Are they still telling their users to suck it?
https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry-pis-incident-on-the-fediverse/
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The 3B+ was probably the high of the raspberry pi. It is still pretty much unrivaled in terms of idle power consumption and energy efficiency (or at least i have not seen any other SBC that got below 0.5 Watts on idle) on the consumer market.
But i have trouble investing further into them.
- They do not post any update guides for newer Debian releases and basically only support new deployments.
- It looks like they are abandoning their older products. vcgencmd for example is still broken on the 3B+. Since they “fixed” it for the 4B. See https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1224
I agree that the 3B+ was the best Pi but for other reasons:
- The Pi 3B+ had the perfect balance between performance and price with the performance being good enough at the time.
- Design flaws at launch. Remember the Pi4 CC1 & CC2? POE getting pulled from the market?
- Pi5: 5V 5A USB-C??? There is now 45W USB-PD (@15V) that would be compatible with generic PSUs but they went proprietary with 5A@5V.
- They put big customers first and let everybody else starve during the shortage. This forced me to alternatives and I have to say they work just as good and cost less.
- Jacking up retail prices: Even Intel x86 is now cheaper than a Raspberry Pi.
Picked up a laptop with a busted screen $30 cheaper than the RPI 5. 1135G7, 8gb upgradable ram, m.2 storage, wifi, bluetooth and a battery.
Raspberry pis’ were great early on, but their appeal has quickly diminished in my eyes considering used hardware options that are available now.
Size would be the one redeeming quality of a raspberry pi for me, my headless laptop is thin but takes up substantially more space.
- Pi5: 5V 5A USB-C??? There is now 45W USB-PD (@15V) that would be compatible with generic PSUs but they went proprietary with 5A@5V.
Was not even thinking about that. Implementing USB-PD is so easy these days. Basically just putting a chip there who handles the PD and then a step down(or whatever) converter which they already have anyway. (See ebay USB PD trigger for implementations)
That is so dump.
Talking about hardware flaws, i think they even fucked up the USB-C implementation on the PI 4. They put the resistor on the wrong pins or somthing. Dont remeber exactly.
They used 1 resistor for CC1 and CC2. The fix and correct implementation was to use one resistor per CC-line (two in total).
I think operating at 5V input might be a technical constraint for them. Compatibility revisions for existing hardware are a lot more difficult if the input voltage is 9x higher. Addressing that isn’t as easy as slapping a buck converter on the board.
Not saying requiring 5A was the right call, just that I can see reasons for not using USB-PD.
We are not talking about 9 times higher. 3A at 9V would be enough.
I am currently looking in the Docs and it is really confusing. It states that the PI 5 has a PMIC on board but still saying it boots up only when the 5A is present… So not sure what is going on here.
And looking at the PD 3.1 standard it looks like 5V 5A is actually in the spec in the new Version…
Will have to get my hands on the new PD 3.1 spec.
Pi 5 sucks massive balls.
They now require a special power supply for it to work else it just crashes under load. Their use of USB C is insanely confusing because it doesn’t work with any normal USB C psu.
This power supply costs 15 bucks which conveniently isn’t included in the price. Also a heat sink that costs 6 bucks.
Also they stuck with micro hdmi which sucks. (even more special accessories needed)
The required accessories almost cost as much as just an old pi.
I hope the community jumps over to Rockchip based boards soon. Pi has taken the communities open source efforts and spit in their face.
Risc5 is also interesting but that seems to be a far bigger task since it need recompilation of a lot of existing stuff
What non standard thing are they doing with the power supply? The PSU looks like a regular usb c PD supply to me (even supports 12v, nice!)
Edit: wtf! 5v@5a yeah thats non standard. What were they thinking?
the community’s* open-source efforts
Is there a RasPi alternative that’s competitive in price and has PCI-e support? It’s been a dream project of mine for quite some time to pair an ultra low power SoC to a GPU in order to make a crazy overpowered Folding@Home or BOINC cluster.
I could say the Orange Pi 5, however Orange Pi’s ports currently tend to only work with specific accessories which they already wrote drivers for themselves. It’s not like they’re blocking other devices, but just like how RPI still needs a lot of work to support GPU’s with drivers, Orange Pi probably needs even more.
The integrated GPU is pretty good though.
Most alternatives to RPI use a Rockchip such as the RK3566 for mid range and RK3588 for high end stuff.
There’s also the new cheap 15 bucks LuckFox Pico with Rockchip RV1106 with a small NPU for AI projects, kind of a Pi Pico alternative.
Thank you for your recommendation. I’ve looked at some of those SoCs and they’re impressive but none of them do what I’m looking for. I want to make a graveyard for my old GPUs, but without the power overhead I have right now with them configured as essentially a mining rig that’s folding proteins instead of guessing the hash. I understand that the potential power saved by using ARM or RISC over x86/64 is a few dozen watts at best and chosing an SoC over a desktop platform hamstrings any opportunity for scaling, but it’s been a dream project of mine for quite some time. It doesn’t have to be practical.
Whenever I am doing different projects I go with RasPi alternatives. I agree they’re cheaper and superior.
Low end Intel like Gracemount N200 are lower power and higher performance than Raspberry Pi.
Even an old JasperLake is like 24 watts max to Pi5’s 27 watts.
The Pi foundation showed their true colors. Don’t continue to support them.
What did they do, I’m out of the loop?
Completely abandoned their original hobbyist customer base and sent all their inventory to B2B sales channels and scalpers for several years.
And now that they’re finally providing B2C vendors with stock, they’ve jacked up the prices by 100% to 300%.
Don’t forget the Raspberry Pi foundation was supposed to be a nonprofit and the only reason they’re the premier SBC is the community. Other boards have better specs, at a better price, with better features. The community support, the hobbyists, are the primary reason why they are what they are.
That’s just one bad action, but their had been plenty others recently. Some other comments here have provided information you should read, such as hiring police officers who specialized in using Pi’s for surveillance…
I’ve been feeling this as well. I’m not too into the Pis but I have one on my shelf for a “one day” project. Looking at the pi5 it’s way too expensive I feel like it’s lost its true niche and sold out being “too mainstream”
I need to look further into single chip computer things cause I’ve seen some competitors come out on my feeds. Hoping there’s an affordable alternative to the Pi5 that beings back the Pi3 feeling.
Damn that sucks. I appreciate raspberry pis but unfortunate to hear all this
The price is more or less the same as it’s always been, where is this nonsense 300% coming from? Are you quoting scalper prices as retail?
I’ve bought, owned, and used, Pi’s since the original. The Raspberry Pi 5 is the first version that I will not purchase and deploy, so fuck off with your bullshit and go back to shilling for YouTube advertisers, or whatever other corporate interest tickles your fancy, just take it somewhere else.
Cry some more
I’m just hoping rockchip gets better kernel support. They are way better positioned on the CxB scale.
There was some stuff in a recent kernel release or rc. I don’t know what though
But you can get a used thinkcentre tiny mini micro on ebay for $80. Wtf would I spend 100+ on a pi?
Energy efficiency?
Most ppl do not bother to calculate that in(especially idle consumption) or living in an area where it basically does not matter.
But yes, no x86-64 device comes close.
I was thinking more along the lines of battery powered operations. I can stick a Pi, a car battery, a solar panel into a weather proof box and set it in the woods if I needed to.
You’ve got a point, but whatever you’re doing innawoods can probably be accomplished with a $40 pi, not a $100+ one.
Yeah I am loving all these micro Linux computer options. Not much bigger than a raspberry pi but it’s a full computer. If you need gpio you can hook up an Arduino through USB and connect super easily. The one I have been using even has an integrated video card. All for around $100 and they are always in stock lol.
Yup. I use one for DNS / pihole / remote into network. Already tiny, easily replaceable parts and any OS. I do prefer the dells over Lenovo though.
can you link to one? i am interested
thank you. that’s a good deal.
first search “thinkcentre i5” https://www.ebay.com/itm/335211475014?hash=item4e0c293046:g:cxAAAOSwxidkleZb
Too many other options to be excited about their offerings anymore
What are some good other options? I haven’t kept up with the advances with this stuff in a few years.
$100 for no h265 hardware encoding.
Hard pass.
