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To me, the Pi 5 misses the point. The original Raspberry Pi was $25 and ran Linux. All it needed was a random USB PSU to work. This made it suitable for a lot
by blagie 3y ago
To me, the Pi 5 misses the point.
The original Raspberry Pi was $25 and ran Linux. All it needed was a random USB PSU to work. This made it suitable for a lot of random projects. Smart light switch? Get a Pi. Homebrew thermostat? Get a Pi. Want to show off a Beowulf cluster? Get a dozen Pis. The cost and size was less than a normal thermostat (or even a nicer light switch). The size and complexity was low.
Now, it's $80 for the 8GB version. It requires a lot more power, and increasingly, active cooling, and what-not. Once you toss that in, it's big, expensive, and clunky. It's usable as a desktop-replacement, but the flipside is that the cost, size, and weight is the same as getting a computer. You can find a much more capable SFF desktop from Dell Refurbished or eBay. It actually costs more than a basic Chromebook (running Linux), and the Chromebook brings a lot more.
Pi Zero is perhaps on the right track, at $15 (the non-wireless version is sold out everywhere), but unfortunately, requires a fistful dongles to make work, which makes it miss the mark.
The appeal is also largely reduced by how much the cost of computers and other devices has gone down. Why spend $80 computer on a Pi when a full-fledged Android tablet from Aliexpress, with case, screen, touch, and battery, sells for half of that?
(The answer, for now, is legacy hats and infrastructure, as well as open-source, but that won't last forever; at some point, an Aliexpress vendor will sell that $40 tablet with open-source infrastructure, documentation, and perhaps a few GPIO pins too).
- karmakaze 3y agoThe article concludes similarly (TL;DR): > But the experience was less of using a regular desktop computer with lots of software available and more of using a Chromebook, where the OS itself is mostly just a layer of UI for a browser to run on top of.
- elcritch 3y agoThe form factor of the RPi 5 is the same as previous generations. You can run them fine without active cooling unless you want it to run at sustained max performance, in which case the original Pi’s wouldn’t work anyways. The biggest benefit of RPis is their good Linux driver support and ecosystem. Something cheap Alibaba Android tablets don’t provide. And there’s still plenty of RPi4’s and 3’s available.
- blagie 3y agoMost people tend to engineer for maximum TDP on thermals, and maximum power draw on power supply. It's good design practice, since it depends on what causes the "max performance." You don't want a $100 light switch, running in an enclosed space, risking a house fire from a bug in code code. You also don't want a lot of embedded devices crashing hard if a bug makes them draw more power than a small battery or power adapter can source (even momentarily). All these problems have solutions, but the central point is the instant I need to explain "thermal design power" to an eight-grader in an afterschool club for them to get their project working, (as they're struggling to figure out what a current versus a voltage is, or what 'ls' does), or why they should pick a 3A over a 5, the Pi has lost most of its raison e'etre.
- earthling8118 3y agoWell it doesn't seem that the RPi5 hits the mark according to that logic either. From what I can tell their changes are still not merged into the kernel so you're beholden to their custom version of Linux
- Astraco 3y agoAnd you won't find it for $80, you only be able to buy bundles with charger, cables and SD card for $120-150. At those price you better buying a second hand NUC or Thinkcentre, or even a Thinkpad.