5 ms·

What are the better alternatives? I don’t think any have anywhere near the level of software and community support nor stability.

jsheard 2y ago
The situation with ARM hasn't changed much unless your budget stretches to Amperes stuff, but the big change is that x86 SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten very cheap, and of course those Just Work with any Linux distro or even Windows. The Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price.
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, it's actually insane how much X86_64 stuff has dropped in price. Yesterday I received two Ryzen 9 mini gaming computers [1], one to replace my old rack mount server and one to be a home theater PC. Each cost about $400, and they are capable of emulating the PS3 and Xbox 360 smoothly (I don't really have any new games so I wasn't able to push the limit too much, but still emulating those consoles requires some horsepower!). Maybe I'm just out of the loop (very likely), but $400 for a super low-power gaming computer feels insanely cheap to me. The server one in particular will pay for itself in about a year due to power savings alone compared to my rack mount server. [1] Beelink SER6's for those interested.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > The Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price. Hard agree, I have one and I love it. Its currently doing the VM work of what a £10k server did in 2012. But if I want GPIO, and or battery powered things with linux, then the pi is the way forward still. Anything else, and a pico/esp32 will do well.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Any reason you can't do GPIO with the ESP32? I've had pretty good luck with GPIO in NodeMCU.
    - KaiserPro 2y ago
      I do! as I said the pico/esp32/rp2040 are useful tools to have lying around. I'm currently using one to be a stepper controller for a project I'm doing now. However the best thing about the Rpi GPIO stack is the support. If I google "how do I do x with y on pi" I will get lots of resources, along with the official docs (the rp2040 docs are great by the way) and a bunch of hardware that is mostly plug and play.
      - tombert 2y ago
        Yeah, fair; there's something nice about the fact that the Raspberry Pi is "just Linux"; it's not some attempt at an embedded version of POSIX. You have the full Linux kernel and packages to play with, the GPIO stuff (if performance isn't a huge deal) can easily be controlled by simply writing to files, meaning that you can do quasi-embedded stuff in basically any language you want, or at least any language that has an ARM port to Linux, which is basically everything nowadays. Still, I'm quite partial to the ESP32 with NodeMCU just because the power consumption is so ridiculously low and NodeMCU + Lua is pretty easy since it has full GC and gives you a node.js-style callbacks that I think are generally easier to work with than doing it myself in C. Most of my embedded projects have moved to the ESP32 as a result.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any machine can be used as the host. That's pretty much how the Pi5 works anyway, the GPIOs are driven by the RP1 southbridge which is more or less an overgrown RP2040.
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      Yeah but why aren't there more boards with a built in coprocessor like that given how cheap they are now? Iirc only Lattepanda and the Pi Foundation make these sort of boards, and the former is overpriced beyond any common sense.
      - jsheard 2y ago
        Keeping the GPIO interface separate does have its advantages, if you accidentally explode a GPIO pin on an external RP2040 board then you've lost a couple of dollars instead of an entire >$50 SBC. It doesn't have to take up much space either: https://www.waveshare.com/product/rp2040-one.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/rp2040-one.htm
        moffkalast 2y ago
        If USB is involved you can't really make a production ready system with it. At least they could put some proper ZH or whatever connectors for UART that don't unplug when you look at them wrong. That's one of the things they did right with the Pi 5 at least.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      > TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any machine can be used as the host Two separate platforms connected over USB is substantially more complicated, expensive, power hungry, and consumes a lot more space. The value prop of SBCs is that they're compact and you can do low-level work in a single package. Connecting an RP2040 to a PC and writing software for both is the opposite end of the complexity spectrum.
  - graphe 2y ago
    When do you use GPIO with Linux?
    - colejohnson66 2y ago
      The same things you'd use GPIO with Linux for on a Raspberry Pi: anything.
      - graphe 2y ago
        Anything is not a useful comment. When? I'm asking for a use case, I haven't seen anyone use them for a specific reason to use Linux. I'm asking about sensors and software that works together better than using it with an MCU
        ianburrell 2y ago
        One example that I'm working on is GPS receiver and NTP server. Accuracy requires PPS signal through GPIO. It would be possible to wire up GPS receiver board to microcontroller. But still need server to run NTPd. Or could put GPS Hat on Raspberry Pi and have everything in one unit. It will run on the cheapest $35 Pi, or extra one in my case. Another I have thought doing is ADS-B receiver mounted outside. It helps to put the receiver close to antenna so would put the SDR and Pi in enclosure, and power it from PoE. Microcontroller can't run the SDR. Micro PC is overkill and wouldn't work in enclosure. Doesn't use GPIO pins.
        graphe 2y ago
        Very interesting, I haven't used gps but that definitely does need more power (or optimizations). Have you heard of this? https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/portapack-h2-for-hackrf-one/ https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/portapack-h2-for-hackrf-... Linux would probably be very easy to built without needing firmware
        ssl-3 2y ago
        I've used GPIO on a Raspberry Pi Zero W to talk with DS18B20 temperature sensors, along with an SDR attached with USB tuning in radio traffic and decoding AX.25 packets in software. I've also used GPIO on a Raspberry PI Zero W to build a Stratum 1 NTP server with nearly spooky accuracy with the PPS line. Both things worked very well. They were compact, performant, used an inconsequential amount of power, and were very inexpensive. And both things were very easy for me to implement, largely due to the tremendous amount of software available in the Linux-ey ecosystem. If I were trying to bodge an MCU into performing these tasks without involving Linux, I'd probably have never gotten either of them done.
  - varispeed 2y ago
    What kind of GPIO you need? If you need slow (under 1MHz) you can easily slap some USB to GPIO device and Bob's your uncle.
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    The top-end Alder-Lake-N N305 is good too! Double the threads, and probably a bit worse performance-per-dollar.
- kllrnohj 2y ago
  Especially if you're willing to go used. 5 year old lenovo, dell, and hp mini PCs are all over ebay as companies dump them due to simply being out of the typical 5 year enterprise warranty. They are otherwise still very potent and capable machines
- michaelt 2y ago
  > the big change is that x86 SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten very cheap Yes - and at the same time, the RPi has gotten more expensive, rising from ~$25 circa 2013 to $60-$80 for the latest RPi 5. Neither price including power supply and SD card. Of course the RPi 5 has more cores, a faster clock speed, more RAM, and built-in wifi so you do get more for your money. Once upon a time, you were looking at $25 for a Pi and $250 for intel. These days it's more like $80 vs $180.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Don't forget the 20-40% inflation over the last decade.
  - dvdbloc 2y ago
    Sure if you are trying to get a cheap desktop computer, the Pi always made a mediocre desktop experience. But if you need GPIO or very low power consumption or a SPI connection with a community that understands its quirks very well I doubt you are going to be happy with an old Intel desktop.
    - michaelt 2y ago
      The low power, GPIO and SPI on the Pi are all trash compared to microcontrollers, most of which are also cheaper and better documented. But if you specifically want to run Linux and have SPI and GPIO on the same chip then sure, the RPi will do that.
      - chrisjj 2y ago
        OOI, why would any user care what's on the same chip?
        michaelt 2y ago
        Well, often they wouldn't. In some cases you want to avoid your programmers needing to know two designs, compiler toolchains etc - a microcontroller might push you towards using C, and perhaps all your other code is in Python and you'd prefer to keep everything in Python. If you're making something like a high precision time server synchronized to GPS, you might want your GPIOs to trigger direct interrupts on the device with the ethernet port. Of course, IIRC the RPi has USB ethernet so it's not a good choice for a truly high precision time server.
eloisant 2y ago
The Raspberry Pi is the best if you can find it at MSRP, but I haven't seen that for many years now. You can only find it for at least double and at that price it's not worth it. There are many alternatives that, granted, don't have a community as big as RPi, but are perfectly valid and can be found at a normal price.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  They are at msrp now for large parts of EMEA
- wlll 2y ago
  I did a quick Google. The pi 5 4GB MSRP is $60 I think, there are some available on Amazon UK for £54.90 with delivery tomorrow. That's apparently $69.53, so above MSRP, but not terrible. There may be cheaper sources I've not googled hard.
- radicality 2y ago
  rpi5 is at msrp of $80 for the 8gb version and widely available at that price in USA, just bought one few days ago.
pokstad 2y ago
Intel chips are becoming dirt cheap. Intel has a lot of cheap dev boards that are more robust than RPi. Maybe not the same level of community support. Recently I bought a refurbished Intel micro size desktop PC to replace my RPi home server.
haunter 2y ago
Depends what do you want to do but I'd say Dell & Lenovo micro PCs. x86, changeable and upgradable CPU, RAM, and storage. And they are stil very very small https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA I have severall Optiplex micros at home for selfhosting, playing around VMs etc and I love them. In Europe you can get one with a 6th gen i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and SSD for ~100€. And of course you can upgrade the CPU for something better, add 32 GB RAM, bigger storage etc. No GPIO pins though.

jsheard 2y ago

The situation with ARM hasn't changed much unless your budget stretches to Amperes stuff, but the big change is that x86 SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten very cheap, and of course those Just Work with any Linux distro or even Windows. The Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price.

tombert 2y ago
Yeah, it's actually insane how much X86_64 stuff has dropped in price. Yesterday I received two Ryzen 9 mini gaming computers [1], one to replace my old rack mount server and one to be a home theater PC. Each cost about $400, and they are capable of emulating the PS3 and Xbox 360 smoothly (I don't really have any new games so I wasn't able to push the limit too much, but still emulating those consoles requires some horsepower!). Maybe I'm just out of the loop (very likely), but $400 for a super low-power gaming computer feels insanely cheap to me. The server one in particular will pay for itself in about a year due to power savings alone compared to my rack mount server. [1] Beelink SER6's for those interested.
KaiserPro 2y ago
> The Intel N100 is incredibly capable for the price. Hard agree, I have one and I love it. Its currently doing the VM work of what a £10k server did in 2012. But if I want GPIO, and or battery powered things with linux, then the pi is the way forward still. Anything else, and a pico/esp32 will do well.
- tombert 2y ago
  Any reason you can't do GPIO with the ESP32? I've had pretty good luck with GPIO in NodeMCU.
  - KaiserPro 2y ago
    I do! as I said the pico/esp32/rp2040 are useful tools to have lying around. I'm currently using one to be a stepper controller for a project I'm doing now. However the best thing about the Rpi GPIO stack is the support. If I google "how do I do x with y on pi" I will get lots of resources, along with the official docs (the rp2040 docs are great by the way) and a bunch of hardware that is mostly plug and play.
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah, fair; there's something nice about the fact that the Raspberry Pi is "just Linux"; it's not some attempt at an embedded version of POSIX. You have the full Linux kernel and packages to play with, the GPIO stuff (if performance isn't a huge deal) can easily be controlled by simply writing to files, meaning that you can do quasi-embedded stuff in basically any language you want, or at least any language that has an ARM port to Linux, which is basically everything nowadays. Still, I'm quite partial to the ESP32 with NodeMCU just because the power consumption is so ridiculously low and NodeMCU + Lua is pretty easy since it has full GC and gives you a node.js-style callbacks that I think are generally easier to work with than doing it myself in C. Most of my embedded projects have moved to the ESP32 as a result.
- jsheard 2y ago
  TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any machine can be used as the host. That's pretty much how the Pi5 works anyway, the GPIOs are driven by the RP1 southbridge which is more or less an overgrown RP2040.
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Yeah but why aren't there more boards with a built in coprocessor like that given how cheap they are now? Iirc only Lattepanda and the Pi Foundation make these sort of boards, and the former is overpriced beyond any common sense.
    - jsheard 2y ago
      Keeping the GPIO interface separate does have its advantages, if you accidentally explode a GPIO pin on an external RP2040 board then you've lost a couple of dollars instead of an entire >$50 SBC. It doesn't have to take up much space either: https://www.waveshare.com/product/rp2040-one.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/rp2040-one.htm
      - moffkalast 2y ago
        If USB is involved you can't really make a production ready system with it. At least they could put some proper ZH or whatever connectors for UART that don't unplug when you look at them wrong. That's one of the things they did right with the Pi 5 at least.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > TBH for projects that need GPIO I would be inclined to use an RP2040 or similar hooked up to USB, then any machine can be used as the host Two separate platforms connected over USB is substantially more complicated, expensive, power hungry, and consumes a lot more space. The value prop of SBCs is that they're compact and you can do low-level work in a single package. Connecting an RP2040 to a PC and writing software for both is the opposite end of the complexity spectrum.
- graphe 2y ago
  When do you use GPIO with Linux?
  - colejohnson66 2y ago
    The same things you'd use GPIO with Linux for on a Raspberry Pi: anything.
    - graphe 2y ago
      Anything is not a useful comment. When? I'm asking for a use case, I haven't seen anyone use them for a specific reason to use Linux. I'm asking about sensors and software that works together better than using it with an MCU
      - ianburrell 2y ago
        One example that I'm working on is GPS receiver and NTP server. Accuracy requires PPS signal through GPIO. It would be possible to wire up GPS receiver board to microcontroller. But still need server to run NTPd. Or could put GPS Hat on Raspberry Pi and have everything in one unit. It will run on the cheapest $35 Pi, or extra one in my case. Another I have thought doing is ADS-B receiver mounted outside. It helps to put the receiver close to antenna so would put the SDR and Pi in enclosure, and power it from PoE. Microcontroller can't run the SDR. Micro PC is overkill and wouldn't work in enclosure. Doesn't use GPIO pins.
        graphe 2y ago
        Very interesting, I haven't used gps but that definitely does need more power (or optimizations). Have you heard of this? https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/portapack-h2-for-hackrf-one/ https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/portapack-h2-for-hackrf-... Linux would probably be very easy to built without needing firmware
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        I've used GPIO on a Raspberry Pi Zero W to talk with DS18B20 temperature sensors, along with an SDR attached with USB tuning in radio traffic and decoding AX.25 packets in software. I've also used GPIO on a Raspberry PI Zero W to build a Stratum 1 NTP server with nearly spooky accuracy with the PPS line. Both things worked very well. They were compact, performant, used an inconsequential amount of power, and were very inexpensive. And both things were very easy for me to implement, largely due to the tremendous amount of software available in the Linux-ey ecosystem. If I were trying to bodge an MCU into performing these tasks without involving Linux, I'd probably have never gotten either of them done.
- varispeed 2y ago
  What kind of GPIO you need? If you need slow (under 1MHz) you can easily slap some USB to GPIO device and Bob's your uncle.
- Marsymars 2y ago
  The top-end Alder-Lake-N N305 is good too! Double the threads, and probably a bit worse performance-per-dollar.
kllrnohj 2y ago
Especially if you're willing to go used. 5 year old lenovo, dell, and hp mini PCs are all over ebay as companies dump them due to simply being out of the typical 5 year enterprise warranty. They are otherwise still very potent and capable machines
michaelt 2y ago
> the big change is that x86 SBCs and mini-PCs have gotten very cheap Yes - and at the same time, the RPi has gotten more expensive, rising from ~$25 circa 2013 to $60-$80 for the latest RPi 5. Neither price including power supply and SD card. Of course the RPi 5 has more cores, a faster clock speed, more RAM, and built-in wifi so you do get more for your money. Once upon a time, you were looking at $25 for a Pi and $250 for intel. These days it's more like $80 vs $180.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Don't forget the 20-40% inflation over the last decade.
- dvdbloc 2y ago
  Sure if you are trying to get a cheap desktop computer, the Pi always made a mediocre desktop experience. But if you need GPIO or very low power consumption or a SPI connection with a community that understands its quirks very well I doubt you are going to be happy with an old Intel desktop.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    The low power, GPIO and SPI on the Pi are all trash compared to microcontrollers, most of which are also cheaper and better documented. But if you specifically want to run Linux and have SPI and GPIO on the same chip then sure, the RPi will do that.
    - chrisjj 2y ago
      OOI, why would any user care what's on the same chip?
      - michaelt 2y ago
        Well, often they wouldn't. In some cases you want to avoid your programmers needing to know two designs, compiler toolchains etc - a microcontroller might push you towards using C, and perhaps all your other code is in Python and you'd prefer to keep everything in Python. If you're making something like a high precision time server synchronized to GPS, you might want your GPIOs to trigger direct interrupts on the device with the ethernet port. Of course, IIRC the RPi has USB ethernet so it's not a good choice for a truly high precision time server.

eloisant 2y ago

The Raspberry Pi is the best if you can find it at MSRP, but I haven't seen that for many years now. You can only find it for at least double and at that price it's not worth it. There are many alternatives that, granted, don't have a community as big as RPi, but are perfectly valid and can be found at a normal price.

KaiserPro 2y ago
They are at msrp now for large parts of EMEA
wlll 2y ago
I did a quick Google. The pi 5 4GB MSRP is $60 I think, there are some available on Amazon UK for £54.90 with delivery tomorrow. That's apparently $69.53, so above MSRP, but not terrible. There may be cheaper sources I've not googled hard.
radicality 2y ago
rpi5 is at msrp of $80 for the 8gb version and widely available at that price in USA, just bought one few days ago.

pokstad 2y ago

Intel chips are becoming dirt cheap. Intel has a lot of cheap dev boards that are more robust than RPi. Maybe not the same level of community support. Recently I bought a refurbished Intel micro size desktop PC to replace my RPi home server.

haunter 2y ago

Depends what do you want to do but I'd say Dell & Lenovo micro PCs. x86, changeable and upgradable CPU, RAM, and storage. And they are stil very very small https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-x0mVgDABA I have severall Optiplex micros at home for selfhosting, playing around VMs etc and I love them. In Europe you can get one with a 6th gen i5 CPU, 4GB RAM and SSD for ~100€. And of course you can upgrade the CPU for something better, add 32 GB RAM, bigger storage etc. No GPIO pins though.