5 ms·

Well the Pi had a good run, honestly longer than I thought it would but the big boys have entered the arena now. Also imagine what the prices on services like

by math0ne 13y ago

Well the Pi had a good run, honestly longer than I thought it would but the big boys have entered the arena now. Also imagine what the prices on services like kimsufi and online.net will look like once these guys have hundreds of thousands of them rack mounted. Good times to come.

eloisant 13y ago
The PI is still a third of the price, depending on you want to do with it, it might be amply enough.
- math0ne 13y ago
  For how long though...
- ah- 13y ago
  There's also the ODROID-U3, which is roughly comparable to the Minnowboard, and it's just 59$. http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php
  - beagle3 13y ago
    But do note that it is a "community price, one for customer" only offer. I doubt they are losing money on it, but I suspect you'd have to buy a few hundreds (or maybe thousands) to get that price if you actually want to build something around it.
    - lgeek 13y ago
      The regular price is $65. http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...
jimmcslim 13y ago
Maybe, don't forget that the objective of the Raspberry Pi Foundation has always been education, and keeping the same hardware platform for a longer period of time, eschewing participation in a hardware arms race, works well for this objective (in terms of building learning materials for teachers around R-Pi etc). That said I think they have said that there will be an R-Pi too sooner it later, 2015 perhaps?
- mkingston 13y ago
  This is a great point, R-Pi foundation may not even need to make it's own boards. This could very well work out best for everybody.
beagle3 13y ago
The Pi has advantages that are not easily overcome by this: Price: $25 for a Model A. Yes, it delivers significantly less - but at $25, it's a consumable for projects, whereas at $100 the Minnow probably isn't. $35 iff you want Network and another USB port and some more memory. Community: If you want to do anything with the Pi, you'll likely found someone who has documented doing something very similar, and probably uploaded their source code. Peripherals: There are a lot of them for the Pi, relatively cheap. I think the Minnow Max will carve its own (smaller, but still nontrivial) niche, but will not actually harm RPi's market share.
- pjc50 13y ago
  Community is _extremely_ important; Arduino lives on its community despite losing on pure technical benchmarks against all sorts of other dev boards. Pi isn't going anywhere, as they have a great understanding of the community they wish to create and do educational projects with.
  - m_ram 13y ago
    I can recommend the Pi to someone who has never used Linux before because there are so many resources available that are Pi-specific. It's the same reason I recommend Ubuntu for newbies even though I prefer other distros for myself.
  - atmosx 13y ago
    I started writing a RoR medical office application. Then I thought what if I wanted every patient to have an RFID card and perform measurements (BP, Weight, etc.). I found an RPi + Arduino project with peripherals, manuals and all I could ask. That I can handle, building everything from scratch (from software to hardware) would take a tremendous amount of time (due to lack of expertise on my part). So as you said, even if you get me an x86 board at 50 USD I'd still go for Arduino.
  - sixothree 13y ago
    Not to mention Arduino seems to have shown commitment to their pinout configuration. I seriously doubt later iterations of this board will retain compatibility.
atmosx 13y ago
This board costs 3 times the RPi (model B), it's not comparable. It's x86 so the premium price is justified IMHO, BUT it's not really comparable with a 25 USD board.
- sokoloff 13y ago
  Maybe true for a personal user, but not for a business. If you're not basing a product around it, the parts cost is trivial compared to the engineering time cost. If you want just one (or a handful) for a one-off project, $25 and $75 are "the same" to any sane business for this. The team will likely spend more on coffee than controllers/SBCs in the course of development.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    I see you have never worked for the accounting department at certain large companies like I used to work for. Oh, we had to buy our own coffee, too.
  - rprospero 13y ago
    While I agree with you, my experience is that most businesses don't recognize your definition of sane. My office decided that providing ink pens was too high of an expense.
Sanddancer 13y ago
The Pi uses 2 watts [1], this uses 5. There are a lot of uses where that 3 watts can be rather significant. They both have niches, and it's going to be interesting to see which one this carves out. [1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6050 http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6050
joezydeco 13y ago
The "big boys" of embedded SoCs (Samsung, Atmel, NXP, Freescale) have been around a lot longer than RPi and are doing just fine.

by math0ne 13y ago

eloisant 13y ago

The PI is still a third of the price, depending on you want to do with it, it might be amply enough.

math0ne 13y ago
For how long though...
ah- 13y ago
There's also the ODROID-U3, which is roughly comparable to the Minnowboard, and it's just 59$. http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php
- beagle3 13y ago
  But do note that it is a "community price, one for customer" only offer. I doubt they are losing money on it, but I suspect you'd have to buy a few hundreds (or maybe thousands) to get that price if you actually want to build something around it.
  - lgeek 13y ago
    The regular price is $65. http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...

jimmcslim 13y ago

Maybe, don't forget that the objective of the Raspberry Pi Foundation has always been education, and keeping the same hardware platform for a longer period of time, eschewing participation in a hardware arms race, works well for this objective (in terms of building learning materials for teachers around R-Pi etc). That said I think they have said that there will be an R-Pi too sooner it later, 2015 perhaps?

mkingston 13y ago
This is a great point, R-Pi foundation may not even need to make it's own boards. This could very well work out best for everybody.

beagle3 13y ago

The Pi has advantages that are not easily overcome by this: Price: $25 for a Model A. Yes, it delivers significantly less - but at $25, it's a consumable for projects, whereas at $100 the Minnow probably isn't. $35 iff you want Network and another USB port and some more memory. Community: If you want to do anything with the Pi, you'll likely found someone who has documented doing something very similar, and probably uploaded their source code. Peripherals: There are a lot of them for the Pi, relatively cheap. I think the Minnow Max will carve its own (smaller, but still nontrivial) niche, but will not actually harm RPi's market share.

pjc50 13y ago
Community is _extremely_ important; Arduino lives on its community despite losing on pure technical benchmarks against all sorts of other dev boards. Pi isn't going anywhere, as they have a great understanding of the community they wish to create and do educational projects with.
- m_ram 13y ago
  I can recommend the Pi to someone who has never used Linux before because there are so many resources available that are Pi-specific. It's the same reason I recommend Ubuntu for newbies even though I prefer other distros for myself.
- atmosx 13y ago
  I started writing a RoR medical office application. Then I thought what if I wanted every patient to have an RFID card and perform measurements (BP, Weight, etc.). I found an RPi + Arduino project with peripherals, manuals and all I could ask. That I can handle, building everything from scratch (from software to hardware) would take a tremendous amount of time (due to lack of expertise on my part). So as you said, even if you get me an x86 board at 50 USD I'd still go for Arduino.
- sixothree 13y ago
  Not to mention Arduino seems to have shown commitment to their pinout configuration. I seriously doubt later iterations of this board will retain compatibility.

atmosx 13y ago

This board costs 3 times the RPi (model B), it's not comparable. It's x86 so the premium price is justified IMHO, BUT it's not really comparable with a 25 USD board.

sokoloff 13y ago
Maybe true for a personal user, but not for a business. If you're not basing a product around it, the parts cost is trivial compared to the engineering time cost. If you want just one (or a handful) for a one-off project, $25 and $75 are "the same" to any sane business for this. The team will likely spend more on coffee than controllers/SBCs in the course of development.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  I see you have never worked for the accounting department at certain large companies like I used to work for. Oh, we had to buy our own coffee, too.
- rprospero 13y ago
  While I agree with you, my experience is that most businesses don't recognize your definition of sane. My office decided that providing ink pens was too high of an expense.

Sanddancer 13y ago

The Pi uses 2 watts [1], this uses 5. There are a lot of uses where that 3 watts can be rather significant. They both have niches, and it's going to be interesting to see which one this carves out. [1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6050 http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6050

joezydeco 13y ago

The "big boys" of embedded SoCs (Samsung, Atmel, NXP, Freescale) have been around a lot longer than RPi and are doing just fine.