- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
There’s a lot of people in this discussion taking about how raspberry Pi and the pi foundation isn’t worth your money, whether on principle, or just dollars per unit of compute.
I get it, but I have a question. Is there a competing SBC that has official PoE support? I know there’s half baked ways to sort that out separate from the device, but I have a few edge cases where the last viable option was the pi 3B+. The official pi 4 case is horrendous for airflow, and third party cases usually either assume you want no protection (and all the airflow) or you want to handle thermals by contact pads passively (making it difficult or impossible to use the PoE hat), or are just as bad as the stock case for airflow, but they have enough room inside to add a hat, in which case, why go third party when the official case is equally terrible?
The pi 3 had a PoE hat, and a case you could take the top off and get decent airflow. Too bad the fans in the first gen PoE hat are unicorns in terms of power draw, with no way to adjust the power curve for the fan connector to suit a different fan, and since they’re unicorns, you can’t find them for purchase, and if you find something remarkably similar, they’re still slightly different enough that they don’t work (I’ve tried). So the fans burn out and IDK, good fucking luck I guess. Buy a new PoE hat?
Then there was the gen 2 PoE+ hat which released alongside the pi 4, which supposedly works with the 3 as well, which I haven’t tried yet, but I’m planning to.
In every case, I have done network monitoring and service nodes that aren’t exactly local to a power receptacle and they need PoE. The pi 4 eliminated itself because of the garbage case design of the official case and the lack of thought by those doing the third party cases… so I’m looking at the 5 like, finally, they got it right.
Now everyone is talking shit about the pi foundation, which I can completely understand, but for the application I need these for (and my pi 3’s have been in service for like ~5 years and probably need to be refreshed), what other option do I have? What’s decent with a good case and PoE input? PoE or PoE+ doesn’t matter, I just need to be able to package it up into a relatively small footprint for the application.
Anyone have any suggestions? I’m all ears. I’ve googled till I’m blue in the face and I can’t even find an SBC that has an option for PoE, I never got to looking into whether it has a decent case or if it will run my software…
The Pi foundation screwed over its original customer base by diverting practically ALL available inventory to business customers. Good riddance.
Why business would buy raspberries? I am out of the loop.
So, they’re really easy to work with and relatively affordable, so great for prototyping, and acceptable for production if a company wants to get stuff out the door without getting a proper custom built solution that would be better in the long run.
When spin (electric scooter app rental company) pulled out of Seattle, they didn’t pick up a lot of the scooters there. People started pulling them apart when it was deemed they were legally abandoned, and it turned out they were all running on raspberry pi’s as their brains.
Ultimately it’s save money on the development side since it allows companies to use less experienced or specialized employees. It’s obviously expensive in the long term since a custom built system that only does what you need it to would cost less
There are good business use cases for Pi’s, you can search online to learn more if you want.
That’s not the issue. The Raspberry Pi Foundation stopped supplying retail resellers and shipped 99% of ALL of their inventory to business customers for the past several years. Which is why you can’t find consistent stock, and why scalpers are mysteriously the only ones able to have reliable inventory.
It’s not a secret, you can look up any number of news stories covering it. Originally they could blame the chip shortage, but long after that’s over, they’re still diverting almost everything they manufacture to business channels, and screwing over the hobbyists who built their brand.
Screw them. I’m not supporting them with my money ever again, and I have double digit amounts going back to the RPi2.
Lol. Maybe I should sell my inventory. Still have like 2 RPI zero, 3 RPI3B+, 2 RPI4 and one RPI400… 😅 Their price is currently like 3-4x higher than I bought.
It’s not even just built their brand, built the damn software, documentation, did a lot of the testing and put up with pis being a bit dodgy out of the box for a year every time a new model came out.
For example:
There are others. Plenty of small/medium businesses just don’t have the resources to develop small computers and the matching software stack. In that regards, the RPi is an appealing choice.
I guess because it’s a cheap way to do embedded computing? Idk.
Great, more unobtainium
Have they been difficult to get? I’ve always been vaguely interested but never actually looked into getting one.
Go to https://rpilocator.com/ and filter by your “region” and check for yourself. Most models seems to be available. The Rapsberry Pi 5 is available for pre-order from a number of suppliers.
I mean uou can get 4’s at retail prices pretty easy right now.
I want to be excited about this, but I just don’t believe I’ll actually be able to get one for retail price. For much of the RP4 lifecycle they prioritized corporate sales, and regular consumers were out of luck. I don’t have a lot of faith in them right now.
we’re going to ringfence all of the Raspberry Pi 5s we sell until at least the end of the year for single-unit sales to individuals, so you get the first bite of the cherry.
They’re probably doing that for first batch bug fixes.
To keep alive the community that maintains the packages that businesses use? /s
There are a few things you won’t forget and the last years were one of those events. Thankfully the competition made leaps forward regarding software support.
Do you remember FTDI-gate 1 & 2 (approx. 1 decade ago)? I do and FTDI never made it back onto my BOM and probably never will again, at least until SiliconLabs, WCH, and Holtek screw it up.
We are dumping the RPI computer modules form our BOM too. The N100 is at a very low price point and readily available. Never again in my BOM.
It’s gotten to the point with Windows 11 killing so many thin clients for businesses with TPM that you can typically find used ones for nearly as much as a Pi. Unless you need the size and efficiency I just struggle to find reason to buy another Pi if I need to selfhost something.
Pis are really cool but they really have become more corporate focused and it shows.
I gotta resist the urge… I have two Pis idle 🤦♂️
Even the Pi has lost its headphone jack…
I mean, if you have USB, for a non-mobile platform, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not hard to get a USB audio interface.
For cell phones or laptops, I can understand not wanting another thing to plug in, but for something like a Raspberry Pi…shrugs
And you can just get an audio dac hat.
To be fair, the pi’s have always been famous for low quality sound cards, so there’s plenty of hats that can add the functionality.
I generally hate the “just get dongles lol” argument but… maybe it’s not a huge loss in this one specific case. I’ve had four models over 3 generations (B, 2-something and 3) and the audio jack always kinda… sucked.
It’s a shame that even the Pi Foundation is cutting corners. Cutting corners and removing features all while not even coming close to their target $35 price. Almost double for the base model. This doesn’t feel like it fits the spirit of the original Pi Foundation goals at all.
Very cool they’ve added an interface to connect a peripheral that can have one though.
Can’t wait for this to be impossible to buy from anyone but scalpers.
We’d like to thank you: we’re going to ringfence all of the Raspberry Pi 5s we sell until at least the end of the year for single-unit sales to individuals, so you get the first bite of the cherry.
https://rpilocator.com/ shows the Pi situation has been solved for a while.
Not really. Higher end models are regularly sold out. In stock Pis are sold at an insane premium.
“we notice everyone is having trouble getting our previous model due to scalpers, so we released a new version at double the price!”
/s
For the small price of 250 scalper dollars you will be able to buy it
While there are now X86 SBC / Mini Computers that aren’t far off the Pi in price, the real benefits of the Pi aren’t just the fact that it offers a certain amount of compute for a certain price.
-
It’s still lower power than most x86 SBCs overall, which matters with portable/remote applications
-
Its schematics are usually available
-
They’re easy to get and have a usually guaranteed availability, so when one dies you should be able to get another
-
its got a decent ecosystem around it of hardware and software, which basically nobody else can claim
-
it’s a fairly standard form factor, so fits into existing stuff well.
-
It’s likely we will see a compute module for the Pi 5 as well at a guess, which means you can treat the vanilla Pi 5 as a dev board for whatever product you’re developing, and then use a potential CM5 as the core of your product once it’s ready to go!
If all you need is a home server or a Linux box, then sure get an X86 SBC, but the Pi isn’t irrelevant, not by a long shot! Congratulations on releasing yet another sweet spot product, I’ll be picking one up as soon as I think of a use for one!
Clearly a bot.
There are bots on lemmy? I thought I escaped the bots…
Lol I assure you I’m no bot. I just think that people forget that the Pi fills a niche that I know many self hosty types like myself no longer need it to fill, and the Pi 5 imo is another slam dunk in terms of nailing filling that particular niche. Other ARM SBCs tend to always have trouble with GPU hardware acceleration due to the weird MediaTek or rockchip SoCs they have or end up pinned to some ancient kernel version missing sources.
I too moved away from Pis to an X86 setup (https://kn100.me/erying-11800h/) something I talk about in great detail in that blog post, but appreciate the Pi exists and continues to evolve in the way it is. Not everything is about mac compute per dollar for everybody!
My bad then. The formatting looked like typical AI opening-bullet-list-closing. I stand corrected.
That sounds like something a bot would say!
I wanted to get a rpi4 when they were nowhere to be found. I refused to pay a scalper so I ended up with a few rockchip devices. I like tinkering and trying different things with them. I made one into an android streaming / dvr / emulation box. I turned a low power one into a pi hole. And I have an orange pi 5 that I still don’t know what I want tondo with it.
I don’t have any need for another x86_64 device. I have plenty of them already. That being said, I probably won’t buy a rpi5 either. Or at least I won’t rush to buy one.
Beep Boop I’m in ur Lemmys astroturfin ur as yet unavailable SBCs.
Nah in all seriousness I too don’t need a pi 5. I just respect what the people behind the Pi project are doing, and it upsets me that people are mad about what is in my opinion a very solid evolution of the Pi because of the availability issues of the Pi 4 during the largest supply shortage the world has seen in ALL consumer goods, not just hobbyist SBCs. Yes that sucked, but there were shortages in virtually everything else too. They also happen to be manufactured in my hometown which means they get a special place in my heart.
Brb sifting thru ur data and targeting ads.
-
For all of us bitter people who couldn’t get an RPi 3 let alone 4 for less than a fortune during the recent dark times…
We’d like to thank you: we’re going to ringfence all of the Raspberry Pi 5s we sell until at least the end of the year for single-unit sales to individuals, so you get the first bite of the cherry.
So I will probably preorder one because why not.
Someone needs to test and find the bugs so that the corporate users get a good experience next year.
I loved Pi’s, but I hate the micro hdmi connectors
Will it handle all features of Plex? Like streaming high def and using all plexamp features?
Theres much better options for that
But are there cheaper options… who am I kidding. Raspberry Pi 5 will instantly get scalped for 80+ dollars.
Edit: looks like they are already 60-80 dollars
4k decoding still drops frames, hardware is capable but drivers are not right now
At those prices you’re really better off getting a lower end NUC format computer which can be found for under $100 USD. Raspberry Pi was cool and innovative when it was new but those days are long gone.
I’ve bought a couple of cheap Beelink machines and I’ve been really happy with them so far.
Comparable power consumption too? Similar GPIO available?
Are you even comparing similar things
Dell thin clients have gpio
And are way bulkier with much larger power draw
You can get similar power consumption.
As for gpio… Add a Pico as a USB pass-through for a few bucks.
So an additional device hanging in the breeze just to gain even some features and pico is hardly a replacement for full rpi gpio. Doesn’t really seem like a better solution.
It all depends on what your usecase is. If someone’s just starting out and wanting to do gpio stuff with a Linux os, yeah the pi may still be the best bet since it’s got such a large following and guides written. But if someone’s got more experience and just needs a cheap small form factor machine to run Linux and interact with some non mission critical gpios, a small nuc with a pico will give you a greater bang for the buck!
Obviously it is usecase dependent. But original comment claimed you are better off getting a small nuc for the same price, as if it is better for any usecase. Please, go reply to them :)
Would you recommend a particular Beelink model?
I have been interested after seeing some reviews, but I’m not sure what would be the best deal.
Hence would greatly appreciate some recommendations.
Seriously. I was thinking about one for a home theater pc a bit ago. Bought a used thinkcentre off ebay for $40 instead. Much better performance and price.
https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/best-mini-servers.html
This article was trending at the time. On hackernews I think.
I really did get the $40 price for an m600 like he mentioned in it.
I think it was a mistake to remove hardware video encoding. Even the hw encoder for H264 1080p 30fps was better than no encoder. Apparently they think sw encoding can replace it…yeah… the cpu is more powerful, but not that much more. I think intels N100 processors will be more competitive for applications involving video/webcam
