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Pi's attraction was that it was a cheap hobby computer. I could buy a whole laptop for that money. I know RAM prices are crazy right now, but I just bought a 1
by taffydavid 4mo ago
Pi's attraction was that it was a cheap hobby computer. I could buy a whole laptop for that money.
I know RAM prices are crazy right now, but I just bought a 16gb Ryzen 7 motherboard to repair an IdeaPad for €70
- LtWorf 4mo agoBut no ethernet port, no GPIO, no fanless. It's comparing two completely different usecases.
- crest 4mo agoI can get a (used) fanless laptop and a USB GPIO/I2C/SPI/CAN/whatever adapter for that money. Raspberry Pis started at ~$30 for a minimal configuration. They were so cheap that they killed the whole overpriced range of $100 to $200 dev boards by vendors that tried to make money of dev boards for their chips. They have to be cheap enough that tinkers leave them in their projects.
- LtWorf 4mo agoBut the result is huge, you cannot 3d print a custom case for that and put it somewhere at home…
- fragmede 4mo agoCould you 3d print a case for the usb dongle and the breadboard, and then Velcro that to the laptop?
- LtWorf 4mo agoI mean… yes… but you still have a laptop sitting there :D
- taffydavid 4mo agoYou might be surprised how small a laptop motherboard can be. Once you take away screen, keyboard, battery, speakers, daughter boards and all that, you can have an actively cooled motherboard as slim as a pi and not much bigger. If you need something really tiny, an esp32 can do a lot of what we used to use a pi for. Driving an eink display for example
- taffydavid 4mo agoPlenty of laptops have Ethernet, and as for fanless, a lot of people choose active cooling for a pi5
- niutech 4mo agoYou can still get Radxa ROCK 5C 16GB RAM for $160 on AliExpress: https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html