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The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026
- walrus01 1mo agoI know RAM prices aren't under control of the raspberry pi project, but something has gone dreadfully wrong in the economy when individual 8GB+ raspberry pi are now costing $200 to $300 for just the board before you add USB-C power supply, heatsinks, case, etc. If a person doesn't need GPIO pins or other direct access to hardware [1], I don't understand why people are trying to use them with 1080p and 4K displays, keyboards and mice as general desktop linux computers. You can get a far more capable small form factor or ultra small form factor used Intel Core i5/i7 something corporate desktop with 16GB of RAM and a real SSD for like 150 bucks on eBay (USD). It'll be significantly faster. Install barebones debian amd64, 'sudo apt install xfce4-desktop', it'll pull in all the xorg and other dependencies and also install a GUI login screen. 20 seconds of searching turned up something that doesn't suck: https://www.ebay.com/itm/820084016851?_skw=dell+optiplex+16GB+intel+i7&itmmeta=01M1NTYNEYHS6Z8GDRNWFXC0V9&hash=itembef0d106d3:g:lqQAAeSw~BdqmddW&itmprp=enc%3AAQALAAAA4GfYFPkwiKCW4ZNSs2u11xDldtnDp%2BuJ7B9Nwl6xc%2BNKLbJZs5oP9UiUUYOZvPM%2Fy2WAL2kKS5D%2BQRpPensPuCoIOCV2jSfr07t9m%2FJMMqFwtXdyJ%2B8FsPtFnsAa2hUHmkdQPQMzf%2FhAnxNza5x0M9umO7OG%2FVf8PVHLo5BtfMosHWjtjQVCEsP6pYkPy3OrMAW97toIcFyGqYHRI4TuLpMl4Mnu8C25HoaSpYv16KysTtrfE6wHhho7Om8eksBObHfLCUoty6DOVr3ws850%2B72fo69pITxgp7ASuwugd%2BlB%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR-DX-rqNaA https://www.ebay.com/itm/820084016851?_skw=dell+optiplex+16G... The one raspberry pi model which is still close to the original's $35 price is the raspberry pi model 4 1GB which is $49 in Canada. Accounting for inflation and difference between USD:CAD, that's about the same as 35 bucks. I think there are still a ton of uses for raspberry pi 3B+ or model 4 1GB particularly because you can power them off an 802.3af power over ethernet switch and cable, to stick one in a weird place with power and ethernet in one cable, with a basic $15 PoE splitter to USB-C power on the load end. [2] [1]: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/rpi-gpio-pins https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/rpi-gpio-pins [2]: https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Compliant/dp/B087F4QCTR https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Complian...
- sdcfgy 1mo agoI’ve always said that. If you want basic GPIO you can always shove a smaller MCU on the end of a USB cable and talk to that. Most of the embedded stuff I’ve done in the last decade has worked like that. They are also terrible in education. Unreliable, huge set up time, no education software runs on them properly. On the unreliable thing I got booted off their forums for writing a technical evaluation of the RPi 1 brown out issues with USB. That really put a bad taste in my mouth. Refuse to use any of their products since.
- dumberquestions 1mo agoRaspberry Pi's are essential for a certain class of robots, they're small, light and mobile enough while still being computers, and they have all the pins you might need, most people who don't understand them are usually actually looking for a stationary mini pc or an mcu and are wondering why an RPi isn't those.
- sdcfgy 1mo agoThere are a million small embedded systems that are designed for that application and aren’t made to the lowest possible standard that they could muster. And those have RTOS on bare metal. The Pi is a fat and slow computer.
- dumberquestions 1mo agoThey're generally aren't as accessible.
- megous 1mo agoAt this point this has to be just raspberry propaganda. Or total ignorance. You can take upstream kernel and u-boot and tf-a, just build it, flash it and have a working system for 10s of different boards from various manufacturers.
- mrheosuper 1mo ago
- throwaway63467 1mo agoBroke off my Pi 4Bs USB C port when using it to test link speed for new LAN outlets, when I wanted to reorder I realized the 4 GB version is now 120 EUR… Damn.
- nusl 1mo agoMay be possible to repair the existing one?
- m4rtink 1mo agoYeah, should be trivial to solder it back on or with wires to a USB-C breakout board.
- throwaway63467 29d agoThe USB C connector has like 24 tiny SMA pins how is that trivial? Under the microscope with soldering equipment from a lab maybe, at home this seems impossible and it will likely not work due to the high frequencies involved, I don’t think you can get the impedance right when hand soldering this back on.
- m4rtink 29d agoWell, not too easy but IMHO still doable, maybe after some training (a couple ready to build soldering projects). Both digital microscopes and precision soldering irons are rather cheap & widely available nowadays.
- hcfman 1mo agoIf you can get them. Seems to be the most popular choice.
- stonecharioteer 1mo agoThe Pi makes no sense anymore at these prices. But I love that I got to experience them when they were affordable. I owned multiple 4bs at one point, and even have a 2b and 3b lying around. I have a clusterhat that I tried to setup again, but realized that the Pi0Ws have only 512mb RAM each and that's useless now.
- mrheosuper 1mo agowith headless debian, i think you have around 400MB ram left for yourself, enough to run light stuff like pihole or Wireguard
- Joeboy 1mo agoFor the people who are sad about the high prices of the Pi range, I want to mention that I'm having a lot of fun with the Pi Pico 2. It's obviously not quite the same thing (ie. not a regular desktop computer), but it's ridiculously capable for its few-dollars price point. There's a lot you can do with it. If you just want a cheap computer the Pi's don't seem so great these days, but the Picos are where the fun is now.
- ahepp 1mo agoThe zero 2 (W) seems pretty great if you just want a cheap linux device.
- ricardobeat 1mo ago> 2025: For $120, the Pi 5 is now available with 16 GB good times
- merpkz 1mo agoRaspberry Pi Zero 2 is the sweet spot these days for price/performance, but it's nowhere to by found in stock, sadly despite the fact it has LPDDR2 type of RAM
- walrus01 1mo agoIt would be a heck of a lot more useful if it had a basic (even 100Mbps) wired ethernet interface on it, then you could put it places without worrying about its horrid 802.11n-only 2.4 GHz only wifi with tiny antenna, be assured it had a reliable ethernet connection, and power it by a cheap 802.3af-to-MicroUSB 5V2A PoE splitter. It's weird there's cheap and plentiful STM32 series things with physical ethernet ports (but they're very weak microcontrollers with little CPU or RAM) which do manage to have real ethernet ports on them...
- Rohansi 1mo agoIt's less weird when you understand that the SoC it uses was built for use in smartphones. The Ethernet port on equivalent Raspberry Pi (non-Zero) models is actually just a USB adapter. Built-in Ethernet support only comes with the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer.
- walrus01 1mo agoSure, but they could logically glue a physical ethernet port onto the USB bus on a zero the same way it's on the USB bus on a 3B+... The BOM cost would be what, a few dollars at most for a cheap 8P8C jack and the ethernet chip.
- lukeh 1mo agoCM4s are very tricky to find right now. Should have stocked up… :( (I’m building an embedded product and it’s probably still the right choice, just more expensive and harder to find than when I started the project in 2024.)
- XCSme 1mo agoCool, I started using a RBPi4 at I had purchased 3 years ago and never used. I use it to be able to start my "AI-agent" PC remotely, to send wake-up-on-LAN signal from anywhere. I am also thinking now to add a tasks queue on PI itself, so I can send requests directly to the PI, it stores them, and maybe once or twice a day, it turns on the PC, sends all the tasks, then turns it off.
- kh_hk 1mo agoA lot of the vibecoded interactive experiences remind me of these interactive books i had as a kid where you would open different hidden parts to explore. At some point it gets boring, i do not want to click one million times to find the information I am looking for. So, it is not interactive, this is a chore.
- justin66 1mo agoI will never understand why someone would pay $45 for a Raspberry Pi when they could assault a passing child and steal their Chromebook.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- Retr0id 1mo ago> 2024 [...] local AI becomes the new core topic. Did it?
- graycrow 1mo agoMy PC runs Linux now because I bought the Raspberry Pi back in 2012, and I'm very grateful for that.
- nekusar 1mo agoYeah, they lost the narrative. Hard. These days I can buy a old FB marketplace or Craigslist laptop and get EVERYTHING in 1. Maybe have to buy a new battery. Usually $100-150. If I need IO for controlling sensors and things, there's clone Arduino nanos for $5 from CN or $10 from US. And if anything burns out, it's a simple replace. I've been done with RPi for a while now.
- Rohansi 1mo agoCould also get ESP32 instead of Arduino. Just as cheap, way more powerful, and has WiFi+BT included. Even more reasons to not get a RPi.
- nekusar 1mo agoYep absolutely works as well. Was just on my phone and gave an example. But arduino = 5v logic, and esp = 3.3v logic. Also ESP does have a lot higher base load than a atmega chip. You can do tricks to get those down to microwatts.
- hcfman 1mo agoThey are really good for edge devices. We have a Raspberrypi 5 running as a thermal imaging enabled wildlife camera with local AI. I don't think you can find another platform that can support this as well. https://youtu.be/k3ZRFHmEh-g?si=eNy3PUaHo_txMkBa https://youtu.be/k3ZRFHmEh-g?si=eNy3PUaHo_txMkBa
- justin66 1mo agoJetson Orin Nano? Although I have no idea what those cost nowadays...
- hcfman 1mo agoYes. The Orin Nano is amazing. We support that as well. Once I’ve added nvme SSD and a case on the pi, if I use an 8GB pi then it’s getting up to 1/2 the price of the jetson. But the jetson does inference 10x faster. Plus it has fantastic hardware video support. None the less, the Pi is still faster and physically smaller. If I’m spinning up lots of them for test scenarios having the pi as a platform still is really handy. But absolutely. The Jetson is brilliant. The Pi is none the less a fantastic platform. I think so of the reactions toward the Pi here are a bit harsh. The price hike is not their fault, it’s all the AI companies that will continue to suck your tax dollars and give them to billionaires. Raspberry Pi have done an astonishing job for the whole communities and we should be thankful for that company.
- justin66 29d agoHarsh commentary on the pi is nothing new. I’ve been a user since the 256mb pi b, so I’ve developed a sense of humor about it. I look back with amusement (and annoyance) at episodes like the Spanish hacker who heaped abuse on the pi team on Twitter for how they handled the drivers for their camera, even telling them they had pulled a “full Apple,” prior to dedicating years of his life to developing Linux drivers for macs. Or pretentious hn users with bios that include vc and starting their own companies complaining about the cost of a Pi b. In what way is the pi5 faster than the Orin nano? Not gpu or inference, so… integer or floating point?
- 9999_points 1mo agoWhen the raspberry pi became more expensive than a used thinkpad on ebay, they've lost what made them great.
- kotaKat 1mo agoForgot that time that Raspberry Pi hired a cop and everyone got pissed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisstokelwalker/raspberry-pi-hired-ex-cop-mastodon-controversy https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisstokelwalker/raspb...
- VCFundedGenYer 1mo agoPis were good when 4Bs were less than $50. Now they are just ripoffs.
- TiredOfLife 1mo agohttps://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4.html 4B $38 https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-5-1gb.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-5-1gb.html 5B $45
- avipars 19d agoLooks like AI slop fueled by amazon affiliate links