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In 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
by user_7832 5y ago
In 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!