4 ms·

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 s

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
    This.
- zrail 2y ago
  Not really. I've been researching this extensively lately to try to add GPIO to my stack of Dell Wyse 3040s. Options with mainline linux kernel drivers: - MCP2221A (i2c + 4x GPIO) - CP2112 (i2c + GPIO) Options without kernel support: - FT232H - Arduino nano and clones - Raspberry Pi Pico running some interesting firmware - ESP32 running something like ESPHome (completely separate from host) I've chosen the Pico for now and forked the u2if project for firmware and host support[1]. I also put together a generic ESPHome-compatible protocol server in python to tie my widgets to Home Assistant[2]. [1]: https://github.com/peterkeen/u2if https://github.com/peterkeen/u2if [2]: https://github.com/peterkeen/aioesphomeserver https://github.com/peterkeen/aioesphomeserver
  - gsich 2y ago
    I have seen a I2C implementation on the RP2040 that works with native support. https://github.com/Nicolai-Electronics/rp2040-i2c-interface https://github.com/Nicolai-Electronics/rp2040-i2c-interface
    - zrail 2y ago
      Yep, that one is pretty cool too. It only does one i2c bus so it seems like it underuses the hardware a bit, but the mainline driver is pretty valuable.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Why do everyone latch onto bit-banging pins from Linux??? Isn't that going to exhibit wildly unpredictable delays? Wouldn't you normally compartmentalize hardware handling into an OS-free or hard-realtime microcontroller and let the uC communicate with host CPU in less-realtime manners? You can roll your own "RGB temperature sensing modem" and get/set values with `bash` and `expect` over ttyUSB, no one PWM controls RGB LEDs on a gaming keyboard straight from a task tray app. Trying to wrestle GPIO problems that way is going to be unnecessarily hard.
    - zrail 2y ago
      Not sure which part you're referring to, but I agree. The u2if firmware I'm using has an interface type that generates the addressable LED bitstream with the RP2040's PIOs. The host software dumps the pixel color values over USB CDC into a buffer on the RP2040, then when it's done the firmware tells the PIO to read the buffer with DMA and stream out the precisely timed LED bitstream. Currently it's running in "one light string per PIO" mode but there's an inaccessible mode where one PIO can do up to 8 strings simultaneously. The pins have to be physically adjacent, though, so it's a bit more difficult to set up in a generalized way.
      - chrisjj 2y ago
        > an inaccessible mode where one PIO can do Clarification please. I thought inaccessible meant cannot do :)
- -mlv 2y ago
  A lot of those used cheap Dell minipcs come with serial ports and the slightly biger ones may have a parallel port.
afavour 2y ago
That’s all true but the OP said that Pis are “no longer cheap”. The reply was simply a demonstration that they are still available at the same price point, no matter what the competition is or isn’t doing.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  In this market, "cheap" is often comparative to performance. You can now get better capabilities for the same price.
  - spookie 2y ago
    Sure, if you want to deal with strange problems no one has ever faced. RPi's strength isn't in meaningless performance benchmarks, is in actually getting stuff done.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      A mini PC with an x86 CPU is the opposite of "user-unfriendly." Compared with Raspberry Pis, laypeople can easily use those.
      - afavour 2y ago
        They vary widely. I bought an off brand mini PC where the USB ports randomly lost power. There was no online community or support to speak of to help me figure out the problem. In that regard the Pi is far better.
        sdh9 2y ago
        Pis eliminate variables, for sure. But, if you stick to name-brand business machines off lease, I doubt you'll have a problem like that.
II2II 2y ago
I suspect a lot of the current disdain is a product of function creep. While the original Raspberry Pi was used as a desktop and server, people understood its limitations. Now that many of the limitations have diminished, to the point where you can expect reasonable performance as a desktop and use it as something more than a simple web server, people are justifiably comparing it to alternatives (which have come down in price over the same period of time). Of course, the Pi is also facing competition from higher end microcontroller based solutions. People seem to forget that there was a time when hobbyists bought the Pi for "Internet of Things" like projects, both due to its cost and size. Then came the ESP8266 and ESP32 and development boards that packaged both a microcontroller and network interface.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  This, but also that they gave a huge middle finger to the hobbyist community during the component crisis by giving preference to integrators. Most makers I know have pivoted to ESP32 during this time as it was good enough and actually available. Probably would have happened sooner or later though.
  - bonzini 2y ago
    The ESP32 has nothing to do with a Raspberry Pi. It's only good that people learnt to use the better tool (in terms of price and power consumption) once better tools like MicroPython or NodeMCU came around.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      I don't agree. When the first raspberry was introduced, it was really really hard to interface an electronics project with the internet. Arduinos were really dumb at the time. That's why the raspberry was so ideal. But most electronics projects didn't really need a whole linux distro running on it. It was just that there was no other option. The ESPs introduced a totally new class that can cover most of the usecases of electronics projects that the raspberry originally aimed at. They support wifi, bluetooth, pretty serious processing, enough for most connected projects. They totally ate the raspberry's lunch in the embedded market. Of course the RP2040 aims for this too but IMO it's kinda too little too late, the ESP32 is already so well established and has the biggest community. At the other end of course the PC pricing came down and the intel N100's and the like eat its lunchon the other side.
ssl-3 2y ago
What kind of bolted-down expansion does a cheap n3350 box have? How fast can I swap the main storage for something completely different? Can I power it with my USB battery bank? Does it support two digital monitors or does it instead have one HDMI and one VGA (like this is 1987)? Can I use it like an appliance and just plug in easy-to-download images like LibreELEC or EmulationStation, or do I need to understand how to make computers work before I can have a good experience with Kodi or console emulation?
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  I can see plenty of n3350 systems with dual hdmi on google and plenty with drive bays and relevant connectivity. Those seem to cost ~$100 vs the minimalist $65 ones. In terms of driver support these intel systems are the easiest to work with in Linux. Very mainstream and well established drivers.
- nottorp 2y ago
  All your pros are cons when you use a Pi as a 24/7 router or home server :) Requirements may vary.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Requirements do vary. And I've got no regrets about using a Pi 4 a router. It's sitting on the shelf next to me, and has been trouble-free for over four years now.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      How much stuff is hanging off usb on it instead of being in a proper case? You may not care but I do. I suppose a Pi 4 is fast enough to route 1 Gbps even through a usb network card? [I do have one "sitting on a shelf" as a home Minecraft server btw. I hate the usb ssd hanging off it.]
      - tracker1 2y ago
        There are some nice cases for RPi 4 that have a semi-integrated USB-SATA adapter in the box. The DeskPi[1] case, Argon and the NESPi-style case in particular. DeskPi is pretty neat, if costly, and the NES-like cases have easy 2.5" sata swap. YMMV. I upgraded my home LAN to 10gb/2.5gb early last year, and the RPi can't really keep up with it anymore. I'm using an N305 based mini-pc with 4 ethernet ports for my router now... exceeds my needs and runs great. My home server is an AMD 5900HX based mini-pc with also works very well (ProxMox, Docker, etc).
danesparza 2y ago
I don't trust Ali express for anything serious. Cheap and Chinese doesn't have the appeal it used to. I'm willing to pay a little more for a respected brand with a little more QA involved (and less hassle to me as a developer).
- tracker1 2y ago
  Too true.. I have a nas project in pieces on the table next to me, since I was out of work for several months and couldn't put any more into it... I "saved" a hundred dollars or so going from AliExpress components, the mainboard doesn't work right, and trying to get it replaced would cost about as much as a different board from AliExpress. In the end, I wish I'd spent the extra hundred or so on a different case and board. The cost of the drives significantly outweigh other costs. It bugs me to no end how much a small (4-drive) nas can cost, compared to much more capable mini-pc prices.

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
  This.
zrail 2y ago
Not really. I've been researching this extensively lately to try to add GPIO to my stack of Dell Wyse 3040s. Options with mainline linux kernel drivers: - MCP2221A (i2c + 4x GPIO) - CP2112 (i2c + GPIO) Options without kernel support: - FT232H - Arduino nano and clones - Raspberry Pi Pico running some interesting firmware - ESP32 running something like ESPHome (completely separate from host) I've chosen the Pico for now and forked the u2if project for firmware and host support[1]. I also put together a generic ESPHome-compatible protocol server in python to tie my widgets to Home Assistant[2]. [1]: https://github.com/peterkeen/u2if https://github.com/peterkeen/u2if [2]: https://github.com/peterkeen/aioesphomeserver https://github.com/peterkeen/aioesphomeserver
- gsich 2y ago
  I have seen a I2C implementation on the RP2040 that works with native support. https://github.com/Nicolai-Electronics/rp2040-i2c-interface https://github.com/Nicolai-Electronics/rp2040-i2c-interface
  - zrail 2y ago
    Yep, that one is pretty cool too. It only does one i2c bus so it seems like it underuses the hardware a bit, but the mainline driver is pretty valuable.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Why do everyone latch onto bit-banging pins from Linux??? Isn't that going to exhibit wildly unpredictable delays? Wouldn't you normally compartmentalize hardware handling into an OS-free or hard-realtime microcontroller and let the uC communicate with host CPU in less-realtime manners? You can roll your own "RGB temperature sensing modem" and get/set values with `bash` and `expect` over ttyUSB, no one PWM controls RGB LEDs on a gaming keyboard straight from a task tray app. Trying to wrestle GPIO problems that way is going to be unnecessarily hard.
  - zrail 2y ago
    Not sure which part you're referring to, but I agree. The u2if firmware I'm using has an interface type that generates the addressable LED bitstream with the RP2040's PIOs. The host software dumps the pixel color values over USB CDC into a buffer on the RP2040, then when it's done the firmware tells the PIO to read the buffer with DMA and stream out the precisely timed LED bitstream. Currently it's running in "one light string per PIO" mode but there's an inaccessible mode where one PIO can do up to 8 strings simultaneously. The pins have to be physically adjacent, though, so it's a bit more difficult to set up in a generalized way.
    - chrisjj 2y ago
      > an inaccessible mode where one PIO can do Clarification please. I thought inaccessible meant cannot do :)
-mlv 2y ago
A lot of those used cheap Dell minipcs come with serial ports and the slightly biger ones may have a parallel port.

afavour 2y ago

That’s all true but the OP said that Pis are “no longer cheap”. The reply was simply a demonstration that they are still available at the same price point, no matter what the competition is or isn’t doing.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
In this market, "cheap" is often comparative to performance. You can now get better capabilities for the same price.
- spookie 2y ago
  Sure, if you want to deal with strange problems no one has ever faced. RPi's strength isn't in meaningless performance benchmarks, is in actually getting stuff done.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    A mini PC with an x86 CPU is the opposite of "user-unfriendly." Compared with Raspberry Pis, laypeople can easily use those.
    - afavour 2y ago
      They vary widely. I bought an off brand mini PC where the USB ports randomly lost power. There was no online community or support to speak of to help me figure out the problem. In that regard the Pi is far better.
      - sdh9 2y ago
        Pis eliminate variables, for sure. But, if you stick to name-brand business machines off lease, I doubt you'll have a problem like that.

II2II 2y ago

I suspect a lot of the current disdain is a product of function creep. While the original Raspberry Pi was used as a desktop and server, people understood its limitations. Now that many of the limitations have diminished, to the point where you can expect reasonable performance as a desktop and use it as something more than a simple web server, people are justifiably comparing it to alternatives (which have come down in price over the same period of time). Of course, the Pi is also facing competition from higher end microcontroller based solutions. People seem to forget that there was a time when hobbyists bought the Pi for "Internet of Things" like projects, both due to its cost and size. Then came the ESP8266 and ESP32 and development boards that packaged both a microcontroller and network interface.

wkat4242 2y ago
This, but also that they gave a huge middle finger to the hobbyist community during the component crisis by giving preference to integrators. Most makers I know have pivoted to ESP32 during this time as it was good enough and actually available. Probably would have happened sooner or later though.
- bonzini 2y ago
  The ESP32 has nothing to do with a Raspberry Pi. It's only good that people learnt to use the better tool (in terms of price and power consumption) once better tools like MicroPython or NodeMCU came around.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    I don't agree. When the first raspberry was introduced, it was really really hard to interface an electronics project with the internet. Arduinos were really dumb at the time. That's why the raspberry was so ideal. But most electronics projects didn't really need a whole linux distro running on it. It was just that there was no other option. The ESPs introduced a totally new class that can cover most of the usecases of electronics projects that the raspberry originally aimed at. They support wifi, bluetooth, pretty serious processing, enough for most connected projects. They totally ate the raspberry's lunch in the embedded market. Of course the RP2040 aims for this too but IMO it's kinda too little too late, the ESP32 is already so well established and has the biggest community. At the other end of course the PC pricing came down and the intel N100's and the like eat its lunchon the other side.

ssl-3 2y ago

What kind of bolted-down expansion does a cheap n3350 box have? How fast can I swap the main storage for something completely different? Can I power it with my USB battery bank? Does it support two digital monitors or does it instead have one HDMI and one VGA (like this is 1987)? Can I use it like an appliance and just plug in easy-to-download images like LibreELEC or EmulationStation, or do I need to understand how to make computers work before I can have a good experience with Kodi or console emulation?

AnotherGoodName 2y ago
I can see plenty of n3350 systems with dual hdmi on google and plenty with drive bays and relevant connectivity. Those seem to cost ~$100 vs the minimalist $65 ones. In terms of driver support these intel systems are the easiest to work with in Linux. Very mainstream and well established drivers.
nottorp 2y ago
All your pros are cons when you use a Pi as a 24/7 router or home server :) Requirements may vary.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Requirements do vary. And I've got no regrets about using a Pi 4 a router. It's sitting on the shelf next to me, and has been trouble-free for over four years now.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    How much stuff is hanging off usb on it instead of being in a proper case? You may not care but I do. I suppose a Pi 4 is fast enough to route 1 Gbps even through a usb network card? [I do have one "sitting on a shelf" as a home Minecraft server btw. I hate the usb ssd hanging off it.]
    - tracker1 2y ago
      There are some nice cases for RPi 4 that have a semi-integrated USB-SATA adapter in the box. The DeskPi[1] case, Argon and the NESPi-style case in particular. DeskPi is pretty neat, if costly, and the NES-like cases have easy 2.5" sata swap. YMMV. I upgraded my home LAN to 10gb/2.5gb early last year, and the RPi can't really keep up with it anymore. I'm using an N305 based mini-pc with 4 ethernet ports for my router now... exceeds my needs and runs great. My home server is an AMD 5900HX based mini-pc with also works very well (ProxMox, Docker, etc).

danesparza 2y ago

I don't trust Ali express for anything serious. Cheap and Chinese doesn't have the appeal it used to. I'm willing to pay a little more for a respected brand with a little more QA involved (and less hassle to me as a developer).

tracker1 2y ago
Too true.. I have a nas project in pieces on the table next to me, since I was out of work for several months and couldn't put any more into it... I "saved" a hundred dollars or so going from AliExpress components, the mainboard doesn't work right, and trying to get it replaced would cost about as much as a different board from AliExpress. In the end, I wish I'd spent the extra hundred or so on a different case and board. The cost of the drives significantly outweigh other costs. It bugs me to no end how much a small (4-drive) nas can cost, compared to much more capable mini-pc prices.