The 3B+ was probably the high of the raspberry pi. It is still pretty much unrivaled in terms of idle power consumption and energy efficiency (or at least i have not seen any other SBC that got below 0.5 Watts on idle) on the consumer market.
But i have trouble investing further into them.
- They do not post any update guides for newer Debian releases and basically only support new deployments.
- It looks like they are abandoning their older products. vcgencmd for example is still broken on the 3B+. Since they “fixed” it for the 4B. See https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1224
I agree that the 3B+ was the best Pi but for other reasons:
- The Pi 3B+ had the perfect balance between performance and price with the performance being good enough at the time.
- Design flaws at launch. Remember the Pi4 CC1 & CC2? POE getting pulled from the market?
- Pi5: 5V 5A USB-C??? There is now 45W USB-PD (@15V) that would be compatible with generic PSUs but they went proprietary with 5A@5V.
- They put big customers first and let everybody else starve during the shortage. This forced me to alternatives and I have to say they work just as good and cost less.
- Jacking up retail prices: Even Intel x86 is now cheaper than a Raspberry Pi.
- Pi5: 5V 5A USB-C??? There is now 45W USB-PD (@15V) that would be compatible with generic PSUs but they went proprietary with 5A@5V.
Was not even thinking about that. Implementing USB-PD is so easy these days. Basically just putting a chip there who handles the PD and then a step down(or whatever) converter which they already have anyway. (See ebay USB PD trigger for implementations)
That is so dump.
Talking about hardware flaws, i think they even fucked up the USB-C implementation on the PI 4. They put the resistor on the wrong pins or somthing. Dont remeber exactly.
I think operating at 5V input might be a technical constraint for them. Compatibility revisions for existing hardware are a lot more difficult if the input voltage is 9x higher. Addressing that isn’t as easy as slapping a buck converter on the board.
Not saying requiring 5A was the right call, just that I can see reasons for not using USB-PD.
We are not talking about 9 times higher. 3A at 9V would be enough.
I am currently looking in the Docs and it is really confusing. It states that the PI 5 has a PMIC on board but still saying it boots up only when the 5A is present… So not sure what is going on here.
And looking at the PD 3.1 standard it looks like 5V 5A is actually in the spec in the new Version…
Will have to get my hands on the new PD 3.1 spec.
They used 1 resistor for CC1 and CC2. The fix and correct implementation was to use one resistor per CC-line (two in total).
Picked up a laptop with a busted screen $30 cheaper than the RPI 5. 1135G7, 8gb upgradable ram, m.2 storage, wifi, bluetooth and a battery.
Raspberry pis’ were great early on, but their appeal has quickly diminished in my eyes considering used hardware options that are available now.
Size would be the one redeeming quality of a raspberry pi for me, my headless laptop is thin but takes up substantially more space.
Are they still telling their users to suck it?
https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry-pis-incident-on-the-fediverse/
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Pi 5 sucks massive balls.
They now require a special power supply for it to work else it just crashes under load. Their use of USB C is insanely confusing because it doesn’t work with any normal USB C psu.
This power supply costs 15 bucks which conveniently isn’t included in the price. Also a heat sink that costs 6 bucks.
Also they stuck with micro hdmi which sucks. (even more special accessories needed)
The required accessories almost cost as much as just an old pi.
I hope the community jumps over to Rockchip based boards soon. Pi has taken the communities open source efforts and spit in their face.
Risc5 is also interesting but that seems to be a far bigger task since it need recompilation of a lot of existing stuff
Is there a RasPi alternative that’s competitive in price and has PCI-e support? It’s been a dream project of mine for quite some time to pair an ultra low power SoC to a GPU in order to make a crazy overpowered Folding@Home or BOINC cluster.
I could say the Orange Pi 5, however Orange Pi’s ports currently tend to only work with specific accessories which they already wrote drivers for themselves. It’s not like they’re blocking other devices, but just like how RPI still needs a lot of work to support GPU’s with drivers, Orange Pi probably needs even more.
The integrated GPU is pretty good though.
Most alternatives to RPI use a Rockchip such as the RK3566 for mid range and RK3588 for high end stuff.
There’s also the new cheap 15 bucks LuckFox Pico with Rockchip RV1106 with a small NPU for AI projects, kind of a Pi Pico alternative.
Thank you for your recommendation. I’ve looked at some of those SoCs and they’re impressive but none of them do what I’m looking for. I want to make a graveyard for my old GPUs, but without the power overhead I have right now with them configured as essentially a mining rig that’s folding proteins instead of guessing the hash. I understand that the potential power saved by using ARM or RISC over x86/64 is a few dozen watts at best and chosing an SoC over a desktop platform hamstrings any opportunity for scaling, but it’s been a dream project of mine for quite some time. It doesn’t have to be practical.
Whenever I am doing different projects I go with RasPi alternatives. I agree they’re cheaper and superior.
Low end Intel like Gracemount N200 are lower power and higher performance than Raspberry Pi.
Even an old JasperLake is like 24 watts max to Pi5’s 27 watts.
What non standard thing are they doing with the power supply? The PSU looks like a regular usb c PD supply to me (even supports 12v, nice!)
Edit: wtf! 5v@5a yeah thats non standard. What were they thinking?
Well, I don’t expect more from ot rather than low-power home server.
the community’s* open-source efforts
If you’re thinking about buying, be aware they removed the audio jack.
I’m just hoping rockchip gets better kernel support. They are way better positioned on the CxB scale.
$100 for no h265 hardware encoding.
Hard pass.
But you can get a used thinkcentre tiny mini micro on ebay for $80. Wtf would I spend 100+ on a pi?
Energy efficiency?
Most ppl do not bother to calculate that in(especially idle consumption) or living in an area where it basically does not matter.
But yes, no x86-64 device comes close.
I was thinking more along the lines of battery powered operations. I can stick a Pi, a car battery, a solar panel into a weather proof box and set it in the woods if I needed to.
You’ve got a point, but whatever you’re doing innawoods can probably be accomplished with a $40 pi, not a $100+ one.
Yup. I use one for DNS / pihole / remote into network. Already tiny, easily replaceable parts and any OS. I do prefer the dells over Lenovo though.
Yeah I am loving all these micro Linux computer options. Not much bigger than a raspberry pi but it’s a full computer. If you need gpio you can hook up an Arduino through USB and connect super easily. The one I have been using even has an integrated video card. All for around $100 and they are always in stock lol.
can you link to one? i am interested
first search “thinkcentre i5” https://www.ebay.com/itm/335211475014?hash=item4e0c293046:g:cxAAAOSwxidkleZb
thank you. that’s a good deal.
The power button and RTC are my two favorite additions lol
I thought I would love a power button but after installing my pi4 in a case with one, I found myself setting the jumper to “always on” after every small power outage took my server offline and I had to drag my lazy butt to my pi to turn it back on.
Yeah that’s valid for that use case. Good thing they still allow the jumper
Too many other options to be excited about their offerings anymore
Such as? I’ve been looking to buy one recently. Are there any you could recommend for an amateur that wants to host totally random small services on a microcomputer?
What are some good other options? I haven’t kept up with the advances with this stuff in a few years.
Cool! More ewaste and destruction of the environment during a climate emergency!
