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Their mass production of the Pi keyboard should clue you into at least one direction that they believe "the Pi is all about"; education, and increasing access t

• Teever 3y ago
  While I admit that I am a bit envious of the large 4k monitors that my coworkers use, I have managed to make it through life without buying anything larger than a 1440p monitor. What exactly is the educational advantage (for the demographic that the raspberry pi is supposed to be educating) of the inclusion of 2x 4k ports and does that advantage override the opportunity cost of including the ports? In other words '1080p ought to be enough for anybody learning how computers work from an SBC.
  • dual_dingo 3y ago
    Raspberry Pi is many things today. The foundation is indeed focused on education, but the company behind it has a much broader focus and sells many (most?) of their devices to commercial customers, where 2x4k outputs might be beneficial, e.g. in digital signage applications.
  • philistine 3y ago
    Honestly, I'm just spitballing here, but it's not like the Raspberry foundation is making its own silicon. They're using what exists. It's probably a simple case of the chipset they chose supporting it, so might as well include it.
    • stefan_ 3y ago
      They are making their own silicon (see the RP1 at [1]) and obviously have very significant input as to what Broadcom puts into the main SoC, a chip that is primarily now made for RPi needs. 1: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/
      • ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        Rp1 doesn’t deal with video, and having two displays is very reasonable for all kinds of things, including display kiosks, points of sale, etc Even for a robot. They don’t need to be 4k, it I guess that’s just normal these days
      • hypercube33 3y ago
        I thought the RP1 was made because broadcom took out gpio functions of the doc so they were forced to move it to another chip?
    • Xelynega 3y ago
      I could be wrong, but iirc the HDMI they use and full size HDMI are pin compatible. It's likely they just chose the smaller connector so they can break both out and have a smaller board footprint(as opposed to having a larger board or only providing a connector for one HDMI port)
• narrator 3y ago
  You can get $60 android tablets brand new on Amazon that don't need a monitor, keyboard and mouse and can use the vast amount of education apps in the play store.
  • victorbjorklund 3y ago
    The education part is tinkering with hardware and linux.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • Xelynega 3y ago
      IMO arch or similar is going to do more towards teaching Linux than raspian will. Just install that on a cheap laptop/phone and play around with different apps/configs. For hardware learning pis arent even that great, an stm32, Arduino , or esp32 is a fraction of the cost(so you don't have to worry about burning the io pins out as much) and the toolchain is basically the same(simpler I'd argue even)
      • victorbjorklund 3y ago
        You can use arch on raspberry pi too. https://itsfoss.com/install-arch-raspberry-pi/ https://itsfoss.com/install-arch-raspberry-pi/ But not sure I agree that arch is the best linux distro to start with for someone new to computers that grew up on an Ipad.
  • passivegains 3y ago
    Yeah, but devices aren't very useful for education if the students can't type on them.
  • borisgolovnev 3y ago
    I got a pretty decent chromebook on eBay for 70 euros. With pretty good display, keyboard, touchpad, touchscreen, 8Gb of RAM and a battery. Runs linux great. Apparently chromebooks dominate education market nowadays, very inexpensive and arguably more useful than a Raspberry pi.
• sleepybrett 3y ago
  Agreed. Their little 'breadbox' pi4* certainly points in that direction very heavily. Their cheaper 'embedded' version (the zero series, and the pico) is doing what this guy wants. * https://vilros.com/products/raspberry-pi-400-vilros?variant=32175939321950&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqP2pBhDMARIsAJQ0CzrU9BqLh6h_vbNt0_8mXuOqYUqkh2NICLi0a5HpWcNudPg327Trx-8aAnZxEALw_wcB https://vilros.com/products/raspberry-pi-400-vilros?variant=...
  • ornornor 3y ago
    If you can get one, which was (still is?) impossible pretty much ever since it came out.
    • kjs3 3y ago
      They seem to be in stock at the link he gave you. Amazon has numerous vendors with them in stock (I've had good luck buying from Seeed Studio, but not for rpis, YMMV). I bought 3 of them in the middle of covid when there were almost no rpi 3 or 4 SBCs for consumers anywhere on the planet and if you did find on they were 1 per customer. I think I got them from AdaFruit, who have 78 in stock right now. They were and are anything but unavailable. Oddly, rpilocator doesn't seem to track them, so if that's your definition of "available"...surprise?
• alpaca128 3y ago
  How are two niche ports requiring adapters more accessible than one full-size HDMI port? Are two ports on such constrained hardware really worth it? If my adapter cable breaks (which already happened) I have to order a new one and can't use the device while sitting on a pile of unused but unsupported HDMI cables. Meanwhile iirc it took until after the launch of the Pi 4 to get USB boot support without first flashing and booting a microSD card, another piece of hardware not known for its longevity. The RPi project is amazing and I'm glad it exists, but some decisions are just weird considering their goals. Though to be fair the RPi 4 & 5 improved the situation significantly.
  • hadlock 3y ago
    The weird niche port for video is the #1 reason I stopped using raspberry pi. I have one adapter, somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it in less than an hour. It's at the bottom of some bag or drawer of infrequently used adapters
    • unfamiliar 3y ago
      Why don’t you just keep it with the Pi?
      • hadlock 3y ago
        I have like five or six pis they get packed and unpacked every time I move
  • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Amen. Micro-HDMI is trash and should NEVER be used, because it will break promptly... especially on a dinky device that moves and shifts a lot. If a full-sized HDMI port is somehow too big (which it isn't on the regular-sized Pi, and definitely not on the 400), they should just use USB-C ports with DisplayPort capability. I'd rather use a DP-to-HDMI adapter (which is cheap and effective) than a shitty micro-HDMI port.
  • ddingus 3y ago
    I have mixed feelings about that. Personally, I found the mini HDMI ports themselves a downgrade. One is forever looking for adapters. However, having two displays is nice! It boils down to whether someone is using the device like a computer. The Pi 400 is a nice, respectable computer and I use one for development. Two displays makes sense and is high value. Now you can absolutely use the device. I have an epaper project in development. I have the epaper setup and attached to a Pi 3. That makes sense and it works well. Code output goes there and I have it all in one place. I use it in two basic ways: One is headless, using VNC to access dev tools and code located right on the Pi. I keep various wi-fi setups handy and can copy a new one onto the SD card if needed. Usually, I am powering the Pi with my laptop in that scenario. The other is via plugged in displays with keyboard and mouse. I do both of those with Pi 3 and 4 devices. The Pi-400 needs the display adapter and though I have not lost or broken one yet, it seems to me simply attaching an adapter permanently to the computer would make a lot of sense. This thread makes me want to 3d print a different case so that I can incorporate the adapters properly and just expose HDMI slots like we see on the earlier devices. Finally, just a tip: I will often use my laptop as a display for the Pi with one of those HDMI capture devices. Power the Pi with the laptop and bring up a display to work with.
• stonogo 3y ago
  Famously the devices have been difficult to acquire because RPi was putting all their manufacturing output into fulfilling commercial market needs (1,2,3). Filling a market need -- well-specced hardware with long support horizons -- is perfectly fine, but Upton et al. have made it very clear that this is the priority and pretending otherwise is weird. Mass producing generic USB keyboards in corporate livery does not meaningfully communicate corporate ethics here. Meanwhile, most of the competition focuses on beating the Pi on specs, availability, or price -- and none of them seem to have noticed that long support life as being the differentiator which leads to business adoption of the Pi hardware. So I suspect the status quo will persist for the foreseeable future. 1 - https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/you-cant-buy-raspberry-pi-right-now https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/you-cant-buy-raspberr... 2 - https://www.elecrow.com/blog/why-is-it-so-hard-to-buy-raspberry-pi-these-days.html https://www.elecrow.com/blog/why-is-it-so-hard-to-buy-raspbe... 3 - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-ceo-eben-upton-discusses-stock-updates-industry-prioritization https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-ceo-eben-upto...
• deleted 3y ago
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• walterbell 3y ago
  > direction that they believe Fortunately we don't need belief, since the foundation has years of volume-based sales data on market segments, e.g. for the last two years they have prioritized industrial business users over education, during supply chain shortages. Is there a published market segment breakdown for each generation of RPi?
• deleted 3y ago
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• Xelynega 3y ago
  Their existing contracts and focus should clue you more into their desired direction than an accessory that they can produce for consumers that is tangentially related to raspberry pis. The pi foundations focus(be it intentional or just out of a desire to stay open) has been to have prototypes created with raspberry pis that go into production without replacing the raspberry Pi so that device manufacturers are locked into large long-term contracts. The inability for consumers to find devices available and the odd io choices(IoT video devices like kiosks would benefit from the double ports rather than a single full size HDMI) are IMO the intention of the pi foundation. Their focus is on generating contracts and fulfilling them, consumer devices are secondary. That's to say they've "forgotten what the pi is about" insofar as they've made choices to grow the business/contract side of the pi foundation more than the education and consumer availability
  • ghostly_s 3y ago
    It's odd then that a single alternative hasn't risen to prominence to serve their original hobbyist market. There are millions of clones out there of course but any with a trusted brand name and support behind them?
    • Paul-Craft 3y ago
      I don't know about you, but if one of those clone manufacturers made it as simple to install Linux on their machine and have it not be an utter pain in the ass, that would go a long way toward me wanting to trust them. The problem with the clones, and with clones in general, is that they're never quite 100% compatible. There's always some sharp edge there to cut yourself on. Fix that, and I'll definitely try a non-Raspberry Pi SoC.
      • Blackthorn 3y ago
        This is by far the largest problem with the clones. The software story is absolute crap compared to RPi.
      • hackmiester 3y ago
• gotoeleven 3y ago
  Parent should know that the hurtfulness of having a different opinion about the best use of a computer cannot be overstated. Imagine if my great grandfather who survived the holocaust read this comment--it would kill him even worse than hitler tried to.
• jonp888 3y ago
  Not sure why you would need dual monitor outputs for education use. I seem to remember at the time of release them talking about how it would actually be useful in telephone call centres. If they want to increase access to computing hardware, their 'industrial customers first, everyone else can pick over whatever odds and end are left over' sales policy is a really strange way of showing it.
  • hypercube33 3y ago
    Call centers are dominated by thin clients typically. you can replace them with a pi but after you get software, an SD card, a case, a power supply...the pricing is moot and you don't have vendor support.