute Modules are targeted squarely at industry.
| Environmental hardening is provided by the cabinet you
| install them in.
|
| I built an RPi 4 based plasma cutter and I've never had a
| crash. You don't get more EM interference than that,
| short of putting it in a microwave.
| mike_d wrote:
| > From my experience doing IT in industrial manufacturing,
| there is a ton of room for them to replace expensive PLCs
| where they aren't really needed
|
| Just for fun try to find a way to get a Pi mounted up to a
| DIN rail with an enclosure that can resist industrial
| vibration and has good particulate penetration/filtering
| and ruggedized connectors. Good luck finding accessories
| that aren't 3D printed with materials that will break down
| when coated in machine oil or in direct sunlight.
|
| Now try to figure out how to get whatever monster you built
| installed in an ISO 9001 or AS 9100 shop.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Again, I'm not talking about machinery that actually
| needs PLCs, I get that. A lot of stuff doesn't have
| vibrations, temperature, safety issues etc. but is built
| around PLCs out of tradition and BoM reasons.
|
| "Here's our end of the production line fan that blows
| dust off of your product for $4k because we used a PLC."
| There is lots of stuff like that that just has no
| business using a PLC.
| mike_d wrote:
| I (thank god) got out of manufacturing IT around 2000 but
| I still have friends working in that industry. A guy I
| know makes an absolute fortune frankensteining old MFM
| drives together and fixing resistors on 10base-T network
| cards because someone thought the exact same thing and
| subbed out a PLC for a computer to save a few bucks.
|
| Trust me, I loathe PLCs, but Allen Bradley will still
| sell you a drop in replacement for something the now
| retired previous guy put in service 15 years ago.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah I'm out of it now too. You still have the same
| issues running PLCs. I've had to find old ass network
| cards on EBAY. I understand why PLCs are used. I turned
| down a project building a machine using Arduino's and
| raspberry Pi's because it was inappropriate for the
| application. But there is definitely a subset of
| manufacturing equipment that doesn't require PLCs. I've
| already seen it happening scanning networks and seeing
| devices show up with RPi MACs.
| pxx wrote:
| The first order bit of better outreach is a low price point,
| which they've completely lost the plot on.
|
| If going public is what takes them to realize it, I'll cheer it
| on.
| rvz wrote:
| That prediction was just too easy [0], and it has now been
| finally admitted.
|
| Time to them to dump their shares on the community.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28773122
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| I badly wish that chip manufacturers were required to produce
| single board computers with their outdated inventory. Or at least
| offer the chips for sale with documentation to reduce e-waste.
|
| Apple's A* and M* chips for example should all be on SBCs.
|
| If you're going to consume earth's resources to produce these
| things, tell humanity how to repurpose them.
| imhoguy wrote:
| I would go even further - open specs and mass recycle billions
| of chips and boards of any obsolete mobile device (Samsung,
| Qualcomm, Apple....).
| moffkalast wrote:
| "Over my rotting corpse."
|
| - Tim Cook, probably
| rpmisms wrote:
| Let's normalize private industry again.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| My pension contributions need to go somewhere, and without a
| flow of new companies going public it's just gonna bid up and
| up the price of the old guard.
| nsteel wrote:
| There was a good interview with Eben Upton back in Feb on this
| topic (and others): https://hackaday.com/2024/02/28/floss-weekly-
| episode-772-ras...
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| If I had a dollar for every time I've seen the words "Shareholder
| Value". Hopefully that particular disease can be kept away for a
| while.
| incahoots wrote:
| The disease of Enshittification ?
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Whatever you call it, when you're beholden to the
| shareholders rather than your customers.
| Karellen wrote:
| Friedman's Malady
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Of course, perfect economics would assume maximizing long
| term shareholder value, which means not exploiting your
| customers. But "Shareholder Value" these days invariably
| means "short term share price" i.e. burn goodwill to make
| the shares spike in the next 5 years so they can be dumped
| profitably, and never mind what comes after.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| That would be cool. I would like to follow their journey. Their
| numbers, their earning calls etc.
|
| I would like to see more smaller tech companies on the stock
| market. The giants like Microsoft and Google are way to hard to
| understand because they have so many products and so much stuff
| in the pipeline.
|
| Are there any interesting examples of smaller tech companies
| which are publicly traded?
| nicce wrote:
| Not so sure.
|
| Interesting opposite: Valve
|
| Superior money milking machine without the pressure from
| shareholders, because they can focus into the benefits of the
| end users with few products and long term sustainability.
|
| No need to rush for increased profits every quarter so that
| someone can sell or admire their stocks.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Wild how far they are from their original stated goals. Maybe
| they were just full of it the whole time.
| mig39 wrote:
| Enshittification incoming.
| revscat wrote:
| Please no. They make good, beloved products that are fairly high
| quality.
| Nux wrote:
| How the enshittification begins..
| muyuu wrote:
| that would explain the focus on services like the VNC replacement
| they've released
|
| those won't be free for long
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Intel N100 has sent raspberry pi to the drawer.
| ein0p wrote:
| It's like $100 per board now once you add a power supply and a
| case. More if you also add storage. Cheapest Intel system on
| Amazon is $139. The whole point of the entire thing was its
| affordability. That was kind of lost along the way.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I don't think inflation is Rasberry Pi Ltds fault.
| chrisjj wrote:
| I don't think inflation is RPi's excuse either. It affects
| Intel too you know.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| On the other hand, a Pi zero is <$10. I remember them being $1
| at Microcenter for a time.
|
| Is the cheapest Intel system as power sipping as the Pi's?
| ein0p wrote:
| Pi is not particularly "power sipping" either. Not every usb
| brick is capable of powering today's Pi's, which indicates
| peak power draw of over 5W.
| int_19h wrote:
| Compared to Intel it still is - a 5V/3A brick is sufficient
| for all Pis, with Intel if you have USB power it's usually
| higher-voltage USB-C.
| pmlnr wrote:
| No, they aren't. You need 5.1 or 5.2v, otherwise you get
| stability issues. Learnt that the hard way.
| blipvert wrote:
| Then why buy a Pi5 if you don't have the juice?
|
| I can get a 1GB Pi3 model B shipped to my door for PS27
| which will run off of any mobile phone charger from the
| last five years (heck, I just plug mine directly into the
| USB socket built into the wall outlet) and connect it to
| any TV from the last ten years with a PS2 HDMI cable.
|
| Cut your cloth.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Here's a 6W, $99 intel system: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CK
| XL2MPM?ref=product_details&th=...
|
| An $80 Pi 5 is 25W.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I have a hard time believing that system only has 6W total
| power draw.
| pmlnr wrote:
| A friend did that with a ThinkPad x200 over a decade ago,
| so I can believe it easily.
| mbesto wrote:
| > The whole point of the entire thing was its affordability
|
| No, not really. If it was just affordability you could buy a
| used ProLiant server for the same price on Facebook Marketplace
| and have 20x the computing power.
|
| Raspi has been about the perfect balance of: power consumption,
| affordability, form factor, and computational capability all in
| one.
|
| If you can manage your project with a unit that is roughly 2x
| the form factor, you can get the same power consumption
| (less?!) with an N100, at the same cost, but double the
| processing power: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-
| raspberry_pi_5_b_b...
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think the real differentiator is support. There is so much
| hardware and software support for Raspbery Pi. This is why I
| use them.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| It's something like "the iphone" of SBCs at this point.
| Many others are using it and writing about it specifically,
| and it's pretty damn commodity. If you break one, another
| can (since the supply crunch) be sourced pretty quickly and
| easily and just dropped in where the old one was.
| mike_d wrote:
| No, it was absolutely about affordability and education. Pi
| was never about compute power, it was focused on a general
| purpose CPU that ran Linux and had I/O that enabled
| tinkering.
|
| They lost their way trying to cater to businesses that wanted
| Pis to drive digital signage or be the basis of some IoT
| deployment.
|
| "The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity [...]
| We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-
| cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to
| children. We expect this computer to have many other
| applications both in the developed and the developing world."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110506002027/https://www.raspb.
| ..
| dijit wrote:
| This was also the appeal, despite using binary blobs and
| some incredibly unfortunate design decisions (ethernet over
| USB for example), people loved these little things because
| they were cheap to a fault- intended to be almost
| disposable for education purposes. All can be forgiven with
| cost saving as the goal.
|
| That has definitely been lost; they are still excellent
| education devices, but at the pricepoint I would have a pit
| in my stomach buying a couple hundred for students...
| assuming I could even get them of course.
| genman wrote:
| False. I was an early adopter and the price was the main
| point of RPi - there were also more powerful and expensive
| boards from different companies.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The lower-end, power-efficient market is being rapidly devoured
| by the ESP32. A $20 Pi will still use much more power than an
| ESP32 while also being less reliable and still 3x the price.
|
| The RPi company looked into the future and saw microcontrollers
| eating the lower end of the market, which is why they are now
| chasing performance.
|
| Unfortunately IMO they are not executing on this well. The RPi
| 5 requires 5V at 5 amps to run properly. It's now near-
| impossible to run via the 5V header pins, no existing power
| supplies can support it, and at 25W of power consumption the
| Intel systems you mention are now serious competition.
|
| EDIT: actually it's worse than that. Here's a $99 Intel system
| that claims 6W power consumption:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKXL2MPM?ref=product_details&th=...
|
| Aside from GPIO headers it's hard to justify a Pi 5 over that
| on any grounds.
| writeslowly wrote:
| The ESP32 seems like a very different product to me. The pi
| has megabytes/gigabytes of memory and can reasonably run
| linux. Were people really using them for the same things?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I think the Pi is for people who want to run Linux and also
| be able to direct-drive voltage pins. Cheap intel systems
| are way better at running linux, and esp32s are way better
| at driving the voltage pins, but the former doesn't offer
| easy hardware-pin accessibility through python and the
| latter has you figuring out which filesystem library to
| compile into your binary.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > the latter has you figuring out which filesystem
| library to compile into your binary
|
| For what many people are doing with them, ESPHome has
| simplified the process to programming an ESP32 to do what
| they want down to nearly nothing.
|
| "Running Linux and being able to direct-drive voltage
| pins" is certainly still an existing market, but it is
| rapidly being encroached upon in both directions.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Yes! This is the space PI is still best for, in my
| opinion. The intel SBC achieve GPIO by adding a
| microcontroller to the board (as far as I know), but with
| PI you can drive those pins directly.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I've personally used Pis for things much better suited to
| microcontrollers, many many times, purely because I
| understood Linux and did not understand how to program
| microcontrollers.
|
| Now, the tooling around ESP32s is so good that that's no
| longer a reason. I would never reach for a Pi over an ESP32
| unless I _need_ something an ESP cannot offer, like USB
| ports or compute or gigabytes of memory.
| greggsy wrote:
| The ESP32 is meeting the needs of people doing IOT things
| that they used to do on the Pi.
|
| Why deploy a $25 Pi for a custom weather controller that
| uses ~2.5w, when a $5 ESP can can do the same thing on
| 25mW, and run off a battery?
|
| ESP32 is obviously not a desktop or server platform.
| Personally, I don't think Pi's are either: flaky and fussy
| power requirements, and packages aren't always cross
| compiled to arm64. I've wasted enough time compiling my own
| packages, and encountered my share of random issues that
| I'll never use it as a server platform again.
| golem14 wrote:
| Maybe off-topic, but are there good solutions for
| esp32/other microcontrollers controlling zigbee devices ?
|
| I found a bunch of libraries (e.g.,
| https://github.com/espressif/esp-zigbee-sdk), but nothing
| that seems easily usable as a zigbee controller/hub to
| flip switches in the house, out of the box.
|
| OTOH, running home assistant on a pi is monstrous: overly
| general and bloated for my use case, need a beefy Pi to
| get decent performance and not need >1 minute to reboot
| after a power outage.
| nsteel wrote:
| They designed and built their own microcontroller. This
| chasing performance narrative doesn't make sense.
|
| And let's be real, it doesn't have 25W power consumption. You
| can attach enough things to it to get to 25W if you try
| really hard but that's hardly the same thing. The latest
| cheapo Intel parts are contenders (at ~10W, where the pi 5
| actually operates) and if you just want perf you're better
| off with that. But if you want a low-level connectivity, a
| rich community, docs, and tailor-made projects, you still
| want a pi.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Yes, they made a microcontroller to compete with the ESP32,
| but the ESP32 has orders of magnitude more market share and
| ecosystem. Not to diminish what they accomplished with the
| RP2040; it's an impressive chip.
|
| But as for whether they're chasing performance, the RP2040
| isn't their flagship product. The Pi 5 is.
|
| And I've had a Pi 5, under heavy CPU (not peripheral) load,
| start throwing undervoltage warnings when using a 5V3A
| power supply from a Pi 4.
| nsteel wrote:
| https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21
|
| Power Idle power draw (at wall): 1.8 W
| (See note) Maximum simulated power draw (stress-
| ng --matrix 0): 9.7 W During Geekbench multicore
| benchmark: 7.9 W During top500 HPL benchmark: 11
| W (2.75 Gflops/W)
| margalabargala wrote:
| Huh. Maybe I had a bad power supply, then. Interesting.
|
| This is compellingly saying that I was too hasty in
| assuming the low voltage warnings were from the 18W
| supply topping out. Thank you for this.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The RP2040 isn't a very compelling microcontroller though.
| The only interesting thing about it is the programmable
| peripherals, but we've seen that before, e.g. from XMOS and
| in practice the protocols & peripherals you're going to use
| 99.9% of the time are completely standard - I2C, SPI, I2S,
| UART, counters/PWM, etc. For the rare case you need
| something custom and high speed there are really cheap
| FPGAs now.
|
| The ESP32 supports all of those protocols _and_ Wifi and
| Bluetooth, _and_ it has low power sleep modes. And there
| are RISC-V versions which is quite nice from a a warm fuzzy
| point of view.
|
| I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics
| projects where you want GPIO. I don't think people are
| going to use it as a standard computer (desktop / media
| server / etc) though.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| XMOS was around for a long time, but for whatever reason
| I never saw it used much. There are so many RP2040
| projects floating around on github now, showcasing the
| programmable IO ports. That's very helpful if you want to
| tinker with something yourself.
| 05 wrote:
| > I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics
| projects where you want GPIO.
|
| But any sane design would offload the IO to a more
| capable MCU that has more than a single SPI channel,
| among other weird limitations.. Sure, hobbyists often do
| weird things, but the niche for RPi is pretty much
| 'basically a computer, but you could theoretically blink
| an LED' - the actual experience of using those
| peripherals is much worse that what you'd have in Arduino
| or Platformio. Try attaching an interrupt handler to a
| GPIO pin on Linux, now you need to write a kernel module
| :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| That's probably an N100. Its actual TDP is 15 watts, but it
| works reasonably well when capped at 6W.
|
| They are good devices, but they are bigger than Pi and are
| whiny. Their fans never turns off and creates background
| noise. I have quite a few of them.
|
| On the other hand, Pi's 25W contains tons of overhead for
| other devices. A 5TB external hard drive still requires way
| more power than a 1 TB one or an SSD.
| mianos wrote:
| I have 2 n100 boxes and none of them have fans at all. Set
| at 9W and never had a problem so far.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Interesting. All models I have found had fans.
|
| It's easy to dissipate 9 watts with some clever design.
| arnavpraneet wrote:
| To pile on here, every Pi I have used (like a dozen at this
| point) worked fine for years, Pi 5 bricked itself randomly
| within 4 months of purchase with the complete accessory sets
| installed (coolers/case etc.) Left a bad taste to blow my
| savings as a student on the newest and greatest Pi to tinker
| around with, and it bricks, when the second hand heavily used
| 4s and 3Bs work fine with constant years of use.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| I thought the point of RPi s easy connectivity to spi, i2c,
| pwm, and gpio with a powerful(1) filesystem and network stack
| behind it. What easy way to give a NUC spi, i2c, pwm, and gpio?
|
| (1) esp-idf is not in the same league as linux.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Latest Raspberry Pis are expensive but also quite powerful. If
| you want a cheap single board computer that can run Linux, you
| have the Pi Zero ($15). You also have the Pico ($4), which is
| an alternative to the ESP32.
| m463 wrote:
| They cost more than that on amazon.
| LM358 wrote:
| I find this amazon obsession with people on the internet (I
| assume Americans) to be baffling and disturbing, it's
| always amazon this, prime that _every_ _time_ the concept
| of purchasing something online comes up.
|
| Mouser has the Zero for 15$, 16$ if you want presoldered
| GPIO headers. 4$ for a Pico. RS Online has them for 4.25$.
| There are probably hundreds of vendors that offer them for
| the same price if you plop the term into your favorite
| search engine. Amazon is the last place I'd look, but then
| again I absolutely do not understand this mindset that
| online shopping == amazon that some people seem to have.
|
| e: formatting
| madmask wrote:
| It's just convenience and trust. No need to input
| addressess or make another account plus good return
| policies.
| m463 wrote:
| Amazon usually reflects the final cost of an item.
|
| If amazon is overpriced, the item might not be available
| from other channels/requires lots of work to get.
|
| Another (related) point is that amazon is less risky than
| other options. You can usually get something cheaper from
| ebay/alibaba/banggood/etc
|
| Somebody always has some nitpicky example, but in my
| experience amazon has reliable shipping and a predictable
| low-friction way of getting a replacement or your money
| back if something goes wrong.
| vasco wrote:
| You make it sound like it's either Amazon or chinese crap
| made to last 2 minutes.
| xienze wrote:
| > Mouser has the Zero for 15$
|
| With $8 shipping that will take ??? days. Meanwhile they
| have one for $19 on Amazon with two day shipping and no
| need to register on some other site for a one-off
| purchase.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| You can get a SFFPC with 7th Gen i5 for like $40. Apart from
| low power cost and form factor (and I guess gpio), you would
| probably just get the SFFPC
| 1-6 wrote:
| And overall size. I hope they build more smaller form factors
| like the Pico and the Zero. That's what differentiates them and
| the rest.
| rychco wrote:
| Farewell Raspberry Pi.
|
| What are some alternative boards with comparable specs?
| Kye wrote:
| Hiring a proud surveillance cop to sell surveillance cop stuff to
| governments must have been a boon if they're considering an IPO.
| Zero consequences for being assholes to critics then lying about
| the criticism to the press.
| chrisjj wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/zh51l4/raspberr...
| szundi wrote:
| R
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| Can you buy the shares in Australia?
| lrvick wrote:
| Do not do it!
|
| The mission was always to produce quality low cost computers for
| hobbyists and kids with open source software.
|
| The moment you IPO you will have shareholders demanding you put
| profit before people and the users will always lose in that deal.
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