3 ms·
These things are getting too expensive. For most embedded projects is cheaper to either scale down to arduino/esp or up to a used laptop.
by daghamm 2y ago
These things are getting too expensive.
For most embedded projects is cheaper to either scale down to arduino/esp or up to a used laptop.
- zamadatix 2y agoThat Pi/Pi-likes can do traditional embedded things like i2c or GPIO seems almost incidental these days. The used/low end laptop is much more comparable but then you have something big, bulky, power hungry (almost always with a fan), and already outdated (maybe not in terms of absolute performance but in technology/support). If you have any need for more than 1 at a time things get awkward and dissimilar and if you happen to run across a need for a traditional embedded use case e.g. GPIO on the side then the interfaces won't really be there. And the other side is the cheaper ones still exist e.g. the just launched CM4S goes down to $30 with some storage included. Not exactly microcontroller cost but not exactly bad for the convenience even if that's your own use case. Then if you need to scale up your ceiling is much higher (in relative terms even) than 10 years ago.
- daghamm 2y agoWhat kind of projects do people have that need both i2c _and_ a powerful compute? What percentage of your projects are like that? You can hook up bunch of sensors to a $5 esp32 and that thing uses much less power. If you need to do any heavy computing, you can offload it over WiFi to your homelab or the cloud.