I'm sorry but it got too expensive and hence lost its main advantage. These days I use second-hand desktop mini-pcs that cost minimally more than the full Rpi set (charger, CD card, case, SBC) but are much more powerful. For anything involving WiFi/IoT, I use ESP32 - far less expensive and very easy to use. And for cases where WiFi is not needed, we have tons of interesting solutions and few reasons to use the Pi.
These are the two high RAM models but I expect the low RAM model to retain the same $35 price. That's no microntroller cost but if you can get away with such they also have the Pico these days which is $4.
What about power / TDP though? I personally lean heavily towards ARM/MIPS and hopefully soon RISC-V for that above all? Depends on the use case of course…
I've owned every Raspberry Pi since the first one but I think the 4 was my last one. They are fun to tinker with with but not great for long-term use in my experience. I felt like I had to babysit it way too often, it absolutely wasn't a "setup an forgot" device, again in my experience. It'd be rock solid for 2-3 months then randomly stop working, rinse and repeat.
A little bit back I bought a cheap (~$250) mini pc to run Home Assistant on and I haven't looked back. The Raspberry Pi 4 did decent at that job but was a little flakey for my liking and I even had a special case with an m.2 adapter so I didn't have to use the SD card. And before "$XX < $200" (whatever these are going for now), I spent over $100 for my RPi 4 (top ram, I think 4? or was it 8?) especially since you need a case, power supply, etc. Also I had to buy a m.2 ssd and that special adapter.
EDIT: I don't doubt that some of you don't have stability issues and/or have a Raspberry 1 that's been running since release without issue. That just wasn't my experience. Maybe that's my fault, I don't know. I know that I bought "raw" boards, kits from multiple suppliers, and expensive cases that came with approved power supplies but without fail in a couple months it wouldn't be pingable/ssh-able and I'd have to power cycle it and sometimes the software on it would just lock up (same software wouldn't have issue on my home server). In the end maybe I'm an idiot or not smart enough to manage a RPi but especially after the stock issues not too long ago and who the RPi Foundation prioritized, coupled with my experience of the hardware, I'm not really interested in the platform.
I've used Pi's dating back to the first one (even had one from the first batch manually packaged up by Eben and co). They're good, but arent without their issues. Power management has been a consistent problem with every single Pi. That combined with the Raspberry Pi Trading Co's behaviour over the last couple of years made me move to alternatives.
Once an 8GB pi cost more than an i3 or i5 mini pc that is capable of being upgraded it became completely pointless even considering them.
The only things I now have running on Pi's is my PiHole on an old Pi 2 - it's been flawless for years, and a Pi 3 that handles humidity detection in the utility room and turns on an extractor fan.
I have 3 pi’s, running piVPN, piHole and homebridge as well as 2 displays that show my website activity and statistics. They only broke one SD card in 6 years and I never tinker with them.
Like I wrote multiple times before here, I stopped having stability issues with the Raspberry Pi 2 and have had very few issues with SD cards.
I have Pis that have been running for 3+ years now (and that haven't been running longer because I upgraded them to Pi 3 or 4 boards, although they are performing the same jobs), and it's not just the OS either - I have Raspbian on the Pi 3 that runs my desktop touchscreen monitor (which controls all my lighting, and has an uptime of 167 days), and Ubuntu on my Homebridge/Zigbee gateway (which has an uptime of 61 days because I upgraded it before Summer, but has been running for nearly 2 years now).
If you need more CPU power, the RK3588 boards (as long as they have proper Armbian support) are decent bets, but at that point an Intel N100 might be more interesting since those CPUs can average below 10W on light load and will boost to better overall performance. Yes, they will be more expensive, but the going rate is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for less than $200, so...
But if you want something that just works _forever_ at under 5W mean load, the Pi 4 is still it. And you can boot it off an USB SSD to great effect (I have a Proxmox instance running that way).
Like I said in another thread, I use a rpi zero2 as the backup of a VPS so I can program on it with my iPad even no internet is available. The reasons I use it is that:
1. You can configure the zero2 so that when it is connected to the iPad with a usb cable, 2 machine will construct an ethernet over usb and you can mosh from iPad to zero2 without any external network. zero2 also get both the data and power from a single usb cable
2. zero2 is cheap to replace. Micro sd card is cheap and easy to be cloned. You don't worry about software or hardware loss.
3. zero2 is actually quite usable in headless/ssh mode. I used to do the same thing on zero1 and it's a little bit sluggish.
I actually have my entire setup stored in a mint tin box.
I have two Pi 3Bs that have been running as VPN hosts for two years now. I ssh in about once a month to verify that updates are applied, and they've just worked without a problem.
Where I've had problems with other Pis has mostly come down to power supplies that don't deliver enough power. Getting a properly sized power supply will likely solve a lot of your issues.
Absolutely. I dumped most of my PIs for older mini-PCs and NUCs. Throw in a bit more RAM and run Proxmox on it. Way better stability, functionality, and manageability.
If you have 3 of those, you can run a Proxmox cluster, which is a godsend for applications like Home Assistant, which require stability and uptime.
The only time I use a Pi these days is when I need to interface with something via the GPIO pins. Netbooting increases the reliability vastly.
They've been releasing videos which talk about various aspects of the Pi 5 design in some detail, and I've found them really interesting: https://www.youtube.com/@raspberrypi/videos
I was surprised by just how much of the hardware and software of the Pi 5 was custom designed by (or for) the Raspberry Pi org. Custom MIPI implementation, custom IO chip, custom image signal processor, custom camera drivers (w/libcamera), custom video drivers (w/Mesa+DRM). They were able to cut out pretty much all of the Broadcom firmware and the VideoCore is no longer handling the bootup process.
I doubt there will be any listed on that for months, the first two preorder batches from the day it was announced are scheduled to deliver November to January. I would imagine that since then there have probably been enough preorders to fill their production quota until 2025.
Can I please have a Raspberry Pi 500? I like the idea of the Pi 400 - a computer inside a keyboard. And I'm looking forward to having a Pi 5 inside one. Anyone know when I can buy one of these for my daughter?
Not saying this applies, but: The speed of the raspberry pi goes up dramatically when using a fast USB disk instead of micro SD. Most people start with a micro SD, and I had no idea how much faster a Pi could go.
It's being reviewed on youtube positively in this regard. If you're reluctant, it wouldn't hurt to wait a few weeks and see what the reviewers who were not favored with prerelease hardware have to say about it.
You'd expect the experience to get better since people have been testing with prerelease software as well, but... we'll see.
I checked all Eastern Europe retailers on their website and none of them seem to be having the board in stock.
All of them are either taking preorders or say they will start deliveries in late december or early january.
The only retailers that seem to have any stock at all are in the UK and buying from there is a nightmare due to brexit (assuming the boards ever arrive at all - they have a nasty habbit of taking people's money but never deliver).
At this price and power consumption, considering the extra cost of a solid housing etc, those small factor x86 boxes make more sense to me, I have no plan to acquire a RPi5 for now.
I had to buy a case fan to set atop my Intel 4port mini PC, otherwise it would hard lock due to heat. Now, I needed it for the network ports, but there are tradeoffs.
For weeks Microcenter (in the US) listed them as available 23 October. When I checked yesterday I see "Available on Nov 03,2023".[0] I wonder why that is.
[0] The test on the page looks like "AVAILABLE" and copies as " Available on Nov 03,2023 "
Can anyone recommend a forward looking “JBOD case” holding the rpi5 that maybe has room for ample cooling for 24/7 usage? Basically for something like a “DIY Asustor” ++ build? Any 2c much appreciated.
It's unfortunate but unless you're willing to spend quite a bit of money (or are willing to forgo compactness) these are hard to find especially for 3.5" drives.
Radxa did have the Taco and Mediasonic does make compact 4/8 bay JBODs bur these are USB only.
There are also various NVME to SATA/SAS adapters but these mostly make use of port multipliers and speed won't be amazing.
You'll probably also want some SATA backplanes to make wiring less nightmarish but these are annoying to source at a reasonable price.
My latest idea I had for something semi compact and performant was to try and use a USB4 SSD enclosure with adapters to connect a full size PCIE card. You'd then get a Thunderbolt DAS theoretically.
You can buy whatever else you want, even cheaper and better today, and after three years, getting a modern supported OS will be a total pain, due to binary blobs, custom drivers, custom "design solutions" etc.
RaspberryPi is currently the only SBC where you can take any revision of it and still get fully working(! yes, even wifi, bluetooth, etc.) software for it, even if it's not the newest and the greatest model.
Orange PI 5 Plus is faster (10% faster single threaded, 200% faster multicore per Geekbench) and also supports up to 32GB of memory. It has decent support, but not anything like the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. So if you want a SBC that is fast for special well defined projects, go with Orange PI 5 Plus, but if you want one for arbitrary hobby projects with tons of support everywhere, go with the Raspberry Pi series.
Technically yes but in most cases you dont need an sbc. An old Lenovo Thinkcentre or Dell OptiPlex Micro can end up being cheaper by the time you add all the additional expenses onto the pi (storage, power, case, etc). The micropc's are also infinately better performing and are upgradable.
Yes, I'd say that - RPi is, through its moat, the only player in town where you as an user (hobbyist, corporate, ODM) can be assured that there's reasonable build quality, availability of parts, and especially the tooling around it.
I’m going to be a contrarian and say that I really appreciate that they went for a high performing/more expensive SoC this time.
When I had to buy a SBC last time I couldn’t bring myself to get the Pi 4 because it was missing core features (4K HDR decode) vs the alternatives. But I love the community around Raspberry Pi and it’ll definitely increase my options with this SBC.
Too little, too late, too expensive. With the RP2040 they showed the world that they can still make very interesting products that fill the low footprint and low cost niche, but the battle for cheap and powerful Linux boards in my opinion is lost; the competition already won in that field and today is years ahead.
Mosern microcontrollers are extremely capable, I agree. But they aren't running a recognizable OS yet. It seems like the only thing holding them back is the ram size generally. The processors on these things obliterate my first linux machine. Is there a reason we have the offerings we do? A kiosk could absolutely be run on a rp2040 if it had more memory.
is it though? checked all official resellers for two countries and the model is not readily available anywhere.
i figured that after a decade of selling millions of Pis, they could establish direct sales channels by now. but instead we are still stuck with re-resellers who charge a hefty markup on marketplaces people outside of electronics would ever visit.
this is like the major critcism that remains for me with their original mission. the price might have started being accessible, but to buy one has almost never been so.
Reminder that rpi refuses to specially sell to educators, the supposed target and whole purpose of their mission. Those that need them can't get it because the purchasing processes in orgs means they're out of stock before it can be bought.
benterix|2 years ago
turtlebits|2 years ago
The hardware is known and well documented has the best OS support.
If I have issues, I can just move the SD card to another one, or just reflash another SD with 0 downtime or fuss.
zamadatix|2 years ago
Mumps|2 years ago
I've been very surprised to not see other people discussing it.
nope96|2 years ago
atoav|2 years ago
The rpi3b is still around. You can also get the rpi zero, rpi zero 2 W, rpi pico, etc.
Get the right one for the job. If you need an M.2 SSD or actual 4k video playback, go for the rpi 5, if not, for sth. else.
Octoth0rpe|2 years ago
I don't think that estimate takes into account the power savings you'd get from an ARM sbc versus a NUC or NUC-like minipic.
musha68k|2 years ago
wyclif|2 years ago
joshstrange|2 years ago
I've owned every Raspberry Pi since the first one but I think the 4 was my last one. They are fun to tinker with with but not great for long-term use in my experience. I felt like I had to babysit it way too often, it absolutely wasn't a "setup an forgot" device, again in my experience. It'd be rock solid for 2-3 months then randomly stop working, rinse and repeat.
A little bit back I bought a cheap (~$250) mini pc to run Home Assistant on and I haven't looked back. The Raspberry Pi 4 did decent at that job but was a little flakey for my liking and I even had a special case with an m.2 adapter so I didn't have to use the SD card. And before "$XX < $200" (whatever these are going for now), I spent over $100 for my RPi 4 (top ram, I think 4? or was it 8?) especially since you need a case, power supply, etc. Also I had to buy a m.2 ssd and that special adapter.
EDIT: I don't doubt that some of you don't have stability issues and/or have a Raspberry 1 that's been running since release without issue. That just wasn't my experience. Maybe that's my fault, I don't know. I know that I bought "raw" boards, kits from multiple suppliers, and expensive cases that came with approved power supplies but without fail in a couple months it wouldn't be pingable/ssh-able and I'd have to power cycle it and sometimes the software on it would just lock up (same software wouldn't have issue on my home server). In the end maybe I'm an idiot or not smart enough to manage a RPi but especially after the stock issues not too long ago and who the RPi Foundation prioritized, coupled with my experience of the hardware, I'm not really interested in the platform.
esskay|2 years ago
Once an 8GB pi cost more than an i3 or i5 mini pc that is capable of being upgraded it became completely pointless even considering them.
The only things I now have running on Pi's is my PiHole on an old Pi 2 - it's been flawless for years, and a Pi 3 that handles humidity detection in the utility room and turns on an extractor fan.
starik36|2 years ago
It absolutely is. I have 4 RPi devices in the house actively doing work and I only touch them when I need to change a feature or something like that.
1. Front end to my 3D printer - RPi 2.
2. Magic Mirror - RPi 4.
3. Front end to my ancient HP LaserJet to make it wireless - RPi Zero W
4. Detector for Dryer finishing and sending me a text message - RPi Zero 2 W
These require no babysitting whatsoever.
spiderfarmer|2 years ago
rcarmo|2 years ago
I have Pis that have been running for 3+ years now (and that haven't been running longer because I upgraded them to Pi 3 or 4 boards, although they are performing the same jobs), and it's not just the OS either - I have Raspbian on the Pi 3 that runs my desktop touchscreen monitor (which controls all my lighting, and has an uptime of 167 days), and Ubuntu on my Homebridge/Zigbee gateway (which has an uptime of 61 days because I upgraded it before Summer, but has been running for nearly 2 years now).
If you need more CPU power, the RK3588 boards (as long as they have proper Armbian support) are decent bets, but at that point an Intel N100 might be more interesting since those CPUs can average below 10W on light load and will boost to better overall performance. Yes, they will be more expensive, but the going rate is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for less than $200, so...
But if you want something that just works _forever_ at under 5W mean load, the Pi 4 is still it. And you can boot it off an USB SSD to great effect (I have a Proxmox instance running that way).
larme|2 years ago
1. You can configure the zero2 so that when it is connected to the iPad with a usb cable, 2 machine will construct an ethernet over usb and you can mosh from iPad to zero2 without any external network. zero2 also get both the data and power from a single usb cable
2. zero2 is cheap to replace. Micro sd card is cheap and easy to be cloned. You don't worry about software or hardware loss.
3. zero2 is actually quite usable in headless/ssh mode. I used to do the same thing on zero1 and it's a little bit sluggish.
I actually have my entire setup stored in a mint tin box.
tallanvor|2 years ago
Where I've had problems with other Pis has mostly come down to power supplies that don't deliver enough power. Getting a properly sized power supply will likely solve a lot of your issues.
CyberDildonics|2 years ago
deepspace|2 years ago
If you have 3 of those, you can run a Proxmox cluster, which is a godsend for applications like Home Assistant, which require stability and uptime.
The only time I use a Pi these days is when I need to interface with something via the GPIO pins. Netbooting increases the reliability vastly.
nanidin|2 years ago
With BirdNET-pi, I have had a few hiccups due to the SD cards getting worn out from constant writing.
mastax|2 years ago
I was surprised by just how much of the hardware and software of the Pi 5 was custom designed by (or for) the Raspberry Pi org. Custom MIPI implementation, custom IO chip, custom image signal processor, custom camera drivers (w/libcamera), custom video drivers (w/Mesa+DRM). They were able to cut out pretty much all of the Broadcom firmware and the VideoCore is no longer handling the bootup process.
my123|2 years ago
Nope that part remains. The VideoCore VPU does almost nothing other than that and power management on the RPi5 though
mschild|2 years ago
https://rpilocator.com/
moffkalast|2 years ago
VikingCoder|2 years ago
MisterTea|2 years ago
peppercat10|2 years ago
treve|2 years ago
guappa|2 years ago
amelius|2 years ago
Narishma|2 years ago
justin66|2 years ago
You'd expect the experience to get better since people have been testing with prerelease software as well, but... we'll see.
alex_john_m|2 years ago
All of them are either taking preorders or say they will start deliveries in late december or early january.
The only retailers that seem to have any stock at all are in the UK and buying from there is a nightmare due to brexit (assuming the boards ever arrive at all - they have a nasty habbit of taking people's money but never deliver).
fanf2|2 years ago
synergy20|2 years ago
unethical_ban|2 years ago
HankB99|2 years ago
[0] The test on the page looks like "AVAILABLE" and copies as " Available on Nov 03,2023 "
musha68k|2 years ago
magixx|2 years ago
Radxa did have the Taco and Mediasonic does make compact 4/8 bay JBODs bur these are USB only.
There are also various NVME to SATA/SAS adapters but these mostly make use of port multipliers and speed won't be amazing. You'll probably also want some SATA backplanes to make wiring less nightmarish but these are annoying to source at a reasonable price.
My latest idea I had for something semi compact and performant was to try and use a USB4 SSD enclosure with adapters to connect a full size PCIE card. You'd then get a Thunderbolt DAS theoretically.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
amelius|2 years ago
ajsnigrutin|2 years ago
You can buy whatever else you want, even cheaper and better today, and after three years, getting a modern supported OS will be a total pain, due to binary blobs, custom drivers, custom "design solutions" etc.
RaspberryPi is currently the only SBC where you can take any revision of it and still get fully working(! yes, even wifi, bluetooth, etc.) software for it, even if it's not the newest and the greatest model.
bhouston|2 years ago
esskay|2 years ago
pizza234|2 years ago
contrarian1234|2 years ago
mschuster91|2 years ago
dtx1|2 years ago
1. Raspberry Pi
2. X86 System
3. Barely functioning SOCs with no mainline support and major software issues until eternity.
justin66|2 years ago
pulse7|2 years ago
yding|2 years ago
When I had to buy a SBC last time I couldn’t bring myself to get the Pi 4 because it was missing core features (4K HDR decode) vs the alternatives. But I love the community around Raspberry Pi and it’ll definitely increase my options with this SBC.
squarefoot|2 years ago
galangalalgol|2 years ago
rldjbpin|2 years ago
i figured that after a decade of selling millions of Pis, they could establish direct sales channels by now. but instead we are still stuck with re-resellers who charge a hefty markup on marketplaces people outside of electronics would ever visit.
this is like the major critcism that remains for me with their original mission. the price might have started being accessible, but to buy one has almost never been so.
cmrdporcupine|2 years ago
walterbell|2 years ago
devwastaken|2 years ago
random_dork1|2 years ago
worldofmatthew|2 years ago
BaculumMeumEst|2 years ago
steve_adams_86|2 years ago