20 ms·
The Life of Pi: Ten Years of Raspberry Pi
- szszrk 5y agoSuch page design make me dizzy. Left, right, left, right, scrolling a whole page to get barely a paragraph. Awkward. Blah.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoI've learned a lot more about Linux playing with it. Learned Python playing with it. Learned more about package managers using it. Used to to play with e-ink displays and other interesting peripherals. I enjoy the Pi and have happily watched as it has become more and more user-friendly.
- chrisjc 5y agoI have a tendency to think about the textbook picture of a bunch of kids in a classroom lab when I hear about the Pi being for educational purposes. However, it's easy to forget about individuals like yourself and how they've tinkered with one to learn all kinds of things about OSes, programming languages and computerized peripherals.
- smoldesu 5y agoI still remember the giddy feeling of paging through coffee table magazines at various places, seeing them mention a $35, credit card sized computer. I also remember trying to explain what it was to my parents, begging them to buy me one even though it had to be shipped from the UK. The biggest memory, though, was opening that box on Christmas day and finding the Raspberry Pi 1 (Revision 2) nestled inside. The rest of my gifts didn't matter: I ripped the mouse and keyboard out of my desktop PC, plugged them into the Pi and co-opted our DirecTV HDMI cable so I could see it in action. Words can't quite describe the magic of booting into Raspbian back them, especially as a budding young computer enthusiast who thought any of this stuff qualified as sorcery. Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and the Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat (the Pi Zero is still neat, though). In any case, I can't help but recommend them whenever I hear someone talk about dabbling in Sysops. I get that giddy feeling again, hoping that it might spark someone else's fascination with Linux and wild hardware form factors. Thank you for all you've done, Raspberry Pi foundation. I'm sure there's more people like me who grew up alongside one of your devices, but I can only hope that the future is even brighter for the next generation of young computer enthusiasts. (For those of you wondering: yes, my Pi does still work a decade later)
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago> Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and the Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat (the Pi Zero is still neat, though). Has it? The Pi 4 is incredible value for money. Barely needs any compromises. Stick it in a case (Argon Neo!), stick it on top of a UASP disk caddy... a whole emergency desktop computer for really almost every normal use.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoBy the time you've added enough components to make it fully functional, it's up to the price range of a used machine off eBay or even some new chromebooks
- user_7832 5y agoI think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself is so cheap. I frequently see old mini-PCs with i3s and it's for ~100EUR. Even a 4th gen i3 is going to be way more powerful than a Pi, the only thing going for the Pi is probably newer faster memory. IMO the best use case for the Pi is buying 10 Pi-zeros at a discount and putting them on a moderately-heavy task that needs them to run off a battery.
- _ea1k 5y agoThat's true, although I think it is also getting to the point that it is at least as powerful as some of those cheap Chromebooks. Most of those don't even have 8 GB of RAM like the latest Pi 4. It seems like whatever Pi comes next might pass some of these.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoThe 8gb Pi 4 is crazily good value for money, but one of the striking things about the Pi OS is that you barely need the 8gb ever. The 4gb machine is fine for almost everyone, as is a £5 case, £10 UASP caddy and a £20 120gb SSD. And _then_ if you don't have stuff lying around, you go onto eBay looking for bits. Mice, keyboards, whatever. At some point I need to upgrade my secondhand MacBook Pro. In the back of my mind I always the idea of "which is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency if I haven't been paid?" Now the cheapest machine I can get by on is an 8gb Pi 4 and the monitor and keyboard I still have lying around. I know because I've done it.
- beardyw 5y agoIt got me (back) into electronics. Hooking stuff up to the pins was great, but I soon worked out that an AVR chip could do more or less the same for under £1. So the pi got neglected :(
- geerlingguy 5y agoI know a number of people who bought a Pi, figured out how easy it was to hook up software to some GPIO pins, then got into microcontrollers and basic electronics afterwards. It's also funny to see how many Pis out there in the world are doing a task using 1-2W of power continuously for years, where a little microcontroller and a sleep could do the same task using a few mW :D
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoSure, but if dev time for the microcontroller was significantly higher it could still lose out overall.
- beardyw 5y agoIt would depend on what you are trying to do, if you are familiar with C etc. In some ways it is simpler, because your program is all there is.
- gruturo 5y ago> It got me (back) into electronics. Hooking stuff up to the pins was great, but I soon worked out that an AVR chip could do more or less the same for under £1. So the pi got neglected :( I'd argue that the pi was a complete success. It got you back into electronics, which aligns with their goals - get people to learn stuff.
- beardyw 5y agoI completely agree.
- geerlingguy 5y agoI remember the early years the Pi was more focused on children's education and the same sort of path the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) took... But the great thing was they could quickly scale up the manufacturing to the point where these $35 computers were available to almost anyone, and since that time a huge ecosystem has flourished, and still grows, even after wave after wave of clones has appeared. I remember the Asus Tinkerboard being the first clone board that I thought could _really_ make a dent... but then Asus basically put it on life support. Pine64, BananaPi, Orange Pi, Radxa, et all often make some pretty decent hardware, but the fact that it's often as hard today to get my projects working on those boards as it was with all SBCs back in 2012-2014 means I still stick to Raspberry Pi-branded boards for most things. Though I hate the closed source bits that power the Pi's Broadcom SoC, and how some of the hardware details can be locked behind restrictive NDAs, I'm happy Broadcom seems to have continued interest in feeding the project over the years.
- treesknees 5y agoI was worried early on about availability. They started with the goal of getting into classrooms, being cheap so kids or low-income schools can afford them, but then you also had for-profit businesses buying hundreds of these to power kiosks and digital signage. I'd almost describe it as "taking advantage" but perhaps that's too harsh. I was a little put off at first that these educational tools were being snatched up by businesses trying to save money.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoI suspect that was an initial concern too, until they came to terms with the idea that e.g. Cisco's requirements in a Raspberry Pi were both achievable and also help underwrite production of more imaginative things.
- laurencerowe 5y ago> I was a little put off at first that these educational tools were being snatched up by businesses trying to save money. I think the RPi's attraction for commercial users is less the price point and more the size of the community around it. It's by far the most approachable system to work with when you need a small linux device with cameras and gpio.
- zwieback 5y agoI'd worked with "serious" embedded systems when the Pi first came out so I was skeptical. Fast forward to today and I have multiple Pis doing various things for lab experiment automation and so do many others around me. I think the main contribution, similar to what Arduino has done, is giving us a mass market standard that seriously drove down prices.
- cmehdy 5y agoFunnily enough, as of 2022 I've been finding it impossible to get Raspberry Pis. I suppose it's due to shortages.. I'm in Canada and everywhere is sold out, when checking the US it's sold out, the UK too, etc. Couple resellers price-gouging at 4-5x prices do exist though. Here's to 10 more years of Pis, preferably with availability too!
- LeoPanthera 5y agoCheck stock at https://rpilocator.com https://rpilocator.com - they have a Twitter you can follow for alerts.
- 1024core 5y agoEvery board is OOS in the US.... :-(
- LeoPanthera 5y agoYeah but they do come in stock occasionally, subscribe to the Twitter and turn on alerts.
- moffkalast 5y agoIf you want to pay four times the price for them yes. Or just wait for Q4 when they'll probably ramp up production to meet demand.
- lukifer 5y agoIt's nuts; they're 3-4x MSRP on the secondary market ($70 for Zero2's, $200+ for 4b's). I just broke down and ordered some competitor SBCs (OrangePi's via AliExpress).
- trs-80 5y agoThere are many Armbian supported devices[0] which make great alternatives. [0] https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
- LeoPanthera 5y agoI've posted about this a lot but I feel the need to evangelize it: The cleverest thing the Raspberry Pi can do that almost no-one uses is network boot. You don't need an SD card at all, you can setup your server such that you can change what OS a Pi boots into just by renaming a symlink. I have a bunch of Pis around my house that all network boot into specific tasks and it is a joy.
- yboris 5y agoThank you for sharing! I looked around and found this cool link: https://blog.alexellis.io/state-of-netbooting-raspberry-pi-in-2021/ https://blog.alexellis.io/state-of-netbooting-raspberry-pi-i...
- throwaway894345 5y agoI would be really interested in learning how to do this. In the past I've looked into PXE booting, but the tutorials all seem pretty opaque ("just make your router send a magic DHCP packet") or too specific to one configuration.
- nsteel 5y agoDid you try this official guide? https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html#network-boot-your-raspberry-pi https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-a...
- htrp 5y agoDo you have a preferred tutorial on this? This is item 1 on google (https://linuxhit.com/raspberry-pi-pxe-boot-netbooting-a-pi-4-without-an-sd-card/ https://linuxhit.com/raspberry-pi-pxe-boot-netbooting-a-pi-4...) but happy to see whats worked for you.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoI don't. But I really want to write one, because all the documentation on how to do it is quite poor.
- user_7832 5y agoIn my view, the biggest advantage of the Pi (and the Arduino too) wasn't just the devices themselves, but rather the large-scale acceptance and adopting of ARM boards in specific, and microcontroller boards in general. You could be using a Teensy or a Pro Micro for a task, but DIY electronics is much easier and more accessible than many years ago. How much of this is cause and how much is effect, may be tough to say but I'm happy that electronics (and moderately complex projects) are far more easily accessible than they were some years back. Open source software/Git/GitHub too deserves credit.
- giantrobot 5y agoThe Pi and Arduino being cheap helped their acceptance for DIY projects I think more than anything. An alternate reality Raspberry Pi identical to our Pi save for a MIPS CPU instead of ARM would have been just as popular. The magic of a Pi isn't the ARM CPU but the $25 price point for a Linux computer and the ability to use memory cards, power supplies, input devices, and monitors people already own. They're cheap enough to play with yet really flexible. Even if you never finish a "project" using a Pi it can still be a fun little emulation machine, Kodi player, or bang around system for kids. Even the Arduino isn't all that useful outside of "projects". Even when a Pi is vastly overpowered for some DIY project powering some LEDs it's still not much more than doing the same project with much more limited but project-specific hardware.
- johnny22 5y agoWasn't the esp8266 similar to the arduino in that regard? It used a totally different chip design from expressif, but even so, it was still popular because of the features for the price!
- cf141q5325 5y agoI read an interesting counterpoint in the IpFire forum. Among other points >Now, everybody is looking for a cheap ARM board with performance and loads of features. The Raspberry Foundation is a charity that pays probably no tax at all, but somehow is selling lots and lots of boards at an absolutely “amazing” price. >Amazing because nobody else in Europe can compete with them. Paying no taxes helps. The second step is that they have almost completely outsourced their software development. They call it Open Source-ed, but that is not the same. >Over many years, there has never been a release of that piece of hardware that was supported by a mainline kernel. Neither Linux nor any other of the *BSDs. They simply do not care what software runs on it. https://community.ipfire.org/t/arm-sbc-support-discussion/2650 https://community.ipfire.org/t/arm-sbc-support-discussion/26... Post number 4
- qbasic_forever 5y agoI thought the organization was split in two, a Raspberry Pi foundation/non-profit that was tasked with the original mission (cheap computing for all people of the world), and a Raspberry Pi company with CEO (Eben Upton), board, etc. driven to be a successful company that produces the Pi. Here's the foundation: https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ Here's the company: https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/
- cf141q5325 5y agoThanks for the heads up. There seems to have been a past thread on a similar topic, when the Ltd announced its IPO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392649 Its a structure like Mozillla, meaning the company is fully owned by the foundation
- blibble 5y agofirst time I've seen someone complain about being outcompeted by a charity... what's next? Glaxo complaining about the Wellcome Trust?
- 5y ago
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoI'd love to purchase a few Pis for the following purposes: - Build a 3 or 4 Pi cluster to practice DevOps stuffs - Use a Pico to learn ARM assembly (However I have a TIVA board for that purpose, although I prefer something simpler) Nowadays they are all off from the online shops!
- zellyn 5y agoIf you ever manage to find any for purchase, I wrote up some brief documentation on how I got a k3s cluster set up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12TT49VgyPRSH7F4b_oC5rOv1Ag7RPxmSNAWbJjf3RF4 https://docs.google.com/document/d/12TT49VgyPRSH7F4b_oC5rOv1...
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoThanks! I'll take a look.
- nereye 5y agoApologies if am misreading the last paragraph, assuming it meant that it's hard to find the Pico, that was the case for a while but the situation is now much better, e.g. Adafruit has 56 in stock: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4883 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4883 Admittedly, this is $1 more expensive than the $4 baseline board since it also comes with headers. Just checked and DigiKey has about 17K in stock ($4 Raspberry Pi Pico): https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0915/13624793 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC09.... And that's leaving aside the slightly fancier boards that have the RP2040 and cost around $10, e.g. Adafruit Feather RP2040 etc. The chip itself is not in any shortage, e.g. DigiKey and Mouser have tens of thousands/thousands in stock, etc.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoOh I forgot to mention that Picos are quite available :D It's the Pi4s that are rare. I actually found some in local but they are in kits. I prefer just boards.
- 1024core 5y agoThese days it's impossible to find Pis in any of the online stores at their original prices. Vendors who do have any stock are charging 5X. I've been looking for a Zero WH (Zero W with headers), and for the life of me can't find any in stock anywhere. /shakes fist at the sky
- adastra22 5y agohttps://rpilocator.com https://rpilocator.com Edit: not sure they track the WH variant though
- snvzz 5y agoGet it w/o headers, and solder them; A half an hour job for a trembling hand. Since you seem to only need one board, I don't see how this is an issue.
- sokoloff 5y agoOr I guarantee someone near you is capable to do the soldering for you. Indeed, if I was designing a soldering practice exercise for someone’s 5th minute ever holding an iron, putting headers on a Pi would be a good one.
- rasz 5y agoSoldering thru hole components is charged by the pin by the fabs. Header might be adding almost $1 to the BOM.
- trs-80 5y agoThere are many interesting alternatives available: https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
- shimonabi 5y agoI remember buying a code on eBay for a few $ with which I could then purchase the original Raspberry Pi from RS Components, because of the limited supply. It was a total waste of money, because I canceled the order and got it faster fron an another online seller.
- franga2000 5y agoI haven't used any of the latest generation, but are they still using that custom PMIC that gets fried by the most basic of mistakes but that they completely refuse to sell you for repair? I remember trying to fix some Pis that died for unknown reasons and seeing nothing but anti-repair nonsense from the staff on the official forums. No schematics to be found and even the people who go through the trouble of diagnosing an issue and try to buy a replacement component (because it's custom for some reason) get the standard response: "the Pi is only sold as a unit and is not intended to be user-serviceable". It's sad that even the cheapest knockoffs from china (like Orange Pi) are more open than the RPi (you can get schematics and all the components are available from the usual places) - I really hope that's improved in the last few years...
- oblib 5y agoI was there the day their site went down when they started selling them. Pretty sure I still have that board around somewhere here.
- LoveMortuus 5y agoI'm form EU and I can't find the latest Raspberry Pi for 35$... Even many of the older models are still above 35$, is this an EU problem or is there something obvious that I'm missing?
- LeoPanthera 5y agoThe price of the basic model was increased to $45 due to the chip shortage. They say it will return to $35 when the chip supply improves. Who knows when that will be.
- mikesabbagh 5y agoThank you for all who worked on making the Pi. I learned so much while having fun. I think it shaped my career too. My only suggestion is that they should produce more of them. I placed an order early January for the new pi zero2w, still in backorder.
- aborsy 5y agoIn case someone doesn’t know, the title refers to the movie, Life of PI https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film) PI is a tiger that has a journey with a boy.
- nekobrain 5y agoA Raspberry Pi might very well be the reason I work as a SRE today, I think it was the first machine I SSH'd into and that got me that "anything is possible" feeling.
- sylware 5y agoAny news on the 64bits RISC-V raspberry pi?