14 ms·

That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists, they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU

That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists, they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported mainline Linux in their products. The only reason they don't cost $500 or more is because the foundation needs the hobbyist market to write and support the open source BSP, without which the RPi would be just another poorly supported also-ran in an already crowded market. With how well supported mainline Linux is on the Pi, EEs would be willing to pay a lot more.

WillPostForFood 2y ago
well supported mainline Linux This is one of the main advantages for hobbyists.
- gumby 2y ago
  And for professionals.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    I highly doubt so. In fact, save for the RP2040 which isn't Linux capable (0), all their processors aren't for sale anywhere; Broadcom simply won't sell them to you, no matter if you order 1 or 100000. That is, you can't build your product around one of their CPU and you have to put their entire boards in you product instead, which translates in huge costs, no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD cards for system disks, which in that context are a no-no. The RPi is a hobbyist board with a huge potential for teaching, but I wouldn't consider it for anything beyond that use. 0: yeah, I know you can run it in theory; I mean in a usable way.
    - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
      Isn't their Compute Module 4 SOM industrial rated?
      - squarefoot 2y ago
        That forces you to sandwich two boards together (connector, more costs, etc), and still you have no freedom regarding which peripherals to place around the RPi SoC.
        colejohnson66 2y ago
        There’s a free PCIe lane that you can put whatever you want on
        imtringued 2y ago
        The average integrator doesn't want to mess around with things like DDR5 routing or designing power supplies for the SoC. There are lots of other companies such as AMD and Nvidia selling SOMs so the fact that they are selling SOMs can hardly be something to complain about.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      There's the compute modules
    - nottorp 2y ago
      > no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD cards for system disks, which in that context are a no-no They kinda work if the system is not mission critical. Just have them self reboot every 4 hours :)
    - justin66 2y ago
      It's not a hypothetical: "professional" or "industrial" use is what most new Pis are used for.
    - gumby 2y ago
      We use them for automation and data collection in our chem lab. I’d call that professional.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  Given that Raspberry Pi hasn’t actually been well supported by mainline Linux and that the Raspberry Pi foundation hasn’t put a lot of effort into upstreaming things, I don’t think it’s actually a big deal. People don’t care where their kernel comes from as long as it works. I am surprised by all of the comments here that assume Raspberry Pi has great upstream support. It’s amazing that people just assumed their boards were working great with upstream kernels. Raspberry Pi has a history of doing nonstandard things that serve their community but are actually a little bit quirky when it comes to normal embedded Linux.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  except that RPi does not support mainline Linux...
justin66 2y ago
> That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists They’ve got a full product line now, including systems that are comparable in cost but much more capable than the original Raspberry Pi.
SahAssar 2y ago
Wasn't there a very long time that the Pi wasn't fully supported on mainline? And it's boot sequence is still a bit weird in that the GPU handles bootstrapping?
- asddubs 2y ago
  I think the main point is that you know the company/product support isn't just going to disappear into the sunset in 2 years and you're stuck with an increasingly outdated hacked together kernel thrown over a wall
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    Except check out the headline here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/raspberry-pi-is-preparing-for-an-ipo-in-london-for-likely-more-than-500m/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/raspberry-pi-is-prep...
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
The Model 1B was $35 (in 2012 dollars) and the still available Model 4B starts at $35? It might even be argued that the Model 1B's successor is more the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for $15, which is cheaper than the original. The Raspberry Pi 5's base model does start at $60 but its specs are too different for a comparison to be meaningful. [EDIT] Oops, I hadn't realized the 4B with 1 GB was discontinued. So the starting price of the 4B would be $45 for the 2 GB version.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  There are complete passively cooled n3350 based systems on Ali express with 64gb storage and 6gb ram in a case with power supply ready to go for $65 with free shipping. That works out cheaper than the cheapest pi after buying case, storage and power for the pi. You can buy usb gpio breakouts for <$10 too. Lower power than the pi 4 too due to the huge process node advantage (despite the x86 disadvantages). 28nm vs 14nm for the pi 4 vs the n3350. The pi is fun but honestly for pi hole or similar you might as well buy the all in one x86. For media streaming definitely buy the all in one x86. For gpio stuff ok the pi is reasonable but even then if you want to make a product rather than a home automation once off you’d go a different route completely.
  - djbusby 2y ago
    Are there loads of driver support for those USB/GPIO things? I've only done that on PI and the Python libs made it super easy. Now it's one more thing to solve research rather built-in.
    - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
      I don't think so - if you needed GPIO on a small x86 the easiest way would be to hook an Arduino / RP2040 to it. That seems like it's still the sweet spot for RPi, esp. the Zero W, if you need small, low-power, full OS and GPIO.
      - ckemere 2y ago
mytailorisrich 2y ago
Plenty of PIs in labs of hardware tech companies. Very convenient when you need a small linux box, indeed, or when you need to access a piece of equipment over a serial terminal, et.c
pclmulqdq 2y ago
I think a lot of people don't realize that there was a decent size, but small market for SBCs for low-volume embedded work (including hobbyists) before Raspberry Pi. You could get a lot of different kinds of boards with good Linux support and a not terrible price. Often, a processor vendor would explicitly provide support for these things because it was a good vector for selling chips. Broadcom, having never wanted anything to do with this market since volumes were too low, had an abundance of a CPU SKU that was good for this. So some broadcom engineers founded Raspberry Pi to use up this excess stock, essentially getting these chips for free. The original RPi blew every other SBC out of the water on price performance (and many manufacturers out of the market) because by getting the most expensive component for free, they could sell Pis for an extremely low price. It also massively expanded the market for SBCs, as hobbyists flooded in to work with RPis. 5-10 years ago, the sweetheart deal with Broadcom went away. Now Raspberry Pi has to compete with everyone else for Broadcom SoCs, and during the semiconductor shortage of 2020, Broadcom had tremendous leverage. Now, Raspberry Pi pricing is nothing special, but they still have the brand name and they have captured the community (on the back of behavior that was borderline anticompetitive).
- transpute 2y ago
  This business history would add valuable context to RPi wiki, or a public reference on the history of SBCs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    Joining the queue behind the histories of the subsequently retconned sole credit for the RPI's design, and the termination of E Upton as the Foundation's CEO.
    - inemesitaffia 2y ago
      Drop the info
      - 2y ago
Vogtinator 2y ago
The Pi 5 is still not supported mainline. Proper mainline support for older models was contributed by third-parties, not the RPi foundation, which just care about their kernel fork.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
>they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported mainline Linux in their products It's not a great choice if you're hoping to productize from it, for various reasons.
Aurornis 2y ago
> they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported mainline Linux in their products. Raspberry Pi 5 isn’t as well supported in mainline. You’re still going to be using their kernel if you want all the features, just like many other module these days. > The only reason they don't cost $500 or more $500 is a huge exaggeration. There are numerous modules and small boards well under that price that come with good support, including many with full x86-64 CPUs. I think it’s more correct to say that the boards are approaching equilibrium with other boards and modules in price, not that they’re secretly some premium $500 product sold at a discount for reasons. Nobody would be buying Raspberry Pi anything at $250, let alone $500.
ahepp 2y ago
I see the Raspberry Pi model B+ available right now on Adafruit for $30. It has a single core 700 MHz CPU and 512M RAM. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is available right now for $15 with a 1 GHz 64 bit quad core CPU and 512 MB RAM. So it seems to me that you can get a Raspberry Pi SBC today, that has higher or equal specs in every regard, for a lower cost than the original. Am I missing something? Looking at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux, I scrolled a few pages of commits and didn't even see one from outside the Raspberry Pi org. I'm picking through their merged PRs and it looks like maybe there are a couple, it's hard to tell. But it looks to me like they just do a great job supporting their own product?
- smileybarry 2y ago
  > So it seems to me that you can get a Raspberry Pi SBC today, that has higher or equal specs in every regard, for a lower cost than the original. Am I missing something? It’s just supporting whoever needs a RPi 1st generation. It’s the same reason some older models of things cost the same or more, it’s basically fishing for the “we need the exact same hardware” customer. The Pi Zero models are also kind of priced to move to make a statement of “look how much power we can stuff in a $5 board”; IIRC they were at first sold at a small loss to hit that $5 price point.
LtWorf 2y ago
You forget gpio
m463 2y ago
> That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists this is sort of sad. I remember reading advice given to the raspberry folks early on to keep things inexpensive, not cave into feature creep. I guess now the price creeps upwards and the original target market has been left behind.
pabs3 2y ago
Mainline Linux isn't supported on RPi5 yet, they are still talking about what needs doing. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=360653 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=360653

WillPostForFood 2y ago

well supported mainline Linux This is one of the main advantages for hobbyists.

gumby 2y ago
And for professionals.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  I highly doubt so. In fact, save for the RP2040 which isn't Linux capable (0), all their processors aren't for sale anywhere; Broadcom simply won't sell them to you, no matter if you order 1 or 100000. That is, you can't build your product around one of their CPU and you have to put their entire boards in you product instead, which translates in huge costs, no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD cards for system disks, which in that context are a no-no. The RPi is a hobbyist board with a huge potential for teaching, but I wouldn't consider it for anything beyond that use. 0: yeah, I know you can run it in theory; I mean in a usable way.
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    Isn't their Compute Module 4 SOM industrial rated?
    - squarefoot 2y ago
      That forces you to sandwich two boards together (connector, more costs, etc), and still you have no freedom regarding which peripherals to place around the RPi SoC.
      - colejohnson66 2y ago
        There’s a free PCIe lane that you can put whatever you want on
      - imtringued 2y ago
        The average integrator doesn't want to mess around with things like DDR5 routing or designing power supplies for the SoC. There are lots of other companies such as AMD and Nvidia selling SOMs so the fact that they are selling SOMs can hardly be something to complain about.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    There's the compute modules
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > no industrial rated parts and forced use of SD cards for system disks, which in that context are a no-no They kinda work if the system is not mission critical. Just have them self reboot every 4 hours :)
  - justin66 2y ago
    It's not a hypothetical: "professional" or "industrial" use is what most new Pis are used for.
  - gumby 2y ago
    We use them for automation and data collection in our chem lab. I’d call that professional.
Aurornis 2y ago
Given that Raspberry Pi hasn’t actually been well supported by mainline Linux and that the Raspberry Pi foundation hasn’t put a lot of effort into upstreaming things, I don’t think it’s actually a big deal. People don’t care where their kernel comes from as long as it works. I am surprised by all of the comments here that assume Raspberry Pi has great upstream support. It’s amazing that people just assumed their boards were working great with upstream kernels. Raspberry Pi has a history of doing nonstandard things that serve their community but are actually a little bit quirky when it comes to normal embedded Linux.
ekianjo 2y ago
except that RPi does not support mainline Linux...

justin66 2y ago

> That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists They’ve got a full product line now, including systems that are comparable in cost but much more capable than the original Raspberry Pi.

SahAssar 2y ago

Wasn't there a very long time that the Pi wasn't fully supported on mainline? And it's boot sequence is still a bit weird in that the GPU handles bootstrapping?

asddubs 2y ago
I think the main point is that you know the company/product support isn't just going to disappear into the sunset in 2 years and you're stuck with an increasingly outdated hacked together kernel thrown over a wall
- chrisjj 2y ago
  Except check out the headline here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/raspberry-pi-is-preparing-for-an-ipo-in-london-for-likely-more-than-500m/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/raspberry-pi-is-prep...

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

The Model 1B was $35 (in 2012 dollars) and the still available Model 4B starts at $35? It might even be argued that the Model 1B's successor is more the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for $15, which is cheaper than the original. The Raspberry Pi 5's base model does start at $60 but its specs are too different for a comparison to be meaningful. [EDIT] Oops, I hadn't realized the 4B with 1 GB was discontinued. So the starting price of the 4B would be $45 for the 2 GB version.

AnotherGoodName 2y ago
There are complete passively cooled n3350 based systems on Ali express with 64gb storage and 6gb ram in a case with power supply ready to go for $65 with free shipping. That works out cheaper than the cheapest pi after buying case, storage and power for the pi. You can buy usb gpio breakouts for <$10 too. Lower power than the pi 4 too due to the huge process node advantage (despite the x86 disadvantages). 28nm vs 14nm for the pi 4 vs the n3350. The pi is fun but honestly for pi hole or similar you might as well buy the all in one x86. For media streaming definitely buy the all in one x86. For gpio stuff ok the pi is reasonable but even then if you want to make a product rather than a home automation once off you’d go a different route completely.
- djbusby 2y ago
  Are there loads of driver support for those USB/GPIO things? I've only done that on PI and the Python libs made it super easy. Now it's one more thing to solve research rather built-in.
  - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
    I don't think so - if you needed GPIO on a small x86 the easiest way would be to hook an Arduino / RP2040 to it. That seems like it's still the sweet spot for RPi, esp. the Zero W, if you need small, low-power, full OS and GPIO.
    - ckemere 2y ago

mytailorisrich 2y ago

Plenty of PIs in labs of hardware tech companies. Very convenient when you need a small linux box, indeed, or when you need to access a piece of equipment over a serial terminal, et.c

pclmulqdq 2y ago

I think a lot of people don't realize that there was a decent size, but small market for SBCs for low-volume embedded work (including hobbyists) before Raspberry Pi. You could get a lot of different kinds of boards with good Linux support and a not terrible price. Often, a processor vendor would explicitly provide support for these things because it was a good vector for selling chips. Broadcom, having never wanted anything to do with this market since volumes were too low, had an abundance of a CPU SKU that was good for this. So some broadcom engineers founded Raspberry Pi to use up this excess stock, essentially getting these chips for free. The original RPi blew every other SBC out of the water on price performance (and many manufacturers out of the market) because by getting the most expensive component for free, they could sell Pis for an extremely low price. It also massively expanded the market for SBCs, as hobbyists flooded in to work with RPis. 5-10 years ago, the sweetheart deal with Broadcom went away. Now Raspberry Pi has to compete with everyone else for Broadcom SoCs, and during the semiconductor shortage of 2020, Broadcom had tremendous leverage. Now, Raspberry Pi pricing is nothing special, but they still have the brand name and they have captured the community (on the back of behavior that was borderline anticompetitive).

transpute 2y ago
This business history would add valuable context to RPi wiki, or a public reference on the history of SBCs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
- chrisjj 2y ago
  Joining the queue behind the histories of the subsequently retconned sole credit for the RPI's design, and the termination of E Upton as the Foundation's CEO.
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    Drop the info
    - 2y ago

Vogtinator 2y ago

The Pi 5 is still not supported mainline. Proper mainline support for older models was contributed by third-parties, not the RPi foundation, which just care about their kernel fork.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

>they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported mainline Linux in their products It's not a great choice if you're hoping to productize from it, for various reasons.

Aurornis 2y ago

> they're developer kits for manufacturers that need a CPU running a well supported mainline Linux in their products. Raspberry Pi 5 isn’t as well supported in mainline. You’re still going to be using their kernel if you want all the features, just like many other module these days. > The only reason they don't cost $500 or more $500 is a huge exaggeration. There are numerous modules and small boards well under that price that come with good support, including many with full x86-64 CPUs. I think it’s more correct to say that the boards are approaching equilibrium with other boards and modules in price, not that they’re secretly some premium $500 product sold at a discount for reasons. Nobody would be buying Raspberry Pi anything at $250, let alone $500.

ahepp 2y ago

I see the Raspberry Pi model B+ available right now on Adafruit for $30. It has a single core 700 MHz CPU and 512M RAM. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is available right now for $15 with a 1 GHz 64 bit quad core CPU and 512 MB RAM. So it seems to me that you can get a Raspberry Pi SBC today, that has higher or equal specs in every regard, for a lower cost than the original. Am I missing something? Looking at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux, I scrolled a few pages of commits and didn't even see one from outside the Raspberry Pi org. I'm picking through their merged PRs and it looks like maybe there are a couple, it's hard to tell. But it looks to me like they just do a great job supporting their own product?

smileybarry 2y ago
> So it seems to me that you can get a Raspberry Pi SBC today, that has higher or equal specs in every regard, for a lower cost than the original. Am I missing something? It’s just supporting whoever needs a RPi 1st generation. It’s the same reason some older models of things cost the same or more, it’s basically fishing for the “we need the exact same hardware” customer. The Pi Zero models are also kind of priced to move to make a statement of “look how much power we can stuff in a $5 board”; IIRC they were at first sold at a small loss to hit that $5 price point.

LtWorf 2y ago

You forget gpio

m463 2y ago

> That's because RaspberryPis are no longer cheap throw away computers meant for education or hobbyists this is sort of sad. I remember reading advice given to the raspberry folks early on to keep things inexpensive, not cave into feature creep. I guess now the price creeps upwards and the original target market has been left behind.

pabs3 2y ago

Mainline Linux isn't supported on RPi5 yet, they are still talking about what needs doing. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=360653 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=360653