[HN Gopher] The Raspberry Pi 5 Is No Match for a Tini-Mini-Micro PC
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The Raspberry Pi 5 Is No Match for a Tini-Mini-Micro PC
Author : louwrentius
Score : 290 points
Date : 2024-06-16 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (louwrentius.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (louwrentius.com)
| louwrentius wrote:
| Depending on what you want to do, the Pi may still be a good
| option, yet I think it's good that people are aware of
| alternatives such as these second-hand mini PCs.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Advantages of Raspberry Pi: No fans, no moving parts, no dust.
| Huge amount of software, documentation, support available.
| linux2647 wrote:
| Though a fan is recommended for the 4 and 5 models
| agumonkey wrote:
| what software is rpi only ? honest question
| pmalynin wrote:
| Not sure if this is still the case but I thought you could
| get a free version of Wolfram Mathematica for RPI for free
| hinkley wrote:
| Running Mathematica on underpowered hardware lead me to
| hate Macs for over a decade.
|
| I have concerns.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's available, but not free. The language server is free
| for all linuxes, sans data.
| ddulaney wrote:
| Almost everything can be modified or configured to run on
| another system, but it's pretty common for RPi to be the
| default or best-tested platform.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| A bit niche, but one software I use for my Raspberry Pi
| powered 3d printer is camera-streamer:
| https://github.com/ayufan/camera-streamer
|
| It provides a WebRTC stream for a USB camera (or Pi Camera,
| what I'm using). Rather than the old, inefficient, low-
| quality MJPEG stream. The software itself will run on
| anything, but the WebRTC only works on a Pi for now.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Huge amount of software compared to?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Mostly other options with no fans, dust, or moving parts.
|
| The fact that you can run a Linux on it means you can tap
| into a big ecosystem of existing software. Nice to have.
| dingnuts wrote:
| good question -- methinks the GP didn't read the article.
|
| the rpi does have a ton of software compared to other SBCs,
| but the article is about fking x86 machines.
|
| With power consumption so low on some of these, I feel like
| they defeat most of the benefit of ARM and you get way more
| native software on x86
| TillE wrote:
| If you're doing stuff with the GPIO, I'm sure there's far
| more software written for the Raspberry Pi than anything
| else.
|
| If you're just using it like a normal computer, then it's not
| special.
| michaelt wrote:
| There is more and better GPIO support for Arduino, ESP32
| and STM32 than anything Linux based.
| tyingq wrote:
| I would add GPIO pins that are also well documented.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi 5's official heatsink comes with a fan and its
| collection of software is dwarfed by what's available for a x86
| PC regardless of whether it's running Linux or Windows.
| distances wrote:
| That fan stays idle on low loads, and if you wanted you could
| also leave it unplugged to just rely on the heatsink.
|
| Then again, N100 can also be bought with passive cooling. But
| not so sure how the mini PCs of the article would fare
| without a fan.
| jki275 wrote:
| I've been running a fanless mini-pc as a firewall for
| years. They work just fine. The ones you get from
| aliexpress come in a case where half of the case is a
| massive heat sink, and it will get a little bit warm.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > you could also leave it unplugged to just rely on the
| heatsink.
|
| You can also expect your hardware to have a shorter life.
| distances wrote:
| Pi will automatically throttle before running too hot.
| And in any case, I doubt most people run their Pis hard
| at all. I bet most use cases will be completely fine even
| without that heatsink, with no compromise on the
| lifespan.
| 42lux wrote:
| Mhm...
|
| mini PC:
|
| [X] No fans available with atoms or i3s
|
| [X] No moving parts
|
| [X] x86... Huge amount of software
|
| [X] documentation
|
| The only thing is support but the raspberry foundation is also
| not really helpful if you go into the nitty gritty parts.
| lomereiter wrote:
| For some Mini PCs there are fanless cases, e.g. from Akasa:
| https://akasa.co.uk/update.php?tpl=list%2FCHASSIS+POWER.tpl&...
|
| I've got one of those, and it houses a system with 8 CPU cores,
| 32 GB RAM (can be upgraded to 64 if need be), 1 TB NVMe and 4
| TB SSD - and it's all inside, whereas with an RPi the SSD would
| have to be external. The only thing that's collecting dust now
| is the old RPi.
| RenThraysk wrote:
| Rugged Intel NUCs have no fans.
| nisa wrote:
| Nice overview, another venue worth looking at is thin clients.
| Some models like the Fujitsu Futro s740 are passive cooled, draw
| only 3-4w idle, can encode hevc in hardware and support up to
| 16gb memory and a nvme drive. There is a nice overview here:
| https://github.com/R3NE07/Futro-S740/blob/main/README_EN.md
|
| Another very similar alternative with support for 32g memory and
| dual channel is the Dell wyse 5070
| https://github.com/pflavio/Dell-Wyse-5070-Home-Server/wiki
|
| These can be brought used for around 60-80EUR on eBay.
|
| For about 150EUR you can buy new Intel n100 mini computers on Ali
| express with similar low idle power but vastly better top
| performance.
| sspiff wrote:
| I've been using some of these off-brand n100 mini PCs as a
| homelab cluster for the past year or so.
|
| Their physical size is smaller than a Raspberry Pi with case,
| and performance is more than twice a RPi5. And you get full x86
| software compatibility. Idle power is around 4-5W measured from
| the wall.
| IndySun wrote:
| Perhaps the title could have been "2nd Hand Tiny Mini Micro PCs
| are a match for new Raspberry Pi 5s in many aspects"?
| Teknomancer wrote:
| Agreed. The whole premise of this article is absurd. An apples
| to oranges a comparison. The Pi is a platform for embedded
| systems development and design. And is excellent for what it is
| designed for. It's not a desktop workstation.
| louwrentius wrote:
| This blog post is not even talking about the role of these
| machines as a desktop workstation.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Has anyone else had thermal management problems with the pi5? I
| have one running just a couple of servers tucked away on a shelf
| and a corner of a room, and I find myself needing to physically
| recycle power on the thing about once every few days (This on top
| of the daily auto reboot script I have set up as a cron job). I
| suspect the Wi-Fi is overheating it.
| floating-io wrote:
| Also check your USB cables if they're supplying power. Low-
| quality cables are notorious causes of instability with older
| Pi's, and I doubt the 5 is any different in that respect.
| Neywiny wrote:
| I think these are great options for where pis aren't needed. Over
| the years I've seen a deluge of "I needed a microcontroller but
| didn't know what that was so I used a pi" and "I needed little
| more than a docker image but I didn't know what that was so I
| used a pi". The pi really comes in handy when you need the combo
| of the 2. Otherwise, people are just jacking up the price for
| those who really do need it. And that's not me, but rather people
| I've known who had great use cases and couldn't buy them.
| bmitc wrote:
| After having bought Pis and then sold them all, I've never
| understood them. The Pico and Pi Zero seem to have a place, but
| the performance of the big Pi is so bad, it's rather pointless
| as an "embedded" computer or general purpose computer with a
| display.
| nkozyra wrote:
| For an embedded computer you basically need to go bare metal
| with Circle or something similar.
|
| But then I'd wonder what you're building because there are
| powerful microcontrollers you can buy for $15/1 that will
| handle anything with basic networking and sensors. I know
| some musical synthesizers are made with rPi4 and I'm
| befuddled that they're not the most powerful synths ever
| made.
|
| I think they oddest one out is the Arduino line, which is
| generally underpowered and expensive compared to just having
| a drawer of esp32s sitting around.
| jki275 wrote:
| Arduino pre-dates the existence of ESP, at least in the
| western market.
|
| Also, Arduino as I think you're using it here is really
| just slang for AVR microcontroller dev boards.
|
| Arduino isn't actually that, it's a boot loader and a
| highly simplified set of libraries to interact with a wide
| variety of microcontrollers including ESP-32 and what
| people traditionally think of as "Arduino" meaning the
| branded dev boards labelled that way.
|
| Of course the whole Arduino ecosystem is basically garbage,
| but it does help beginners get into the idea of doing
| embedded things.
| imtringued wrote:
| The Arduino "line" is a bunch of dev boards. The attiny40
| chips cost less than $0.50 at high volumes.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Well yeah I'm just saying they have a lot of overlap in
| the market with rPi despite being a much less powerful,
| different thing.
|
| Getting started with esp32 dev board is cheaper, more
| powerful, and not any harder, so I don't understand their
| niche.
| akira2501 wrote:
| A embedded computer using microSD for main storage should be
| a non starter for any serious application. They fail far too
| easily given the bad thermal layout on the board. You can get
| the larger ones to boot USB, but the smaller ones obviously
| can't.
|
| I've got a guy who loves running these things, but calls me
| every other month because one of his images fails, and he
| needs help rebuilding it. So far I doubt he's saved himself
| any effort, time or money.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| This is so true. Back when I used to use reddit, I had to leave
| the raspberry pi subreddit for this reason. 95% of the projects
| only needed a small C program and microcontroller but instead
| used a full blown OS and Python. It drove me nuts.
| afavour wrote:
| The Pi method sounds 1000x more approachable to a beginner.
| Which is it exactly where the Pi shines. I see nothing wrong
| with it.
| beardyw wrote:
| The pi has a lot of exposed pins and associated hardware
| capabilty. That was an intrinsic part of it's design. It's what
| got me interested in electronics again. Any comparison should
| include that. It was never meant to be just a computer.
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| Depends on what youre comparing. Some people buy a pi just to
| run home assistant or some other compute task
| moffkalast wrote:
| So you're saying that the Pi is a proverbial Toyota Hilux and
| people are buying it to highway commute to work and back
| instead of using it for what it was meant for, and then
| saying it compares poorly to sedan? Yea, no shit.
|
| If you're not using the GPIO or any of the ribbon cable
| peripherals there are much better options out there. But a Pi
| will be able to do things those machines never will.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I think they are comparing a $700 micro PC to an $80
| Raspberry pi, but pretending they are in the same price
| range since the micro PC is available cheap in the refurb
| market.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Not only are they very different in price, the micro PC
| is 10x the size. Size doesn't matter for all uses, but
| there are going to be things where a Pi will fit but
| these micro PCs won't.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I got one recently that was PS159 (1.4x the 8GB Pi 5
| starter kit) for a 16GB i3-8109U (with 500GB SSD) and is
| just about 3x the volume of the Argon Neo 5 case for the
| Pi 5 (113 x 127 x 43mm vs 94 x 70 x 30mm).
|
| Doesn't change the "[places] where a Pi will fit but
| these micro PCs won't" assertion but the pricing and
| sizing are not as egregious as you're suggesting.
| ekianjo wrote:
| NUCs are very similar in size
| nine_k wrote:
| No, an apt comparison would be with a PC like a used
| ThinkCentre off eBay, where $50 buys you an i5 with 8 GB
| RAM and a real SSD.
| amluto wrote:
| You don't need to pay that much. For example, Minisforum
| is selling a barebones MS-01 for $399 new. This isn't
| quite apples to apples -- the Raspberry Pi includes RAM
| (but not much), whereas the MS-01 includes a case, a
| cooling system, a power supply, and an RTC battery. (And
| the MS-01 uses a non-janky 19V supply, whereas the
| Raspberry Pi 5 wants a weird not-to-spec not-quite-sure-
| what-they-were-thinking 5V USB supply by default.)
|
| For the price, you get massively more CPU power, 3x the
| number of easily connectable NVMe devices, at higher
| bandwidth each, 22x (!) the network bandwidth, and the
| ability to connect a real multi-lane PCIe card of your
| choice.
|
| I still find it sad that NVMe is an afterthought in the
| Raspberry Pi ecosystem. SD is convenient, but it's also
| slooooow, and it holds back a lot of raspberry pi use
| cases. The new-to-RPi5 official NVMe support still seems
| really awkward in the way it interferes with the overall
| thermal performance and the way it interferes with the IO
| header if you use the official board.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _You don't need to pay that much. For example, Minisforum
| is selling a barebones MS-01 for $399 new_
|
| That doesn't really change my point that they are
| comparing the Pi to a PC that costs 4 - 8 times more (and
| in a much larger formfactor), so it's not surprising that
| it's faster.
| justinsaccount wrote:
| > 22x (!) the network bandwidth
|
| It's 25x, the copper ports are 2.5g. It's even more if
| you use the usb-4 ports for ip over thunderbolt.
| mech422 wrote:
| Checkout the odroid H+ series...about $125 for full x86
| passively cooled system with dual nics, up to 32G of RAM,
| sata and m.2, etc.
| mrighele wrote:
| For $150 you can get a new mini pc with a low power intel
| cpu (e.g. N100) and 8GB of Ram. It comes with an SSD, a
| power supply and (gasp) a case. Add those to a raspberry
| pi and the price is not much different.
| manojlds wrote:
| I have been looking at a N100, are they good in general
| as a Pi alternative. I am mostly looking at running K8s
| and running apps and running things like Pihole
| squarefoot wrote:
| $700? Here's one with 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC and Linux
| already installed at $87,49. New.
|
| https://t.ly/S-OW6 (shortened Amazon link)
|
| Now the 4020 isn't certainly a monster, but I can assure
| you it's way more performant than a RPi. Also, bear in
| mind that, as is the case with many Chinese products,
| those mini PCs are produced in huge quantities and sold
| under at least a dozen different ever changing "brands".
| Don't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is
| something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name
| could certainly be thrown away but the product will most
| certainly reincarnate under another "brand".
| yumraj wrote:
| Linux already installed from a Chinese vendor.
|
| I guess it's subsidized by the malwares that come
| preinstalled.
| squarefoot wrote:
| OK I understand the RPi must have very good press, but
| nitpicking every part of a message just to find something
| to attack isn't constructive. Linux preinstalled means
| that Linux works out of the box, that is, you don't even
| have to search around for Linux compatibility with any of
| the peripherals inside that mini PC. Of course I would
| never ever trust anything preinstalled, neither Linux nor
| Windows, just as I got rid of stock Android on my
| recently bought Pixel 7 in favor of GrapheneOS like 2
| hours after unboxing it. I only meant about
| compatibility, certainly I wasn't suggesting that anyone
| runs unknown software from China.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I got the $700 figuring by looking up the list price of
| one of the mini PC's mentioned in the article, which use
| an Intel i5-6500 or AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 2200GE CPU (which
| each have 4 cores @ 3.6Ghz), I think if they'd compared
| against a 2 core 2.8Ghz Celeron, it would have been more
| evenly matched. The Raspberry Pi 5 beats the 4020 in both
| single and multi-core performance in this benchmark:
|
| https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-
| raspberry_pi_5_b_b...
|
| _Don 't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is
| something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name
| could certainly be thrown away but the product will most
| certainly reincarnate under another "brand"._
|
| Does that matter? If it dies in 2 months and I can't find
| the manufacturer because it's operating under a different
| name now, is that any different than if the manufacturer
| folded completely?
| squarefoot wrote:
| The manufacturer is the same, what dies is the brand
| name; the very same product is just being packaged in a
| box with another name. I mean, you shouldn't place too
| much importance in the name, just look at the real iron
| inside the box. We, as westerners, are used to give a lot
| of importance to brand names, possibly because it comes
| from the old times when brand names identified products
| with the families that created them; that is completely
| different from how it works in far east today.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The reason I give importance to the brand name is because
| if the company has been around for a decade (or many
| decades), it's likely to still be around in a year or two
| to give me support when the product fails.
|
| If the company resurrects itself every 6 months under a
| different name, then there's effectively no warranty on
| the product and there's no reason to think that it's
| built to be long lasting, since even bad reviews won't
| show up under the new brand name.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I'm not sure whether to assume you either are clueless or
| whether to assume you're actively working to try to
| sabotage perception.
|
| No one's gonna recommend an ancient middling mini-PC that
| costs vastly more than a modern current mini-PC.
|
| Either go on the secondary market & get this old PC for
| under $100. Or go get some modern Ryzen mini-PC for $500.
| Or a decent n100 for somewhere in between, especially if
| you insist on new for some reason.
| mech422 wrote:
| Personally, I'm a fan of the odroid H+ series - full x86
| SOC with dual nics, and some on-board gpu stuff for $125.
| I have 3 of the old H2 series and I love them.
| imtringued wrote:
| Bmax B1 Pro costs less than $130 for 8GB RAM and it comes
| with 128GB storage and a case out of the box.
| nirav72 wrote:
| You can pick up something like an HP elitedesk g2 with
| 8th gen intel cpu for $100-120 on secondary markets. Most
| of them ship with at least 8gb ram and also a 500gb m.2
| drive. A 8th gen cpu will be many many times more
| powerful than even the rpi 5. In addition to having
| quicksync for hardware media transcoding. Something the
| Pi still cannot do via hardware. Not to mention, its x86
| - so lot more support over the ARM7
|
| Of course, if you size and the ability to interface with
| other hardware via GPIO is the primary use - then yeah a
| SBC like a Rpi would be the better option. But for a
| small home server, one is better off just buying a mini-
| PC.
| stavros wrote:
| I bought a few used NUCs for $150 each, they're _amazing_
| home servers. Much, much faster, more capable, more flexible
| than a Pi, at only twice the price.
| distances wrote:
| What do you use them for? I'm one of those that have
| Raspberry Pi 5 mostly just for Home Assistant. It's clearly
| overpowered for that use case, but I wanted the NVMe
| support. I'm not convinced by these articles -- used x86
| box that maybe achieves almost the same low power draw
| still doesn't have any actual upsides if you don't
| realistically need that computing power.
| stavros wrote:
| I have one where I deployed K9s so I can learn Kubernetes
| better, and one where I have deployed Harbormaster
| (http://harbormaster.readthedocs.io/).
|
| The Harbormaster one has a bunch of stuff (Zigbee2MQTT,
| my smart home stuff, my apps, etc. I have a Pi 4 that has
| Octoprint, services on the NUC load instantly whereas
| Octoprint feels a bit sluggish.
|
| The NUC _is_ an x86 (well, amd64) box, with a 10W power
| draw, which is great. I don 't think a desktop PC will do
| less than 100W...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| You can have full-size desktop PCs (large mobos, large
| GPU, multiple SSDs, fancy power supply) that idle at 20W.
| stavros wrote:
| Really? How? Mine is an order of magnitude more than
| that.
| nottorp wrote:
| Not sure about GPUs but I have a Ryzen 5 system under my
| desk which with the integrated graphics, 64 G ram and two
| SSDs idles at a little under 20 W.
|
| The M2 Mac Mini though idles at 12 or less...
| kccqzy wrote:
| I have a home server that stores and processes all my
| photos, using PhotoPrism. Things like face recognition
| does require a bit of a compute. A NUC is perfect for
| this use case.
| distances wrote:
| That's a nice use case, thanks for the tip about
| PhotoPrism!
| distances wrote:
| Just as a quick update after trying out: seems like a
| very nice local photo album service. The initial scan
| will take a long while, but looks like Pi5 is quite
| enough to handle the service after that completes. I will
| need a larger SSD for my Pi if I intend to keep all my
| photos in this, though.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I've got one that does PhotoPrism + other media (sabnzbd,
| gerbera, flexget) as a general "media storage" box, one
| that just runs a Minecraft server, and one that's
| "everything else" (currently Home Assistant, Grafana,
| Prometheus, my webcam bird detection stuff, NATS, etc.)
|
| Originally started with HA on a Pi 4 but it wasn't really
| up to it.
| bri3d wrote:
| This. The Pi is a great little real world <-> computer
| interface. The hat ecosystem is really cool. Using one as a
| general computer is foolish. Unfortunately each Pi generation
| seems to move more towards the computer case and away from the
| real-world one.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The RP2040 and pi zero are still very much not regular
| computers for desktop use:
|
| - https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2040/
|
| - https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/
| louwrentius wrote:
| The blog article is hosted on a Pi4, which also runs some
| python to manage the solar setup it is powered by.
|
| In particular I'm using the GPIO pins to drive the LCD display
| showing solar stats and a relay to disable/enable the inverter.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can add something like an Adafruit FT232H to the PC and
| still come out cheaper according to TFA's price calculation.
| afavour wrote:
| Yeah, the first thing you see on raspberrypi.org is:
|
| > Empowering young people to use computing technologies to
| shape the world
|
| With a link to learning resources. So the article is true but
| beside the point: the Pi 5 is no match for something the Pi
| isn't even aiming to be.
| manojlds wrote:
| They do talk a bit about it at the end with the solar powered
| setup they have.
| marricks wrote:
| Has the Raspberry Pi tripled in price since launch? I was
| skeptical of all these threads of "this is better" but it doesn't
| seem like it's as ridiculously affordable as it once was.
| michaelt wrote:
| The original Raspberry Pi had a single-core 700MHz CPU and
| 256MB RAM.
|
| Right now I can buy:
|
| Raspberry Pi 5, 2.4GHz Quad-core CPU, 8GB for PS76.80
|
| Raspberry Pi 4, 1.5GHz Quad-core CPU, 1GB RAM, for PS33.60
|
| Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, 1GHz Quad-core CPU, 512MB RAM, for
| PS14.40
|
| (None of those prices include SD card, PSU, case, or any
| peripherals)
|
| Is that a price rise, or just the high end getting higher?
| rr808 wrote:
| Remember when the Pi first came out, it was cheap for small hobby
| projects. Rpi 5 is $80? At these prices you might as well get a
| refurb x86 micro pc.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Please point to the GPIO pins on the refurb PC.
|
| The PI is about making hardware hacking accessible on a linux-
| based platform.
|
| A refurb PC fails horribly at that.
| numpad0 wrote:
| But what do you use Pi GPIO for? Using Pi GPIO directly
| leaves pins unconfigured or stuck while your app is inactive.
| Aren't most need for GPIO better served by Arduino + PC?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I have a Pi Zero W that is a spooky-good GPS-backed NTP
| server. It relies on GPIO for getting tightly-accurate PPS
| pulses from the GPS module (which a USB-connected Arduino
| won't help me with -- the timing would be much sloppier).
|
| I have also used a different Pi Zero W with an SDR dingle
| to decode APRS weather data, while also using GPIO to read
| a local DS18B20 temperature sensor and to switch a solid-
| state relay.
|
| I could have done this last thing with any random Linux-ey
| PC plus an Arduino, but then I'd have _two_ problems. (It
| would have also cost me rather substantially more money: I
| bought these Zero Ws very, very cheaply from Microcenter.)
| jki275 wrote:
| https://github.com/DennisSc/PPS-ntp-server
|
| Not mine, just something I found. I had a feeling one
| could run a GPS backed NTP server on a microcontroller
| without too much difficulty.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Cute, but missing some things that real ntpd on *nix
| offers.
|
| And I _like_ ntpd. I also like self-contained systems
| that I can tweak without using a compiler and a dev
| environment. I 'm a fairly competent computer user, but I
| have zero aspirations of being a programmer when I grow
| up.
|
| (If a Pi Zero W can do the job, then: Why must it not do
| that job?)
| demondemidi wrote:
| I don't think you understand how GPIO is used on a Raspbery
| Pi. You can flip GPIOs in a BASH script, or set events on
| them in Python. GPIOs are first-class citizens in Rpi land,
| which is what makes it so convenient: you get GPIOs +
| Linux, seamlessly.
|
| I have a Pi4 hooked up to a motion detector, a camera, a
| solenoid and some SCRs for a floodlight. A python script
| waits for an event interrupt from the motion detector on a
| GPIO. Then it turns on the lights and opens a door via
| GPIO, and starts recording in another thread (via a pipe to
| gstreamer). When the motion times out, it pushes the video
| to an private S3 bucket (using my own handshake for a token
| so that it can't be spammed).
|
| (I used to have some GPIOs connected to motorized cat toys
| so that I could trigger them remotely while watching an
| realtime stream, but that throttled the above camera which
| was more important.)
|
| ... It is also a BLE gateway that monitors 4 temperature
| sensors, and also pushes that data up to the cloud with
| another python script.
|
| ... and it also is an MQTT gateway for a few NXP WiFi
| devices scattered around the yard, and their data ... you
| guessed it... is pushed up to the cloud (they control
| sprinklers because BLE doesn't have the range). I can log
| into my personal website and turn sprinklers on from
| anywhere my phone works.
|
| Sure I could do the WiFi and BLE with a PC, but why waste
| the energy and space when I can use a tiny Pi that is
| already doing a bunch of other things?
|
| I just keep adding things to it because I have my own cloud
| system (HomeAssistant is a big fat bloated joke).
|
| Having a good BLE sensitivity and WiFi chip on a tiny linux
| board that runs dozens of python processes listening to
| GPIOs, and running Gstreamer would be too much of a hassle
| with a PC and far beyond an arduino.
| manfre wrote:
| I'd wager that most people are not using any GPIO on theirs.
| Typical usage is likely a low power computer they can
| optionally plug a USB cable into; 3d print controller, home
| assistant w/dongle, etc.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| I'm using AVR/STM for IO. have plenty of them around. Just
| loaded with a basic serial to IO passthrough program. Can't
| complain for PS2 each on aliexpress.
|
| EDIT: added STM.
| forinti wrote:
| You can still get a cheaper model. You don't have to buy a Pi
| 5.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Raspberry Pi 5 is $60 for 4 GB RAM. Raspberry Pi 1 was $35 in
| 2012, which is $50 just accounting for inflation.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Completely depends on intended use case. If your goal is good
| compute and connectivity, a used minipc or a new N100 is the
| obvious choice.
|
| If you need GPIO, the Pi is the obvious choice.
|
| I end up with multiple N100 systems and a single RaspberryPi.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Very much this. If you just need a small, low power computer to
| be a server or whatever, it's hard to beat used
| business/enterprise SFF computers or a new N100 based NUC.
|
| rPi's defining use case is as a microcontroller, it can also
| serve as just a computer but it most definitely isn't optimized
| for that.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Also worth considering getting the $6 Pi Pico microcontroller
| in such a pairing. Keeps the microcontroller capabilities at a
| lower cost and without having to maintain 2 operating systems
| across 2 different architectures.
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah, any PC can have GPIOs if you plug a cheap USB
| microcontroller into it. That's more or less how the Pi5
| works internally anyway, as they've moved the main SOC to
| more modern silicon processes its internal GPIOs have become
| less able to tolerate hobbyist abuse, so now they proxy the
| GPIOs through their custom southbridge chip instead, which is
| an amalgamation of a microcontroller and various other
| peripherals.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, a USB MCU is my preferred GPIO these days. It makes
| my peripherals platform independent, and I can do my code
| development at my comfy desktop workstation with its big
| displays.
|
| I find it easier to write real-time code on the MCU.
|
| In fact, I've disciplined myself to make all of my projects
| -- hardware and software -- capable of running on any
| modern platform. It turns out that's not hard to do.
| GordonS wrote:
| How does the idle and loaded power draw compare between an Rpi
| 4 (or 5, if you prefer) and an N100? Genuinely would like to
| know, because I think power usage (and heat) is an important
| part of the equation.
| mech422 wrote:
| I use the odroid H series(1) for basic 'small server' usage.
| Dual nics for use as a firewall, DDR5 upto 48G, multiple sata
| ports, m.2 port, etc. Totally silent and very low power draw.
| They run from like $125 to $175 new, depending on model.
|
| I've had 3 of the old H2 series and I really love them...
|
| 1.https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-h4-h4-h4-ultra
| akira2501 wrote:
| > If you need GPIO, the Pi is the obvious choice.
|
| There are so many USB GPIO modules that I don't think the Pi is
| so "obvious." Plus if you blow out your USB GPIO, replacement
| is a far easier thing to consier.
| crawsome wrote:
| Those intel 6500u processors also have Quicksync, so you can run
| a modest PLeX server on one.
|
| I have a micro Dell PC, and it runs like a champ. I'd take it
| over the Pi anyday for my uses.
| atVelocet wrote:
| If you ever plan to use any of these older PCs: Disable Spectre
| and Meltdown mitigations! As a bonus you should also remove CPU
| microcodes from the BIOS/UEFI and make sure that no microcode is
| loaded via software.
|
| The performance gain is huge if done correctly. There is no need
| for these mitigations on homelabs.
| unique_parrot2 wrote:
| You made me try this, my cpu went from 16% to 9% on my proxmox-
| box running a home-assistant vm and a few lxcs. Thanks for your
| post.
| kayson wrote:
| Any guides on how to do this?
| jki275 wrote:
| Usually it's just a bios option you can turn off.
| complaintdept wrote:
| Offtopic, but does anyone know of a decent mini pc with ECC?
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away
| computers meant for education or hobbyists, they're developer
| kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported
| mainline Linux in their products.
|
| The only reason they don't cost $500 or more is because the
| foundation needs the hobbyist market to write and support the
| open source BSP, without which the RPi would be just another
| poorly supported also-ran in an already crowded market. With how
| well supported mainline Linux is on the Pi, EEs would be willing
| to pay a lot more.
| justin66 wrote:
| > That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away
| computers meant for education or hobbyists
|
| They've got a full product line now, including systems that are
| comparable in cost but much more capable than the original
| Raspberry Pi.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Wasn't there a very long time that the Pi wasn't fully
| supported on mainline? And it's boot sequence is still a bit
| weird in that the GPU handles bootstrapping?
| asddubs wrote:
| I think the main point is that you know the company/product
| support isn't just going to disappear into the sunset in 2
| years and you're stuck with an increasingly outdated hacked
| together kernel thrown over a wall
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _well supported mainline Linux_
|
| This is one of the main advantages for hobbyists.
| gumby wrote:
| And for professionals.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I highly doubt so. In fact, save for the RP2040 which isn't
| Linux capable (0), all their processors aren't for sale
| anywhere; Broadcom simply won't sell them to you, no matter
| if you order 1 or 100000. That is, you can't build your
| product around one of their CPU and you have to put their
| entire boards in you product instead, which translates in
| huge costs, no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD
| cards for system disks, which in that context are a no-no.
| The RPi is a hobbyist board with a huge potential for
| teaching, but I wouldn't consider it for anything beyond
| that use.
|
| 0: yeah, I know you can run it in theory; I mean in a
| usable way.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Isn't their Compute Module 4 SOM industrial rated?
| squarefoot wrote:
| That forces you to sandwich two boards together
| (connector, more costs, etc), and still you have no
| freedom regarding which peripherals to place around the
| RPi SoC.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| There's a free PCIe lane that you can put whatever you
| want on
| imtringued wrote:
| The average integrator doesn't want to mess around with
| things like DDR5 routing or designing power supplies for
| the SoC. There are lots of other companies such as AMD
| and Nvidia selling SOMs so the fact that they are selling
| SOMs can hardly be something to complain about.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| There's the compute modules
| nottorp wrote:
| > no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD cards
| for system disks, which in that context are a no-no
|
| They kinda work if the system is not mission critical.
| Just have them self reboot every 4 hours :)
| justin66 wrote:
| It's not a hypothetical: "professional" or "industrial"
| use is what most new Pis are used for.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Given that Raspberry Pi hasn't actually been well supported
| by mainline Linux and that the Raspberry Pi foundation hasn't
| put a lot of effort into upstreaming things, I don't think
| it's actually a big deal. People don't care where their
| kernel comes from as long as it works.
|
| I am surprised by all of the comments here that assume
| Raspberry Pi has great upstream support. It's amazing that
| people just assumed their boards were working great with
| upstream kernels. Raspberry Pi has a history of doing
| nonstandard things that serve their community but are
| actually a little bit quirky when it comes to normal embedded
| Linux.
| ekianjo wrote:
| except that RPi does not support mainline Linux...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The Model 1B was $35 (in 2012 dollars) and the still available
| Model 4B starts at $35? It might even be argued that the Model
| 1B's successor is more the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for $15, which
| is cheaper than the original.
|
| The Raspberry Pi 5's base model does start at $60 but its specs
| are too different for a comparison to be meaningful.
|
| [EDIT] Oops, I hadn't realized the 4B with 1 GB was
| discontinued. So the starting price of the 4B would be $45 for
| the 2 GB version.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| There are complete passively cooled n3350 based systems on
| Ali express with 64gb storage and 6gb ram in a case with
| power supply ready to go for $65 with free shipping. That
| works out cheaper than the cheapest pi after buying case,
| storage and power for the pi. You can buy usb gpio breakouts
| for <$10 too. Lower power than the pi 4 too due to the huge
| process node advantage (despite the x86 disadvantages). 28nm
| vs 14nm for the pi 4 vs the n3350.
|
| The pi is fun but honestly for pi hole or similar you might
| as well buy the all in one x86. For media streaming
| definitely buy the all in one x86. For gpio stuff ok the pi
| is reasonable but even then if you want to make a product
| rather than a home automation once off you'd go a different
| route completely.
| djbusby wrote:
| Are there loads of driver support for those USB/GPIO
| things? I've only done that on PI and the Python libs made
| it super easy. Now it's one more thing to solve research
| rather built-in.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I don't think so - if you needed GPIO on a small x86 the
| easiest way would be to hook an Arduino / RP2040 to it.
| That seems like it's still the sweet spot for RPi, esp.
| the Zero W, if you need small, low-power, full OS and
| GPIO.
| ckemere wrote:
| This.
| zrail wrote:
| Not really. I've been researching this extensively lately
| to try to add GPIO to my stack of Dell Wyse 3040s.
|
| Options with mainline linux kernel drivers:
|
| - MCP2221A (i2c + 4x GPIO)
|
| - CP2112 (i2c + GPIO)
|
| Options without kernel support:
|
| - FT232H
|
| - Arduino nano and clones
|
| - Raspberry Pi Pico running some interesting firmware
|
| - ESP32 running something like ESPHome (completely
| separate from host)
|
| I've chosen the Pico for now and forked the u2if project
| for firmware and host support[1]. I also put together a
| generic ESPHome-compatible protocol server in python to
| tie my widgets to Home Assistant[2].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/peterkeen/u2if
|
| [2]: https://github.com/peterkeen/aioesphomeserver
| gsich wrote:
| I have seen a I2C implementation on the RP2040 that works
| with native support.
|
| https://github.com/Nicolai-
| Electronics/rp2040-i2c-interface
| zrail wrote:
| Yep, that one is pretty cool too. It only does one i2c
| bus so it seems like it underuses the hardware a bit, but
| the mainline driver is pretty valuable.
| -mlv wrote:
| A lot of those used cheap Dell minipcs come with serial
| ports and the slightly biger ones may have a parallel
| port.
| afavour wrote:
| That's all true but the OP said that Pis are "no longer
| cheap". The reply was simply a demonstration that they are
| still available at the same price point, no matter what the
| competition is or isn't doing.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In this market, "cheap" is often comparative to
| performance. You can now get better capabilities for the
| same price.
| spookie wrote:
| Sure, if you want to deal with strange problems no one
| has ever faced. RPi's strength isn't in meaningless
| performance benchmarks, is in actually getting stuff
| done.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A mini PC with an x86 CPU is the opposite of "user-
| unfriendly." Compared with Raspberry Pis, laypeople can
| easily use those.
| afavour wrote:
| They vary widely. I bought an off brand mini PC where the
| USB ports randomly lost power. There was no online
| community or support to speak of to help me figure out
| the problem. In that regard the Pi is far better.
| II2II wrote:
| I suspect a lot of the current disdain is a product of
| function creep. While the original Raspberry Pi was used as
| a desktop and server, people understood its limitations.
| Now that many of the limitations have diminished, to the
| point where you can expect reasonable performance as a
| desktop and use it as something more than a simple web
| server, people are justifiably comparing it to alternatives
| (which have come down in price over the same period of
| time).
|
| Of course, the Pi is also facing competition from higher
| end microcontroller based solutions. People seem to forget
| that there was a time when hobbyists bought the Pi for
| "Internet of Things" like projects, both due to its cost
| and size. Then came the ESP8266 and ESP32 and development
| boards that packaged both a microcontroller and network
| interface.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This, but also that they gave a huge middle finger to the
| hobbyist community during the component crisis by giving
| preference to integrators.
|
| Most makers I know have pivoted to ESP32 during this time
| as it was good enough and actually available. Probably
| would have happened sooner or later though.
| bonzini wrote:
| The ESP32 has nothing to do with a Raspberry Pi. It's
| only good that people learnt to use the better tool (in
| terms of price and power consumption) once better tools
| like MicroPython or NodeMCU came around.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| When the first raspberry was introduced, it was really
| really hard to interface an electronics project with the
| internet. Arduinos were really dumb at the time. That's
| why the raspberry was so ideal. But most electronics
| projects didn't really need a whole linux distro running
| on it. It was just that there was no other option.
|
| The ESPs introduced a totally new class that can cover
| most of the usecases of electronics projects that the
| raspberry originally aimed at. They support wifi,
| bluetooth, pretty serious processing, enough for most
| connected projects. They totally ate the raspberry's
| lunch in the embedded market. Of course the RP2040 aims
| for this too but IMO it's kinda too little too late, the
| ESP32 is already so well established and has the biggest
| community.
|
| At the other end of course the PC pricing came down and
| the intel N100's and the like eat its lunchon the other
| side.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| What kind of bolted-down expansion does a cheap n3350 box
| have? How fast can I swap the main storage for something
| completely different? Can I power it with my USB battery
| bank? Does it support two digital monitors or does it
| instead have one HDMI and one VGA (like this is 1987)? Can
| I use it like an appliance and just plug in easy-to-
| download images like LibreELEC or EmulationStation, or do I
| need to understand how to make computers work before I can
| have a good experience with Kodi or console emulation?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I can see plenty of n3350 systems with dual hdmi on
| google and plenty with drive bays and relevant
| connectivity. Those seem to cost ~$100 vs the minimalist
| $65 ones.
|
| In terms of driver support these intel systems are the
| easiest to work with in Linux. Very mainstream and well
| established drivers.
| nottorp wrote:
| All your pros are cons when you use a Pi as a 24/7 router
| or home server :)
|
| Requirements may vary.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Requirements do vary.
|
| And I've got no regrets about using a Pi 4 a router. It's
| sitting on the shelf next to me, and has been trouble-
| free for over four years now.
| danesparza wrote:
| I don't trust Ali express for anything serious. Cheap and
| Chinese doesn't have the appeal it used to.
|
| I'm willing to pay a little more for a respected brand with
| a little more QA involved (and less hassle to me as a
| developer).
| kohbo wrote:
| Those low price ones are never available. The cheapest 4b I
| see right now is $60. Which isn't bad, but not $35.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I checked Digi-Key through RPiLocator and they report
| several thousand units in stock each of the Raspberry Pi 4
| 2GB at $45 and of the Raspberry Pi 3B+ 1GB at $35:
| https://rpilocator.com/?vendor=digikeyus
|
| For those unfamiliar with them, Digi-Key is a electronic
| components supplier to manufacturers but they also sell to
| individuals. Their stock count should be accurate.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Every single official US retailer has units available for
| MSRP. Where are you looking? Which model are you looking
| at?
|
| Are you talking about the Pi5 4GB which is $60? We are
| talking about the Pi4 2GB which is $45. For many things,
| the cheaper, older version is fine.
| justin66 wrote:
| Look harder? They're available at a number of retailers,
| and if you're in the US, Adafruit is recommended - but I
| wouldn't pay more than $35 + shipping in any case. There
| are a couple of dozen online retailers here with the 4B
| 1GB:
|
| https://rpilocator.com/?cat=PI4
| stkdump wrote:
| Inflation adjusted the 1B (with 512MB, which was the only
| available variant) was slightly more expensive than the 5
| with 2GB at their respective release. The price "increase" is
| that 4 and 8GB models are available at all and most people
| buy them, presumably because people actually don't care about
| the purchase price so much. But you still get the cheapest
| variant, if you really want to. Also, there are different
| variants of the Zero, all of which are cheaper than the 1A at
| release.
|
| The power brick got more expensive due to the increased power
| use. Also if you want to make use of the full power, you need
| a cooler. But you can also do without cooler, because it just
| gracefully slows down when overheated.
|
| I think the Pi drove the price of lower end computers down so
| far that people completely lost their sense of perspective.
| justin66 wrote:
| > the 1B (with 512MB, which was the only available variant)
|
| Hey now. Proud owner of a 256MB 1B here. Although they
| upgraded the baseline spec right after that first
| production run.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Oops, I hadn't realized the 4B with 1 GB was discontinued.
|
| Is it? I can buy one for $35 at my local Microcenter, and I
| can see that Adafruit is selling them for $35 as well. [0]
| It's still listed as a $35 part on the official Raspberry Pi
| product page. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4295
|
| [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-
| pi-4-model-b/
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Plenty of PIs in labs of hardware tech companies. Very
| convenient when you need a small linux box, indeed, or when you
| need to access a piece of equipment over a serial terminal,
| et.c
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think a lot of people don't realize that there was a decent
| size, but small market for SBCs for low-volume embedded work
| (including hobbyists) before Raspberry Pi. You could get a lot
| of different kinds of boards with good Linux support and a not
| terrible price. Often, a processor vendor would explicitly
| provide support for these things because it was a good vector
| for selling chips.
|
| Broadcom, having never wanted anything to do with this market
| since volumes were too low, had an abundance of a CPU SKU that
| was good for this. So some broadcom engineers founded Raspberry
| Pi to use up this excess stock, essentially getting these chips
| for free. The original RPi blew every other SBC out of the
| water on price performance (and many manufacturers out of the
| market) because by getting the most expensive component for
| free, they could sell Pis for an extremely low price. It also
| massively expanded the market for SBCs, as hobbyists flooded in
| to work with RPis.
|
| 5-10 years ago, the sweetheart deal with Broadcom went away.
| Now Raspberry Pi has to compete with everyone else for Broadcom
| SoCs, and during the semiconductor shortage of 2020, Broadcom
| had tremendous leverage. Now, Raspberry Pi pricing is nothing
| special, but they still have the brand name and they have
| captured the community (on the back of behavior that was
| borderline anticompetitive).
| transpute wrote:
| This business history would add valuable context to RPi wiki,
| or a public reference on the history of SBCs,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This is spot on. There is a market for small SBCs that spans
| from weapons to washing machines. When the RPi was introduced
| it threw a huge wrench into that market because it came in,
| _with an operating system and storage_ , at under the price
| for the typical enclosure, much less the board itself of the
| existing systems. Look at PC104 systems for example.
|
| The two pieces that have to be in place, as 'threshold'
| requirements are
|
| 1) The SBC exists and is available from a manufacturer
|
| 2) The _same_ manufacturer provides an OS for that board and
| its associated board support package (BSP) which is drivers
| for all the I /O and system support functions.
|
| The industry is full of people who went out of business
| because they chose Vendor A's SBC and Vendor B's OS, only to
| fail to deliver when it didn't work with Vendor A and Vendor
| B point at the other saying it was their problem. So people
| just don't do that any more.
|
| What most vendors in the SBC space, prior to the introduction
| of the Raspberry Pi, didn't have was 20 to 30 thousand
| programmers writing random bits of code. What that meant was
| the Pi's feature set exploded rapidly, what's more there were
| lots of free tutorials on programming it.
|
| In the SBC space before Pi that "Programmer Training" was one
| of the ways the vendor made better margins at $500/hr for a
| class of "up to 15 students" at our facilities.
|
| So before, higher priced SBC + BSP, and you had to send your
| programmers on a road trip to the vendors facility to get the
| hands on training, and then you had to pay every time you
| made a service request.
|
| After, cheap SBC + BSP!, a bunch of different programming
| videos on the web for free! Program doesn't work? Just ask
| the community of enthusiasts what they think!
|
| We are not surprised a whole lot of the smaller SBC vendors
| closed down after that.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I think a lot of people don 't realize that there was a
| decent size, but small market for SBCs for low-volume
| embedded work (including hobbyists) before Raspberry Pi. You
| could get a lot of different kinds of boards with good Linux
| support and a not terrible price. Often, a processor vendor
| would explicitly provide support for these things because it
| was a good vector for selling chips._
|
| Before RPi became really popular and the 4 came out, I used
| BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, Aria G25, Gumstix, Cubieboard, i.MX
| devkits, and spun custom boards using Marvell, TI, Freescale
| (now NXP), and Qualcomm CPUs - I don't remember any of them
| having as good a BSP or being as easy to develop with as the
| RPi was five years ago. Maybe my memory is (very) faulty but
| the experience was leagues worse. PTSD-inducing level of
| worse. I wasted weeks or months on every major project
| shaving silicon yaks that should have been handled by the
| vendor (and is now handled by the RPi community).
|
| The modern i.MX toolchain may now be comparable many years
| later but I've long since given up on everything else since
| CM4 came out in 2020.
|
| My understanding is that they lost the sweetheart deal
| _after_ they pivoted to supporting commercial, right in time
| for the pandemic supply crunch.
| 05 wrote:
| Yocto works the same way whether it's Pi or iMX, most of
| the learning curve has nothing to do with the SoC. So it's
| really strange to hear that your Pi workflow is better than
| anything you'd get with another chip..
| transpute wrote:
| BSP quality is famously variable by board vendor,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niH1-NB6W8w
| Two products.. leveraged a Yocto-based board support
| package (BSP); one being in AgTech, and the other being
| in the veterinary space. These products have followed
| disparate practices when leveraging the BSP for custom
| hardware and software.. this talk [described] the two
| products, how the BSP was customized and used, and the
| resulting consequences.*
| nottorp wrote:
| But on a Pi you don't have to use Yocto. Raspbian is
| always faster to develop for.
|
| Source: have worked on both Pi based solutions and custom
| hardware with yocto.
| 05 wrote:
| Yeah, one is easier and the other is right. Shipping a
| reproducibly built readonly rootfs image takes longer,
| but is strictly better than putting 'some' versions of
| Debian packages on the SD card and calling it a day.
|
| It's the Arduino curse - sure, it's faster to ship Hello
| World with Arduino but soon you realize all your
| libraries were built by beginners and use delay()
| everywhere so you're screwed if you need two peripherals
| to work at once.
|
| You use Pi for prototypes and one-offs, not where you
| need to ship something that's actually competitive on
| BoM.
| bloggie wrote:
| Not using Yocto simplifies and speeds development
| extremely, unless you have dedicated staff familiar with
| Yocto. It's a big reason to prefer Pi.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I think a lot of people don't realize that there was a
| decent size, but small market for SBCs for low-volume
| embedded work (including hobbyists) before Raspberry Pi. You
| could get a lot of different kinds of boards with good Linux
| support and a not terrible price.
|
| And you still can! The big innovation from Raspberry Pi was
| making it all feel very accessible through the documentation,
| community, and various utilities to configure things via
| menus instead of by editing files.
|
| The Raspberry Pi was rarely the best board, but it was the
| easiest to recommend to beginners because you could point
| them to volumes of documentation and community threads.
| justin66 wrote:
| > essentially getting these chips for free
|
| > by getting the most expensive component for free
|
| I get that you're exaggerating, and you perhaps aren't trying
| to be deceptive by misusing the word "free," but the low
| markup the RPi guys initially paid to Broadcom does not
| explain as much as you think it does about the Pi's success.
| To explain why let's examine something else you're wrong
| about:
|
| > You could get a lot of different kinds of boards with good
| Linux support and a not terrible price. Often, a processor
| vendor would explicitly provide support for these things
| because it was a good vector for selling chips.
|
| Prior to the Pi you could get _one_ board with good Linux
| support and a not terrible price from a vendor who provided
| support because they thought it was a good vector for selling
| chips. That was the BeagleBoard, from TI. I mean, the BB
| _barely_ checked all those boxes: the support wasn 't very
| good, it was kind of nonexistent compared to the support
| community the Raspberry Pi people created. But they sure
| didn't have to worry about the cost of the CPU.
|
| So back to the original point: getting the CPU "for free"
| (since we're apparently just saying "free" now when we mean
| "at cost") wasn't a decisive advantage for the Raspberry Pi
| people, since the TI people had the same advantage. TI had a
| few other advantages as well, like a first mover advantage,
| their own assembly lines, and relationships with everyone who
| sells electronics components.
|
| TI's support was crap when compared to something like RPi
| which deliberately targeted newbies, and as far as I remember
| they didn't have a few amazing people in their community
| dedicated to making a whole new spin of Debian and supporting
| it like RPi did. And, you know, PR matters. All that stuff is
| what made the difference.
|
| > anticompetitive
|
| I guess we're just throwing words around without caring what
| they mean today for some reason.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > I get that you're exaggerating, and you perhaps aren't
| trying to be deceptive by misusing the word "free," but the
| low markup the RPi guys initially paid to Broadcom does not
| explain as much as you think it does about the Pi's
| success.
|
| Broadcom sold the chips to the Raspberry Pi organization at
| a significant loss, not at a low markup or at cost. They
| were not free, but they were close to free. The TI guys
| never even gave anything close to "at cost" to the
| BeagleBoard folks.
|
| Also, the BeagleBoard was the most hobbyist-targeted and
| the one with the best PR. There were, and still are, tens
| of companies making SBCs, but before the RPi they would all
| sell you singe unit quantity. Not any more. Most of them
| actually had better support than TI. The NXP boards in
| general were and still are my favorites.
|
| Also, providing a product at a loss so that it
| significantly undercuts your competition (also called
| "dumping") is very much anticompetitive. I don't like using
| the term for Raspberry Pi because they clearly weren't out
| to create a monopoly, but the Raspberry Pi was dumping a
| product.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| The Pi 5 is still not supported mainline. Proper mainline
| support for older models was contributed by third-parties, not
| the RPi foundation, which just care about their kernel fork.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU
| running a well supported mainline Linux in their products
|
| It's not a great choice if you're hoping to productize from it,
| for various reasons.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU
| running a well supported mainline Linux in their products.
|
| Raspberry Pi 5 isn't as well supported in mainline. You're
| still going to be using their kernel if you want all the
| features, just like many other module these days.
|
| > The only reason they don't cost $500 or more
|
| $500 is a huge exaggeration. There are numerous modules and
| small boards well under that price that come with good support,
| including many with full x86-64 CPUs.
|
| I think it's more correct to say that the boards are
| approaching equilibrium with other boards and modules in price,
| not that they're secretly some premium $500 product sold at a
| discount for reasons. Nobody would be buying Raspberry Pi
| anything at $250, let alone $500.
| ahepp wrote:
| I see the Raspberry Pi model B+ available right now on Adafruit
| for $30. It has a single core 700 MHz CPU and 512M RAM.
|
| The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is available right now for $15 with a
| 1 GHz 64 bit quad core CPU and 512 MB RAM.
|
| So it seems to me that you can get a Raspberry Pi SBC today,
| that has higher or equal specs in every regard, for a lower
| cost than the original. Am I missing something?
|
| Looking at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux, I scrolled a
| few pages of commits and didn't even see one from outside the
| Raspberry Pi org. I'm picking through their merged PRs and it
| looks like _maybe_ there are a couple, it 's hard to tell.
|
| But it looks to me like they just do a great job supporting
| their own product?
| LtWorf wrote:
| You forget gpio
| lhl wrote:
| Pi's are great for easy hardware hacking, but I don't know if
| they ever made that much sense as home servers. You could always
| pick up used office/minipcs for even cheaper than a bare pi
| board, and if you picked carefully, you wouldn't really be using
| much more idle power.
|
| Also EUR100-150 for those used 1L boxes sounds a bit pricey to
| me, since in that range you can buy brand new minipcs that
| perform similarly (personally for a network-centric device
| probably I'd go on aliexpress and grab one of the fanless N100
| router-style pcs).
| mmastrac wrote:
| They are ridiculously overpowered for a number of usecases,
| even the older and cheaper 3 models. I'm running progscrape.com
| on a 4 and it held up to HN traffic without sweating at all.
|
| I had a Pi1 running Stylus for home monitoring with maybe 10%
| CPU use at any time.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I don't have room for that tinyminimicro pc case. I could fit 8
| pi's in it.
|
| > The Pi 5 can be fitted with an NVME SSD, but for me it's too
| little, too late. Because I feel there is a type of computer on
| the market, that is much more compelling than the Pi.
|
| My pi4 has been running from an ssd for years now, no sd card.
| Usb3,not nvme but still good enough for my (most ?) use case.
| demondemidi wrote:
| It is odd to me that people call the RPi 3/4/5 "not capable."
|
| It depends on your needs. I find it perfectly capable when I need
| more than an STM32/ESP, but less than a PC, which is about 90% of
| the gadgetry I find enjoyable.
|
| I don't understand all the anger. If you need a different
| platform, you need a different platform. /shrugs/
| floating-io wrote:
| I'm starting to wonder if we're seeing the ramping up of an Arm
| vs. Intel war at the same level as Mac vs. Windows, or emacs
| vs. vi, with Raspberry Pi as a convenient proxy, and all the
| usual foibles of every other us vs. them war.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if paid influencers were fanning the
| flames, either; certain folks have a lot to lose if arm goes
| mainstream on the desktop.
|
| And then there's the recent Raspberry P-IPO or whatever it was,
| which seems to have pissed a bunch of people off...
|
| The timing is interesting.
|
| I can see the appeal of the N100 and similar -- and am
| currently considering one -- but it's hard to beat the ~1W
| DNS/DHCP/Consul servers that have been humming away in this
| house trouble free for the last decade...
|
| I don't need those to power my homelab. There's a reason
| they're separate, and tiny low-power Pi's are ideal for that
| job.
|
| I have in my possession more than merely a hammer. :)
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Where are these tiny low-power RPis that idle at 1W ? Are you
| measuring at the wall (i.e. with the power adapter
| inefficiencies?)
|
| The entire point of the article is that at least the non-
| micro RPis are not "low-power" at all (something that agrees
| with my observations). The article is quoting around 3.5W for
| the RPi5. I was also getting a similar reading for my older
| RPi4 after months of fine-tuning, while _out of the box_ an
| N4000 miniPC had 1.8W consumption at idle. RPi may be cheap,
| but not much else.
| politelemon wrote:
| Can the mini PCs mentioned be used for videostreaming? From what
| I recall RPIs are weak at Plex/Jellyfin.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Yes, the Intel-based one supports Quick Sync.
| franciscop wrote:
| I feel these comparisons are a bit funny. The "RasPi 5 is no
| match for X", showing a picture of a computer that seems around
| 5-8x times bigger in area, and probably around 20x bigger in
| volume. They also cost A LOT more, but if you get them second
| hand only +50%. Color me surprised, even when ignoring the
| general totally different markets of those, even as a tiny PC
| these are not fair comparisons (specially comparing a second-hand
| device to the full cost of a new Raspi, adding the accessories
| that we all hackers/makers already have).
| louwrentius wrote:
| A ton of people use Pis as small home servers and for that use
| case, there are imho better options.
| franciscop wrote:
| Yes, for ALL purposes that people use the Pis for there's
| definitely a better, more specific option. But that's the
| great thing of the Pis, that they are very general-purpose
| for hobbyists, while also being very well standardized and
| documented (and run Ubuntu).
| tjoff wrote:
| I don't see the appeal of using these mini-PCs. Using an old
| second hand power supply is enough to turn me away.
|
| And the PI has many advantages. Power supply dies? I can order a
| new one in literally seconds. And meanwhile I wait for it to
| arrive I can use a spare notebook charger or whatever. Etc.
|
| The shortage sucked, but it is solved now.
|
| Last image I created I tucked in a Raspberry Pi 1, and it worked
| just fine. The versatility is unmatched. Equally I can test an
| image at my home and then let someone install it on the other
| side of the globe.
|
| The point of a Pi for me is more that you can have it where you
| need it. Attached to your TV or whatever.
|
| For a home server I would recommend something beefier, an old
| desktop will be superior to any mini-pc and the Pi. But probably
| bulkier and more power hungry.
|
| A Pi5 with nvme does work and be a decent home server for
| tinkering though. From my perspective the niche for the mini-PC
| is pretty much nonexistent.
|
| But I don't think maximum utility is the goal though, it is a
| hobby. Do what you enjoy! Tinkering with low power PCs might be
| enough of a reason alone.
|
| But these comparisons to the Pi doesn't make much sense to me.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You can get new Mini PCs for not much more than a Pi 5,
| especially if you want an 8GB model, case etc. $150-$200 will
| get you an okay bottom barrel Intel PC with support for stuff
| like SATA and M.2 SSDs which are more annoying to have on the
| Pi.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| And $150 is overstating it. Look up 'n3350 all in one'. Lots
| of models and retailers selling these atm. Intel must be
| selling these cpus for a few cents given the price for these
| complete systems with storage ram, case and power supply is
| ~$65 even when not on sale.
| ac29 wrote:
| N3350 is nearly ten years old and I suspect a lot of the
| ultra cheap "new" systems using it are actually using
| salvaged parts.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I honestly don't get it at all considering the sheer
| volume of these on the market right now. Is there any
| chance intel would run off an old low cost design that
| doesn't compete with the high end just to keep the 14nm
| fabs busy? It seems like there's too many on the market
| for salvage alone to explain it.
| jimz wrote:
| Not exactly salvage, but more like buying in volume from
| government entities trying to liquidate either actual
| surplus or fairly new but legally required retired
| machines. The feds go through the GSA, state and local do
| their own thing for the most part. It's not unusual to
| see agencies attempt to sell multiple palettes of
| computers or just about anything you can imagine for next
| to nothing. Example:
| https://www.gsaauctions.gov/auctions/preview/288722
|
| I personally disliked dealing with federal agencies, but
| entities as local as a school district can easily have a
| palette of relatively new machines, sans hard drive, and
| are far more flexible in payment and how you choose to
| get it to you. For a brief period I used to rent a truck
| and do weekly runs from Brooklyn mostly to Maryland and
| Virginia and Pennsylvania and get back to my one bedroom
| with 90-120 computers. At the palette level prices can
| get down to the $10-$20 each machine level (probably
| higher now due to inflation), hard drives aren't really
| that expensive either. The biggest headache was shipping
| but the process is likely far more streamlined today. Of
| course, it probably would've been even cheaper if I
| didn't operate out of a tiny 1 BR in Brooklyn and can
| actually own a vehicle and have reliable parking It's not
| exactly my tax dollars at work, but effectively it is a
| sort of subsidized sale at the taxpayer's expense, Intel
| isn't really selling anything for pennies on the dollar,
| but pretty much every municipality and county government
| will, at least at some point.
| jnovek wrote:
| I use two of them (Lenovos) in my small homelab. They take up
| 1U side-by-side so they're great if you have limited space.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I don't see the appeal of using these mini-PCs.
|
| Suprise - you are not the ones who do.
|
| > Using an old second hand power supply is enough to turn me
| away.
|
| > And the PI has many advantages. Power supply dies? I can
| order a new one in literally seconds'.
|
| This is a quite a stupid argument.
|
| a) it's totally the same for any other PC: you just order
| another 'in literally seconds'
|
| b) if you don't like a second hand PSU then order a new one in
| the first place
|
| > And meanwhile I wait for it to arrive I can use a spare
| notebook charger or whatever
|
| ... just like you can have a compatible charger for a mini-PC
| ?[0]
|
| > For a home server I would recommend something beefier, an old
| desktop will be superior to any mini-pc and the Pi
|
| For most of the people there is no need in 'beefier', 32Gb RAM,
| 256-1024Gb SATA/NVMe is all they need.
|
| > The point of a Pi for me is more that you can have it where
| you need it. Attached to your TV or whatever.
|
| Anyone can have mini-PC where they need it. It's because they
| are _mini_ , not a desktop ones.
|
| [0] by the way, most of the time those mini-PCs have a notebook
| style external PSUs (not some anemic square brick of 15W) and
| they are quite rare to break
| tjoff wrote:
| The argument was that you already have a PSU at home. Or in
| my small town I can get one in 15 minutes, or order it and
| have it delivered tomorrow.
|
| On the contrary, the notebook style external PSUs are more
| likely to break and much harder to find replacements to. When
| it has happened to me the best source to buy has been to
| order it from another country.
| amluto wrote:
| > Power supply dies? I can order a new one in literally
| seconds.
|
| For the RPi 5, for fully reliable operation, you need an
| oddball 5V/5A power supply, which is not actually a standard
| device. IMO Raspberry Pi messed this one up. At the price
| point, either use a barrel jack or support USB-PD for real.
| (The latter would be _great_ for many use cases, because the
| same conversion circuitry would enable driving from a wide
| voltage range. A tiny cheap ESP board can do this -- why not a
| rather pricey Raspberry Pi?)
| tjoff wrote:
| It is part of USB-PD though, it is just a recent addition
| (PPS) that isn't that common yet.
|
| I agree it isn't ideal, but you shouldn't blindly buy a PSU
| to any computer. Extra easy mistake to make when it is USB-C
| though.
| ianburrell wrote:
| PPS is getting more common. Quite a few phones need PPS for
| fastest charging so seeing more chargers that support it.
| It is still cheaper to buy official charger but barely. And
| there are multi-port chargers where might be able to
| support multiple Pi5.
| amluto wrote:
| I can't find any evidence that RPi5 supports PPS or that
| anyone makes a 5V/5A PPS charger, except perhaps a massive
| 100W charger or something along those lines. It's a silly
| voltage/current combination.
|
| edit: PPS is _not_ supported. See:
|
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=359918
|
| https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/497
| tjoff wrote:
| Thanks for the correction!
| ianburrell wrote:
| Oh, so it needs a 5A power supply. The problem is that
| usually requires a >60W supply, which will be willing to
| provide 5A. It also requires a marked cable. I think it
| can legally be done with PPS if power supply supports 5A.
|
| It is weird that Pi5 doesn't do USB-PD 27W supply which
| is common. It would require converter from 9V. But that
| would cost money.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > but you shouldn't blindly buy a PSU to any computer
|
| Make up your mind.
|
| Or you don't need to bother with RPi PSUs or _you shouldn
| 't blindly buy a PSU to any computer_.
|
| It's even more ridiculous what you were proven wrong _in
| your_ assumptions about RPi PSU.
| pelorat wrote:
| Well for one, they have an normal HDD interface.
|
| The worst part of a Pi is the SD card. It's truly the worst
| interface to use for booting off. Extremely unreliable and due
| to kernel bugs, having your system on an SD card is extremely
| unstable. (but that is more of a Linux issue than an Pi issue).
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Using an old second hand power supply is enough to turn me
| away.
|
| It's a standard 19V laptop power supply. Any laptop supply will
| work with that HP device and they're just as easy to find as
| any other power supply.
| varispeed wrote:
| I found RPi to be unusable for anything remotely serious.
| Recently I got RPi 5 with NVMe hat. Had a lot of "fun" finding
| drive that will actually work with it, so more money and time
| spent. Got it working and found that it randomly dies after
| couple of days. The time and money spent I probably could be
| better off just getting one of those N100 mini PCs.
|
| For dabbling with electronics Pico or STM32 seem more
| reasonable. RPi GPIO is too limited for anything that could use
| its processing power. Not sure if there are even any
| distributions that would support realtime operations with those
| pins or things like DMA, custom protocols working at 1x-1xx MHz
| speeds.
| earnesti wrote:
| I always keep coming back to RPi because of the software support.
| Now when I think about it, basically everything is secondary to
| that. Most of the stuff with RPi just works like charm, and when
| not, you usually find tons of information how to make it working.
| Not so with other devices
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Used, many years old PCs are cheap compared to new, non-used ones
| and can be still perfectly sufficient for basic tasks. True, but
| also seems very apples to oranges.
|
| The proper comparison would be either be pi vs new mini PC (e.g.
| n100 based) or new mini PC vs used mini PC.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I recently spent some time looking into exactly this. I
| ultimately decided to go with an N100 running Proxmox. It is a
| wonderful compromise between power utilization and compute.
|
| The N100 was roughly $50 more than the Pi 5 (after adding storage
| to the Pi). The idle cost to power both is roughly $5/year for
| the Pi5 and $10/year for an N100 (based on local electricity
| rates YMMV).
|
| I'd argue the Pi still has a purpose: Running it off of
| battery/solar is likely better, it is physically smaller, and it
| also has pin-outs and documentation/software to support it. If
| all you're after though is a small-low power usage computer, it
| may not be the first choice anymore.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| If you're in a small apartment or sensitive to noise, I think
| it's still worth considering the Pi or a new fanless N100 system.
|
| I bought a tiny Lenovo i5-6500 system on eBay, and while it's
| fantastic from a price/performance perspective, you can still
| hear a subtle whine when the ambient noise drops.
|
| Which makes total sense - the acoustic output is probably not a
| major consideration when they're optimizing for footprint and
| cost.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I think it's still worth considering the Pi or a new fanless
| N100 system. I bought a tiny Lenovo i5-6500 system on eBay, and
| while it's fantastic from a price/performance perspective, you
| can still hear a subtle whine when the ambient noise drops.
|
| This. I basically made nearly the same comment somewhere else
| in this thread. But then we have similar nicknames so...
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| And at almost exactly the same time! Maybe some parallel
| universes crossed over.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| At least for the lower power draw models, can you disable the
| fan entirely? Or cut the RPMs in half?
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| It's an i5-6500T, which is the same as the regular Skylake,
| but limited to a max of 2.5GHz
|
| I actually solved the problem by just discretely routing an
| Ethernet cable to a closet - but considering that it averages
| 10W from the wall, I definitely suspect I could get away with
| taking the lid off and adding a larger heat sink.
| mynegation wrote:
| This is situation I am in and I went for a completely fanless
| mini ITX system that works very well for me for close to 10
| years already (yes, it is time for an upgrade - probably to a
| fanless N100 based mini ITX). These systems are a great
| alternative to both Raspberry Pi's (that now need fans) and
| those repurposed office PCs, even if you do not mind the fans.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| Buyer beware - Dell mini PCs also have this problem, they run
| constantly and are clearly audible in a quiet room. The BIOS
| doesn't have any options to disable or reduce the RPM, software
| sensors don't see the fan and if you unplug it or try to
| undervolt it the motherboard panics and doesn't boot anymore.
| Had to sell mine away.
|
| Otherwise they're a nice piece of kit. Perhaps someone can hack
| the BIOS to remove the fan protections.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I find TFA interesting because I've got at home, both on my desk
| and in the closet, a _mix_ of Raspberry Pis and... HP EliteDesk
| mini PCs / NUCs. I mean: literally the same HP EliteDesk as
| pictured in TFA. I bought three HP EliteDesk that were
| decommissioned from a nearby NATO base (so I bought them factory
| reset and without any hard disk in them).
|
| One advantage the EliteDesk do have is that they are _not_ ARM,
| which can help at times when I need to run that 's only shipped
| as an image and that wasn't compiled for ARM. I know there are
| other ways but, well, when that happens I just run that on the
| EliteDesk.
|
| Now the very obvious advantage the Raspberry Pi have: no fans.
| That is, to me, a big one. A huge one. My main PC is so quiet
| that I do hear the EliteDesk's fans when I turn one on. Typically
| I'll just run a Plex server at home on the EliteDesk and only
| turn it on when I want to stream something: the rest of the time
| they're off.
|
| The Pi do run servers not requiring lots of CPU: like an
| _unbound_ DNS server.
|
| I don't see these as mutually exclusive: they can be
| complementary.
|
| If I had to pick only one I'd probably still pick a Pi though.
| louwrentius wrote:
| The Pi 5 needs a fan, unless you can find a special case that
| allows the device to run without a fan. I run the Pi4 which
| hosts this blog fan-less and that works fine, even 'right now'.
| distances wrote:
| Not the parent, but I run my Pi5 without a case, out of
| sight. I do have the Active Cooler fan on it, but on normal
| low intensity usage the fan turns on only during bootup and
| otherwise stays off.
| t43562 wrote:
| You can choose not to use a fan.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Sorry, but if you're going to write the Pi5 off, do it properly
|
| compare it to an intel n100 machine.
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/TRIGKEY-Lake-N100-Processor-G4-Comp...
| PS165 16 gigs of ram, 500gig ssd.
|
| 1957 single core passmark and 5548 multicore. More importantly
| its 5 watts at _full CPU_
|
| You can run it off 19v DC, and its physically tiny. Yes, it has a
| fan, but its not that loud, significantly quieter than the HP
|
| The second hand HP is just not compelling anymore, unless you
| need more than one drive, or you need something physically
| larger.
|
| TLDR: the PI isn't great for KVM. The n100 is.
|
| I have a mix of n100s, NUCs and Pis. Each has their purpose. If
| you really want cheap ephemeral linux, then the pi-zero is still
| dirt cheap. PS20 for a linux machine with wifi.
| louwrentius wrote:
| The irony is that HN is now hitting my solar-powered Pi4 on which
| this blog is hosted, and the cores don't even go past 25% if they
| even get there.
|
| No need for a tiniminimicro to host a static blog site :-)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I buy every Pi and try to run MechWarrior 2 in dosbox and they've
| all fallen short. I also have a Surface Go 2 (bought used for
| $80) w/ 4GB of memory + Pentium Gold and it runs flawlessly.
|
| Relatedly- I find that old hardware is still very capable but
| ruined by new media codecs that lack HW acceleration. Are the new
| codecs really worth it when they essentially render whole
| generations obsolete for media?
| dddw wrote:
| Ugh I just loved to play that game. Cool you still do!
| haunter wrote:
| I have some of these mini PCs at home. Not just HP but Lenovo and
| Dell are also making them. A Dell Optiplex 3080 with i5-10500T,
| 16GB DDR4, and 256GB NVMe SSD is ~200EUR and can be upgraded to
| 64GB RAM with a lot of storage (NVMe + a 2,5")
| mvkel wrote:
| I mean it's, what, 5X the volume of a raspi? I would hope it's in
| a different class.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I wrote a post on my (deleted) blog back in 2022, and in it I
| documented some of the issues I ran into with the Raspberry pi 4
| when I was building a media pc that I bolted onto the back of a
| TV.
|
| Briefly, the Pi absolutely sucked in a bunch of ways compared to
| the MeLE Quieter 3Q that replaced it.
|
| 1. Pi couldn't use USB 7.1 audio device in the mode I needed (7.1
| out + line in). No idea why, but Linux totally froze up when I
| selected that mode, and remained frozen until I physically
| unplugged the usb device. On the same USB device this worked fine
| on other computers. This meant that I couldn't use my external
| Bluetooth receiver seamlessly via the Pi.
|
| 2. YouTube failed in a bunch of ways. Seriously! Neither Chrome
| nor Firefox would work 100% reliably. Sound issues on most
| videos, awful performance, locking up the browser.
|
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=...
|
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=151632
|
| 3. Can't be put to sleep or remotely started using Wake On LAN
|
| 4. Lacking sufficient hardware encoders/decoders
|
| 5. Everything goes through the USB bus, so you get awful
| storage/network performance
|
| 6. Can't use Wine to run windows apps. While this may not be an
| issue for many people it was for me because I wanted to use
| MusicBee. Wine works fine on the Pi _if you 've got ARM
| compatible windows apps_. So good luck with that.
|
| 7. The hassle and cost of getting a decent case.
|
| I ended up spending a few hundred bucks on the MeLe and
| everything just worked. Flawlessly. First time. And I had a wide-
| open choice of Linux distributions.
| scosman wrote:
| New vs used is mentioned, but kinda critical for the comparison.
| Yes a $60 board is definitely less capable than a $300 PC. The
| cost difference is primarily driven by the factors compared:
| better CPU, better IO, and more memory. You get what you pay for
| and you can get deals in the used market.
|
| Pi's are great for their ecosystem, being fanless, and cost for a
| brand new device.
|
| Aside: ESP32/ESP8266 have taken over a lot of the hobbyist realm
| for connectivity + GPIO. $3 dev boards that are plenty fast for
| almost any single use-case scenario.
| xhrpost wrote:
| This is timely, after not getting my Orange pi to boot an image,
| I saw I can get an actual mini PC like these used on eBay for
| like $60 shipped. 8GB ram and 500gb SSD with small form factor.
| I'm considering buying more and trying to host some old school
| LAN parties as used LCD monitors can also be had for about $50.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| These conversations around the rPi make no sense to me. To me the
| value of rPi has always been:
|
| * Simple to install a well supported OS with a full UI. * GPIO
| array (including pwm, i2c, etc)
|
| I could take one. Connect a keyboard and monitor. Jumper a few
| pins into a breadboard with an LED matrix, and right a python
| script to bitbang a multiplexed LED array
|
| The only other product I have seen that I view as even competing
| in the same space is the OrangePi line. However, those are vastly
| inferior in terms of support.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Compared to an x86 PC which is what TFA is showing ? The only
| argument in favour of the RPi is GPIOs, but "simple to install"
| and "support" definitely are a thousand times better on
| standard x86 PCs than on any of these ARM SBCs.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Right. It is the combination of the two features.
|
| If _all_ you want is the GPIO array, there are thousands of
| other boards you could buy.
|
| If _all_ you want is a well supported, easy to use computer,
| there are hundreds of options to choice from.
|
| If you want both in a single product, your options are very
| limited.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| I have a Pi 4.
|
| It runs home assistant and bunch of other docker images.
|
| It has a DVBT-2 hat that feeds tvheadend that lets me watch
| broadcast TV on my laptop and phone.
|
| It doesnt make a noise. It doesnt reboot randomly. It doesnt get
| hot. It doesnt get hacked.
|
| After that, who cares?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Of course it's not. It's not even a match against the Rockchip
| boards I've been testing over the past few months:
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/06/16/1800
|
| I also have recently gotten an N100 mini-PC, which helped me put
| one of my ancient mini-ITX i7 machines out to pasture. Those are
| amazing (and are dipping under $120 with 12GB RAM and 512GB SATA
| SSDs).
|
| But more to the point, I think the space the original Pi occupied
| in hobbyist land is being eaten up by RP2040 and ESP32 MCUs,
| which can do everything I need I/O wise and with increasingly
| sophisticated software support (MicroPython is amazing for
| prototyping, and I even got a WaveShare RP2040 board to test that
| is a direct drop-in replacement for a Pi Zero)
| squarefoot wrote:
| I've moved my media players and servers to mini PCs and unlocked
| Chromeboxes and couldn't be more happy. Performance is on another
| planet compared to the RPi. Mini PCs however can't be used when
| one needs a small board with lots of gpios, but there's a lot of
| (often cheaper and faster) competition in that field as well.
| Please, keep in mind that the usual story "other boards don't
| have decent Linux support/community" is simply not true. Here are
| Armbian and DietPi pages where you can find images with mainline
| support for a lot of common boards, including forums. Images
| supplied by the board manufacturer should rather be intended for
| quick testing only as you can't count on their support; just
| ignore them and go straight to Armbian or DietPi sites, and
| consider contributing for their hard work.
|
| https://www.armbian.com/download/
|
| https://dietpi.com/#download
| nullify88 wrote:
| Powertop is a great utility for identifying wakeups and CPU C
| states, but for tweaking power management flags in Linux, I find
| TLP (https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html) to achieve greater
| power savings at the "cost" of more configuration.
| chad1n wrote:
| Raspberry Pi is mostly an expensive toy at this point, it costs
| 60-80$ and it's pretty hard to buy one to begin with. You can't
| use it for most electronics projects because it's overkill and
| also it's not as powerful as a n100 or a second hand pc. If you
| are lucky, you can snipe a bunch of ryzen 3 hps or dells (if you
| don't need a lot of performance) for 60-80$ or ryzen 5s at 120$
| (if you need a bit more).
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| This headline makes as much sense as "the Kia Niro is no match
| for the Volvo FH" -- it really all depends on what you want to do
| with it?
|
| RPi5 is a great platform for prototyping, and many hobbyist
| applications, even if you move to ESP32 or similar afterwards, or
| if you decide that PC-ish platforms work better for you after
| all.
|
| "One size fits all" has never worked in computing history and
| most likely never will...
| ein0p wrote:
| My home router runs on a dual core Intel Celeron. Software wise
| it's OPNSense in KVM and a few docker containers on the host.
| Measured power draw is 4-5W. That's with an SSD and 16GB RAM.
| It's also way faster than any Raspberry Pi. The notion that Intel
| draws a lot of power is wildly outdated.
| tonymet wrote:
| I consolidated about a dozen raspberry pis and virtual servers
| onto a Hyper V server https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-
| microsoft-hyper-v-serv...
|
| Hyper V Server runs any Linux VM via VHD or ISO installation
| image. You can provision using Vagrant to automate your setup.
|
| It was nice to consolidate all of my resources, clean up the
| spider web of raspberry pi's, and reduce VM costs by running
| everything locally .
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I'm curious... Why hyper-v and not something like proxmox?
| tonymet wrote:
| Originally the server & VMs were running on my windows 11 pro
| dev machine. Keeping HyperV made it easier to move them to
| another machine.
|
| Now that I have a separate server, I find it easier to
| develop the VMs on my dev machine, snapshot and then migrate
| them to the server. I have a library of base images for
| alpine, Debian & Kali Linux that I can launch as easily as
| AWS.
|
| Using Hyper-V across both makes this seamless. I can manage
| the servers using the Windows Management Instrumentation
| (gui) or RDP into the server.
|
| I know many Linux users have aversion to Windows, but I get a
| lot of benefit out of Windows for other applications as well
| (gaming, one drive, document indexing, copilot, as well as
| all the great native apps)
| giantrobot wrote:
| I've gone this direction with my home lab stuff as well. I have
| an assortment of older RPis up to a couple RPi 4Bs. Most I bought
| to use on projects where I wanted Linux plus GPIOs and they were
| and still are good for that purpose.
|
| I've also given in to the temptation to use them as little
| servers on my LAN for various sorts of things. I've even tried to
| use them for HTPC boxes and they have worked ok.
|
| However I have sent all my Pi's back to projects where I just
| want Linux plus GPIO. For everything else I replaced them with
| cheap mini PCs.
|
| 1) a bare Pi on a workbench/desk is fine but when connected to a
| TV in the living room has a very low WAF.
|
| 2) the arrangement of ports on a Pi are a complete pain in the
| ass. Even _with_ a case any installation of a Pi looks like a
| careless hack job.
|
| 3) MicroUSB is complete fucking garbage. The port/connector wears
| or breaks and the slightest bump powers off the Pi. MicroUSB
| power supplies are usually also garbage and typically have
| criminally short cables. "Appliance" appropriate power for a Pi
| costs more than the Pi itself. USB-C in the 4B is better but I've
| only got one of those.
|
| 4) like power supplies a decent microSD card that won't randomly
| fail in a Pi ends up costing as much as a Pi.
|
| I replaced a bunch of individual Pis running servers with a
| single mini PC with an N95. The Pis weren't taxed with the server
| loads so the N95 doesn't break a sweat. It's also way easier to
| manage since the various server apps are managed by a docker
| compose file.
|
| The mini PCs replacing the HTPC Pis are just a better experience
| overall. The ports are all on one side, they have same barrel
| connectors for power, and their local storage doesn't magically
| corrupt itself because the unknowingly cheap power supply didn't
| provide enough power.
|
| I still love the Pis for small nerd projects but just don't want
| to deal with them anymore for pretty much anything else. If you
| _don 't_ need GPIO for a project and physical volume isn't a
| prime concern a <$100 mini PC is a far more convenient option
| today than a Pi. That wasn't true ten years ago which was why I
| started using Pis for servers and stuff but today it is
| definitely the case.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| TL;dr: brand new top end Pi 5 similar price to second hand base
| spec of another type of computer.
| userbinator wrote:
| _The AMD-based system is cheaper, but you 'pay' in higher idle
| power usage._
|
| That 6W more costs around $5.26 per year at $0.10/kWh, which is
| basically nothing.
| krasin wrote:
| In SF Bay Area, the cost of electricity is $0.42/kWh, so around
| $20/year for just extra idle usage. Still not a lot, but it
| adds up.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Well... Yeah... I have a bunch of raspberry pis from back when
| they were cheap + a raspberry pi 400 I won at a hackathon a few
| years ago. There are things about them that I love(the older ones
| to be more specific): low power and great thermals. But ever
| since their prices skyrocketed, I have completely abandoned the
| newer ones and opted out for what me and my friends refer to as
| "cubes". Optiplex micros and similar ones. They are a tiny bit
| more expensive but you have expandable storage and memory and in
| lots of cases upgradable cpu if it comes down to it. And most
| importantly x86, which I take over ARM any day of the week,
| especially when I have to dive a layer or two deeper - it's just
| more convenient having all the additional tools.
|
| However I have one or two projects that I keep kicking down the
| road due to time constraints which involves a rasprerry pi zero
| w2. The reason being is that it's compact, packs a decent punch
| and is extremely easy to power it from an 18650 battery and keep
| a low profile.
|
| I'm fine with the current prices of the raspberry pis but it's
| hard to justify using one of them if you don't need GPIO pins or
| something that uses little power. My advice to the raspberry pi
| foundation is to stop trying to push performance and focus on
| features. I'd be the first in line to get a new raspberry if it
| comes with a battery hat and LoRa built in(the project I was
| referring to really). Here's another one(which ironically already
| sort of exists): the milkv duo. There are lots of cases when you
| don't need a full operating system 24/7, which would waste a lot
| of resources to do one-off tasks every now and then. Ideally you
| should be able to boot the OS from a sensor or some sort of
| signal, which is hooked to a very under-powered micro-controller
| only when you really need it, let it do it's job and then power
| it off. As we stand, the raspberry pi foundation largely offers
| the same product in different form factors with some arguably
| marginal upgrades, which most people don't really need.
| turtlebits wrote:
| You don't buy a Pi for performance. You buy it for peace of mind.
| If one dies you can easily find a replacement and just swap out
| the SD card.
| pi-rat wrote:
| Not that different for the prodesk/elitedesk small form factors
| IMHO. There's a steady supply of cheap used ones available on
| most online marketplaces (there's probably millions of them
| being cycled out of offices every year).
|
| Get a new replacement one, swap over the NVME. Doesn't have to
| be the same cpu, linux handles the rest.
| liampulles wrote:
| In my area there are a few pawn shops who offer second hand DELL
| enterprise pcs, which is great for me because they struggle to
| sell them to the general public and I've gotten my hand on one or
| two for a steal.
|
| I use one as a server, and another as a media center PC. My
| server has been going without issue for 5+ years now (granted,
| I'm not stressing it, its just for serving files and doing
| downloads).
| lemonlime0x3C33 wrote:
| I will always love raspberry pi's, they are well supported and
| great for quick and cheap prototyping. I have used them to teach
| children how to code (They really enjoyed working with sensehat),
| research at university, and at work for rapidly prototyping. The
| size is also easy to work with.
|
| There are better SBC's out there, but raspberry pi is familiar.
|
| I really hope the recent IPO doesn't change too much...
| whoiscroberts wrote:
| Not when you compare per watt performance.
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