3 ms·

Thank you for saying this. I've been pointing this out forever and it always results in a massive downvote. The educational angle of the Pi is long long gone.

Thank you for saying this. I've been pointing this out forever and it always results in a massive downvote. The educational angle of the Pi is long long gone. And what really intrigues me is how much time people will spend trying to get this SBC to do something in a one-off project when an extra $75-$150 will get them a system that can do much much more out of the box.

nine_k 8y ago
Does that more powerful $100-150 system have an ecosystem comparble to Pi's? Programming tools, shields, etc? I suppose that could be a significant factor for some (but not all).
- dijit 8y ago
  I think fear of the unknown here is part of the problem. The real answer is: "yes, but". Yes, there's a strong ecosystem elsewhere, the raspbian project deserves _major_ kudos for supporting so many boards and so well, anything listed on their site is basically plug and play, sometimes linux has to be coaxed into doing SPI, but that's Linux itself. "But" you should have learned how SBC's are working already. Pi's are not the first and last word in SBCs and it's wrong to hold them to that standard. If you use RPI for it's intended purpose there's no reason you'd be in this position now; learning how GPIO pins work is one of the only things that will differ strongly on a PI vs something else. Unless you're talking about third-party hardware being built for the platform?
  - thinkmassive 8y ago
    The SoC differs significantly as well. Raspbian works so well on official boards that this isn’t an issue, but it certainly can be with less common boards. Other SBCs may require binary blobs for certain functionality, and if the manufacturer stops releasing updates then you’re stuck with the last one they made available.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  In a lot of cases, and I'll be specific to my ecosystem of choice (NXP i.MX), yes. There are thousands of pages of documentation and TRMs, there's an active kernel tree, the bootloading process is open and documented, there are toolchains and Yocto recipes and etc. Is it perfect? Is the kernel mainline? No in both cases. But they exist. And regarding shields, a lot of other SBCs have keyed into the Arduino and/or RPi shield setup. I'm working with a Broadcom EVK right now that's not meant for hobbyists, and even that board has an RPi shield header on it. Pick up any recent Kinetis-based board and it's got Arduino shields on it. But let's think about the complaints the OP presented. He's bitching about the on-board ethernet PHY and whatnot. External add-ons aren't even the topic here.

nine_k 8y ago

Does that more powerful $100-150 system have an ecosystem comparble to Pi's? Programming tools, shields, etc? I suppose that could be a significant factor for some (but not all).

dijit 8y ago
I think fear of the unknown here is part of the problem. The real answer is: "yes, but". Yes, there's a strong ecosystem elsewhere, the raspbian project deserves _major_ kudos for supporting so many boards and so well, anything listed on their site is basically plug and play, sometimes linux has to be coaxed into doing SPI, but that's Linux itself. "But" you should have learned how SBC's are working already. Pi's are not the first and last word in SBCs and it's wrong to hold them to that standard. If you use RPI for it's intended purpose there's no reason you'd be in this position now; learning how GPIO pins work is one of the only things that will differ strongly on a PI vs something else. Unless you're talking about third-party hardware being built for the platform?
- thinkmassive 8y ago
  The SoC differs significantly as well. Raspbian works so well on official boards that this isn’t an issue, but it certainly can be with less common boards. Other SBCs may require binary blobs for certain functionality, and if the manufacturer stops releasing updates then you’re stuck with the last one they made available.
joezydeco 8y ago
In a lot of cases, and I'll be specific to my ecosystem of choice (NXP i.MX), yes. There are thousands of pages of documentation and TRMs, there's an active kernel tree, the bootloading process is open and documented, there are toolchains and Yocto recipes and etc. Is it perfect? Is the kernel mainline? No in both cases. But they exist. And regarding shields, a lot of other SBCs have keyed into the Arduino and/or RPi shield setup. I'm working with a Broadcom EVK right now that's not meant for hobbyists, and even that board has an RPi shield header on it. Pick up any recent Kinetis-based board and it's got Arduino shields on it. But let's think about the complaints the OP presented. He's bitching about the on-board ethernet PHY and whatnot. External add-ons aren't even the topic here.