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- cross-posted to:
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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.
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.
Hmm. Yeah, though I have to say that the USB route looks cheaper.
USB audio will always be better in pricing options, but the question is, which will give you better sound for the price. Of course, this only matters if you think audio quality is more important than price.
Why would you expect USB to constrain your audio quality?
You’re not getting better 0s or 1s based on which bus they’re sent over to the DAC.
Please re-read my response. I never said that USB would always constrain the audio quality, but if you get a cheap USB to aux converter, the quality would be lacking vs a more expensive solution.
You are making just such a weird argument and it sounds like you are retroactively trying to salvage a bad position because you made a mistake.
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If you care strongly about audio quality. A built-in doesn’t have any quality guarantees… why then does usb vs hat matter?
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If quality is your concern why bring up price in the first part? It is blatantly obvious that cheap parts *might" equate to cheap quality. This is blatantly obvious.
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Obviously there will be USB solutions that are equal or better solutions than prebuilt rpi dac hats since the primary dac hats are exceptionally niche.
This response just sounds like you got caught out in your mistake/bad argument. Why be a dick about it?
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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.
How do you mean, what sucked about it?
I remember when i wanted to make something like a chromecast audio with volumio and spotify connect on my Pi 2. I had to buy an audio DAC (~30€) because I could not get the 3.5 Jack to work correctly. It just sounded bad when cranked up to a volume you could actually hear something. You almost couldn’t understand lyrics in songs due to the static noise. I read that this was due to being badly shielded from the power source.
The Audio jack on the Pi 3 I have is ok, but still not that good compared to the Audio DAC of course. But then again, the audio DAC i bought for 30€ was said to be on par with 1000€ standalone audio interfaces lol.
It was some hacked-together sound output that was terrible quality compared to a real sound card output, AFAIK. You could make it make sounds, but if you care at all about quality it was a non-starter, which is one reason a whole lot of audio hats exist.
Connectors seemed low quality and so did the audio. Crackling and sounding… sort of like a broken toy for kids.
The sound quality sucks.
There’s just not enough room
/s
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.
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.
What should I look for in a thin client if I want to prioritize low power consumption?
The Pi foundation screwed over its original customer base by diverting practically ALL available inventory to business customers. Good riddance.
Once they hired that former cop who bragged about using these RPI’s for “legal” surveillance police operations, I was done with them. This goes completely against the DIY spirit. There are so many better options out there without cops and without snarky Twitter social media managers.
What ever happened with all that? Do they still work there?
What is a good alternative you would recommend?
Remember when they said the Rpi3 had 1Gbps speeds. That’s when they started to lose me. Pine64 has had a far better competing board going back to the Rpi3, and they don’t use scummy marketing practices like the Pi Foundation.
Yes, Pine64 is absolutely an organization that adheres to their stated ethos. They are what the Pi foundation should have been, but only pretends to be.
I dunno about ethos, but I do know Pine can also make false claims. I bought a Rock64 years back and they touted it as 4k60 video capable with an integrated GPU and that wasn’t realistic at all. The software stack was still very immature on release. From their own wiki, years later, it still doesn’t work and key parts still haven’t been upstreamed.
Libre computer is pretty good too. I’m a big fan of the Libre computer renegade
Why business would buy raspberries? I am out of the loop.
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.
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
That’s so cool! Thanks!
I guess because it’s a cheap way to do embedded computing? Idk.
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.
This thing looks so fucking cool and simultaneously somewhat dystopian
I’m excited to install retropie for the x time and then never ever touch it until the next iteration.
Are you me?
Can’t wait for this to be impossible to buy from anyone but scalpers.
https://rpilocator.com/ shows the Pi situation has been solved for a while.
Sort of. I still haven’t been able to snag the top of the line CM4 (WiFi, 8gig ram, 32 gig emmc). I’ve seen a handful of CM4s with different configs that I don’t want. But for the 4B, yeah they can be bought now.
Edit: haven’t been able to snag one in my region*
Not really. Higher end models are regularly sold out. In stock Pis are sold at an insane premium.
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.
In a store nowhere near you. And not on the interwebs either.
Oh come now, it’s the principle of the thing.
But indeed I doubt I’ll be able to buy one for a long time.
I’m pretty glad I got myself a Pi 4 for the normal price when it was relatively fresh on the market. I’m tempted to try and get a Pi 5 to replace it and use the Pi 4 for something else at some point. I’m not sure what that might be though, and I feel like the expected scarcity is what even makes me consider it at all. I use my Pi 4 for Kodi on my trusty dumb TV and have recently put my old 3B+ to use for my 3D printer. I’m now left with no spare Pi for whatever might arise.
Might as well add some picos to scratch that itch. And the rabbit hole that micro controllers bring… next thing you know, your work desk is also a solder station, a hot air station, PCB design, circuit design, and you’ve got two extra diy printers in various state of being built/rebuilt
I don’t have a problem, you have a problem
I started out the same way and now my desk is cluttered with partially completed projects and devices in various states of taken apart. But for me the fun part is learning something new along the project journey. The microcontrollers were a game changer due to their low cost. I’m not trying to fry them, but hey if I screw up who cares it was a couple bucks anyways.
For circuits I design I’ve mostly been having them created overseas and I’ll solder on the components but I’m really curious about hacking a toaster into a refry oven or whatever their called and soldering surface mount components. Not that I need the small form factor or I’m making enough circuits to warrant trying to save on cost, I’m just curious and want to try haha. Gonna need a bigger desk…
Honestly, get the flux and a hot air station instead, imo. Then again, I prefer being able to have control over where the heat is going instead of reflowing everything at once
I have pre-ordered one for delivery in October. If you look at https://rpilocator.com/ you will find various models in stock at the official price. The Raspberry Pi clearly isn’t the tool for you
Oh it certainly is.
For the small price of 250 scalper dollars you will be able to buy it
Its not very price competitive now. Its moved into the low end N100 territory with ITX boards and while its smaller and a bit less power its no where near as performant. They will still have some use in smaller applications but 5V x 5A is a chunky cable. I am not convinced this is the way now.
My main uses for them weren’t ever desktop but tinkering with simple robotics / telepresence, automation, aprs / mapping, 3d printing (octoprint). Seems like the 5 is overkill for that. I guess there’s always the pi zero.
Haven’t read the article but is it seriously 5V 5A for the power cable? It seems absurd that they wouldn’t put a voltage regulator on board to accept a 12V 2A power supply.
The idea is they run off USB. Having said that, I’m pretty sure most of us just plug it into mains power.
Even still I wonder if they could have added USB-PD capabilities in order to use 9V or 15V to bring the current down. A 5V 5A USB supply is very unique (even the previous 5V 3A was niche) as standard USB supplies that we’re all used to typically max out at 2.5A. $12 for the official power supply is a decent price but you’re severely limited on options if you don’t have the official supply.
Looking at the power supply listing, it says that it is USB-PD. It lists output as “5A @ 5.1V, 3A @ 9V, 2.25A @ 12V, 1.8A @ 15V”.
I fully admit that I don’t understand USB-PD, though. Does the Pi have to support it too?
Yes, USB-PD requires a handshake confirming that both the charger and device are capable of using it.
I didn’t look any further than the article listing the power supply as 5V5A so its good that it supports higher voltages, but really odd that it’d push out 25W at 5V as this is very demanding on the wiring since it has internal resistance which causes the voltage to drop with increasing length. The whole purpose of USB-PD is to up the voltage while reducing current to mitigate losses (and heat and wire thickness) and supply much higher wattage without having to use chunky wiring. This has been an issue with the Pi for quite a while which is why you always hear troubleshooting responses talking about having too small of a power supply. Now they’ve upped the power requirements while still using a 5V baseline. I did see the article mention that it has a voltage regulator capable of handling 20A of current so maybe it’s just poorly worded with regards to the official power supply.
It’s pretty hefty… and there’s an official cooling solution to remove all that heat too…
They’re basically going for the low end desktop market with it I think.
Realistically probably not getting one for less than $160CAD.
At that point, might as well just buy a used Dell optiplex or something. These boards are absurdly priced, and you’ll never get it for MSRP.
Even with the added power consumption of the Dell you’ll pull out ahead lol
I remember when the Raspberry Pi was the amazing $15 computer. Times have changed.
Amazing for what exactly? I remember them being unreliable, slow af and not really good for much other than collecting dust.
I mean sure the idea was cool, in principle, but they needed a serious upgrade in specs. Now they got it and everyone bitches bc it comes at a price?
- Kiosks – my makerspace uses one for guest signin
- Pihole – make your life less ad-infested without browser plugins
- Octoprint – run your 3d printers
- Home voice assistant without relying on a big company of any kind, or sending them sounds of you having sex
The first models were rough on reliability, but they got a lot better around Model 2B and onward. SD cards with A1 or A2 rating help a lot.
I don’t need any of those things tho. Mostly what I need is decent IO throughput which was unnecessarily constrained on earlier pis by poor design choices. The pi4 is the first to really shine in that regard.
I have a pi2 and I used it as a libreelec media center, and it was Ok in that capacity, but it’s far too slow to transfer larger files regardless of how you do it (all relies on a slow usb interface).
Idk about everyone else but I was fine with the specs. A basic Linux machine that can hook up to the network and run simple python scripts was plenty for a ton of use cases. They didn’t need to be desktop competitors. The market didn’t need to be small form factor high performance machines, and I’d argue it wasn’t.
They still sell the old slow ones don’t they? from the website: “Raspberry Pi 1 Model A+ will remain in production until at least January 2026” “Raspberry Pi 3 Model B will remain in production until at least January 2028” etc etc.
If you like pain, go get yourself a rpi1 lol. As for me, idk… I’m drawn more to VMs and containers which can run very well even on a 2011 tower pc (with few upgrades over the years).
Used Lenovo Thinkcentres are also a good option.
While I love Raspberry Pis and have a few older ones, it’s a shame that the latest ones were very hard to come by and far exceeded the $35 price point.
I was looking to upgrade to a Pi 4 a while back but prices were outrageous or it was sold out completely. I eventually discovered tiny form factor PCs.
I bought some used Lenovo Tiny ThinkCentres (which are about 10x more powerful than a Pi 4), off eBay for ~ $70. I upgraded the Ram and SSDs and they are quite capable, low power units!
So to anyone looking for a low power computer to run Linux, consider buying used off eBay. You can get some pretty good deals on used hardware that’s more capable.
Is it something you could run an arcade emulator from? Thinking of building my kids a tiny arcade.
That would be more than capable. Retro emulation can run on very low end hardware.
But here’s an ebay listing for same model that I bought earlier. It doesn’t include an SSD but you can buy M.2 SSDs for very cheap which I also did. Plus they’re much faster and more reliable than micro SD cards.
It’s very easy to open the machine up which I liked.
RAM upgrades are cheap too but 8GB is a lot for most cases.
A lot of corporate environments use these so when they upgrade you can find them used for dirt cheap, if you don’t mind some possible cosmetic defects. Mine are just stacked on a shelf and I just use them as servers for docker and whatnot.
A friend of my dad’s old PC recently shit the bed and recommended such a ThinkCenter purely by specs and price point. I did some remote setup last night and I got the impression that it was pretty snappy running Windows 10. Such a tiny computer is definitely on my list for the future.
If you need something with power sure! RasPi has a huge community that supports it, that’s what sets it apart.
Priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling (plus your local taxes), virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded, delivering a no-compromises user experience.
Ehhhhhh, that’s pushing it. Didn’t the v4 and v3 cost in the $30-$40 range?
$35 for 1GB RAM. 4 and 8 GB v4 are $55 and $75.
I didn’t see that in the article, but that’s a bit better, thanks.
They are talking about what the Pi 3/4 prices were. All that is mentioned about Pi 5 prices in the article is for 4GB/8GB.
Yeah, they didn’t even try to come close to the $35 price point. That was always RPi’s big selling point. I know COVID screwed that up but I was hoping it was a temporary thing, instead it seems they’ve used it as an excuse to raise prices permanently. Really stifles any excitement I had for the Pi 5 as RPi’s biggest advantage over the competition has traditionally been their low entry price. The base model is almost double the $35 point and we all know it’s getting scalped. Good luck getting a Pi 5 for a reasonable price.
One thing to notice, there are jumpers on the PCB for 8, 4, 2, and 1GB on the Pi 5. They’re selling hte 8 and 4 variant now. I’m guessing a 2 or 1GB model will hit the $35 price point.
If you could fine one, then maybe
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
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 :)
Dell thin clients have gpio
And are way bulkier with much larger power draw
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.
Thank you for posting this!
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.
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.
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It’s still lower power than most x86 SBCs overall, which matters with portable/remote applications
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Its schematics are usually available
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They’re easy to get and have a usually guaranteed availability, so when one dies you should be able to get another
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its got a decent ecosystem around it of hardware and software, which basically nobody else can claim
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it’s a fairly standard form factor, so fits into existing stuff well.
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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!
Easy to get?
Supposedly because there’s no through hole components, everything is surface mount, it should be much easier to manufacturer.
When I say easy to get, I don’t necessarily mean “in stock” - and that is obviously a huge consideration. What I do mean that as far as I know the Pi foundation plans to keep manufacturing older boards for a long time since some customers can’t just easily upgrade to the latest Pi, let alone move to a whole new platform. Is the Beelink x86 PC you got last week going to still be for sale without any significant revisions in 6 months?
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!
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.
They’re manufactured in the UK right? You should probably go to bed!
The GPU crunch was way more painful for me. I waited as long as I could and even went igpu for a year. Finally I overpaid for a nvidia gpu that never played nice with slackware / wayland. It ended up forcing me to replace it with an amd gpu recently. Wanna buy a gently used 3060 ti?
Please serve me more beer and liquor ads. I haven’t had a drink in almost a decade but that’s all I seem to see when I’m not on my pi-hole filtered home network.
My bad then. The formatting looked like typical AI opening-bullet-list-closing. I stand corrected.
You’re probably right, ashamed I didn’t notice though
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I gotta resist the urge… I have two Pis idle 🤦♂️
I have a 4 on server hosting and 3 3s idle. If I buy the 5 I would have 4 Pis idle
They go for good prices on eBay.
But you should keep them because you could have a good use for it in a future side project… right? … right???
Definitely. Got to be something that will come up.
i have no sympathy for hoarders
Your disregard for my future projects disgusts me
🤝 fair enough!
I made a nice nextcloud server on mine :)
I was also planning to do one with a new 1TB hdd or ssd attached. This might be what the 4 will become due to its CPU and memory
Yes, this is exactly what I did, with a 1TB SSD. I tried to host a Jellyfin server as well, but it didn’t have the oomph for that. A plan for my 10yo Mac Pro once I finally retire it lol
The future: when I’ll finally use this stuff.
