Time to Dump the Raspberry Pi!
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2024
- We had a good run with the most popular project Single Board Computer (SBC), the Raspberry PI, the current model being the Raspberry PI 4B. When you could get a board at $45 and get so many 3rd party accessories, it was the maker's dream. You could build anything.
Alas, those days are gone. Prices are through the roof and we have a thorough demonstration of the failure in our dependence on China for our supply chain. This is one of the victims.
Time to move on and we discuss alternatives.
Beelink Mini S12 Mini PC, 12th Intel Alder Lake- N95
amzn.to/3OTojjt
Beelink SER5 Mini PC, Mini Computers with AMD Ryzen 5 5500U
amzn.to/3BU1gxc
Mini PC Windows 11 Pro, Lightweight 11th Intel N5105
amzn.to/41YhVdu
Intel Nuc 11 NUC11ATKC4 Atlas 8GB ram 512GB SSD,Canyon Mini pc,Intel Celeron N5105,
amzn.to/3MtScDT
Intel NUC 7 Essential Kit (NUC7CJYH) - Celeron, Tall
amzn.to/3OTo5J9
Intel NUC 12 NUC12WSHi7 (High End Version)
amzn.to/3WtzqkO
BMAX B1 Plus Mini PC Windows 10 Pro 6GB DDR3/64GB eMMC Celeron N3350 Processor
amzn.to/3BQGNcn (haven't researched this. Just discovered)
ACEMAGICIAN Mini PC N5105
amzn.to/3MtZYxz
Blackview MP60 Mini PC
amzn.to/3MwINLR
Dopesplay Laptop Monitor
amzn.to/3pZw24Q
Ubuntu 22.04 Installation Instructions
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Raspberry Pi was way too expensive since 2020, I don't think the price will ever go down. COVID is just a lame excuse imo.
It's a lame excuse for what was always a problem of limited supply and the fact that the Raspberry Pi Foundation got its startup money from companies that signed contract to be prioritised for getting their hands on any stock first - unfortunately that's how business works and I think the Foundation could perhaps be accused of being somewhat "naive" in how it signed up to those contracts.
The price never went up accept for 1 model that raised $10. It's the scalpers making things hard for hobbyist. Stock will level out by end of year.
@@jmr I'd like to think you're right but I think it's over-optimism. There's a severe shortage and I think the scalpers will still be taking advantage of that for months yet - I don't see scalper prices dropping as of yet which might be a sign of more stocks becoming available.
But I hope you're right.
,,, co(n)vid,,,
@@terrydaktyllus1320 I mainly based my statement on the PI Foundations predictions. They've held steady on Q3 to get out of the deficit. That isn't my only source though. I use the RSS feed from RPILocator. I got a notification for every US restock of retailers they track for over 14 months. I watched the frequency of those restocks fall and I'm watching them go back up. I never paid scalper prices. It's a PI 4 I have monitoring the RSS feed and sending notifications.
Rob, Raspberry Pi is manufactured in a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales, not China. They probably get components from all over the place but that is where it is all put together.
So if that’s true then why the supply problem??? If you can’t blame China or COVID then... what?? It’s because the Prince of Wales recently got a new job?
@@johnlacey3857 it uses somewhat complex modern chips and chips production is only done by a few companies in the world and they are of a lower priority to produce then say chips that the auto industry needs to manufacture modern cars and a batch of chips is 6-12 months to produce. Shut down for a year or two and you end up with a long line of manufactures waiting to get the IC they need to assemble the PCBS in their devices and pi's are big but not big enough to get priority in production.
@@NeverSuspects So the chips are from China 😡
@@johnlacey3857 No, they are from Taiwan - which is where 90 plus percent of all advanced semiconductors are made. The company that makes them is TSMC. Perhaps you should do a bit more research.
@@natefox6681 A Raspberry Pi does not have “advanced semiconductors”. It’s a low cost product intended to make computing available and affordable to the masses. TSMC specializes in high tech leading edge devices, not lower end semiconductors for low cost consumer products.
To me, it's crazy that a Pi costs more than a cheap phone,
How is it that they can include a screen, and battery etc for less than a pi while basically offering the same amount of computing power
or more! and better selection of apps too. phone wins. super computer in your pocket.
Supply and demand. Economics 101.
They are getting a tracking device in your hand. They make money off the ads they sell. It's a "Loss Leader".
Just get a cheapish laptop, max out the RAM, and put everything in VMs and containers. It's like having a server with a built in UPS.
This is an interesting video as I have been using the Raspberry Pi since it came out in 2011 and I have been also using other SBCs from China like the Asus Tinkerboard, Banana Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid XU4, NanoPi Neo and several others. I also do my own Linux builds with Gentoo Linux that I have been using as my main OS for 20 years now.
The Raspberry Pi has been a victim of its own success and it's clear that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has "bitten off more than it can chew" because the Foundation got its initial investment from certain suppliers to whom it had to prioritise supplies going forward - so those investors, rightly or wrongly, are now getting any available supplies over and above anyone else who needs them.
From my perspective, it doesn't bother me - I purchased enough Pi's to have enough for my needs plus I have those other SBCs above and I can build Gentoo Linux how I want to on any of them. Most of those boards are also supported by Armbian Linux.
There's no way I am paying above normal retail price for a Pi, but I think the Intel NUCs are a waste of money when, on eBay, it's easy to pick up a small and used SFF PC made by Dell, HP or Lenovo for about $50 with a 3rd or 4th generation Core i5 CPU and usually 8 GB RAM. These are great value at the moment because of so many "sheep" buying new PCs rushing to upgrade to Windows 11 rubbish.
Once again, this is an issue of "effort in = reward out".
There are solutions and good alternative to Raspberry Pi boards as long as people are prepared to put in effort to learn how to build the best kind of computer solutions for their needs.
It came out in 2012, not 2011. I got one of the first batch released to the public.
Otherwise, I agree completely. Old business grade laptops can be picked up for well under £100, desktops for even less.
@@sarkybugger5009 I have one of the first 256MB Raspberry Pi boards in front of me now and it's stamped "(c) 2011" so that's the year that stuck in my head - but I accept you're right for 2012 as to its first official release date.
Yes, as a "Thinkpad nut", I would also second the use of old laptops too.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 Fellow Thinkpad nut here. 2 x T420 and an old IBM 600, which still works. Very slowly. 😄👍
@@sarkybugger5009 Yes, I have a couple of T420s and a 600 and 600E too - plus about 50 others - to the point where the wife has banished them from the house into my garage man cave!
I think my favourite has always been the X220 - the perfect all-round laptop PC!
@@terrydaktyllus1320 You've got it bad! 😂
I've been gravitating towards NUCs for a couple of years and been really happy with the NUC purchase I made last year as spare desktop PC.
Once the price of the of the Raspberry PI became similar to other small form factor pc's then obviously, the market would change quite rapidly. As you point out, the small form factor pc's run standard operating systems, are reliable and powerful. Thanks for sharing this.
It depends on what you are doing. If you need something that will run at pretty low power, be small formfactor, with gpio, pi's and some other sbcs are the way to go. You can add a Arduino over usb, to control stuff, but that's not really the same thing. But, for a lot of stuff, these regular mini pc's are a better. In some instances, by a lot.
@@TheRealFrankWizza An atmel with the encryption instruction set for VPN set would be worth it in a pi.
R-Pi got expensive because of scalpers; nothing else changed.
They're way weaker than the comparably priced RPI4 though
@@timelliot9110 I haven't priced it. How much is a pi4 if you just have the pc boards printed, and populate them?
The raspberry pi fulfilled the exact purpose it was meant to. I have a pi400, which at the time was the only one worth the price, and a couple rp2040 micro controllers. Being new to micro controllers and electronics, it is still my favorite toy 😄
Vintage repaired, and/or upgraded is my low-cost option. Over the years it blows my mind at the number of usable desktops, laptops, tablets, and even high end business servers tossed in dumpsters, and recycle bins.
ikr? This is also most environment-friendly option as well. However this is the most anti-capitalism option, this is why it will ever be suppressed as much as possible by the corps.
NUCs tend to run hot and have noisy high pitched fan that get annoying on moderate to high CPU loads. Regarding the Chinese NUC alternative, I'm not sure I'd trust their firmware. One of the big draws for me toward rpi4 were that they can run silently and consume much lower power per instruction, and you'd lose both those with a NUC.
"NUCs tend to run hot and have noisy high pitched fan"
And a relatively short lifespan because of it.
Good point. I was ready to bash on rpi but this comment made me rethink about his advantages... I bought a Rpi3B and Rpi4B and paid ridiculously expensive here in my country even by using "cheap" means. Was tired of running gaming stuff weakly on rpi4 then decided to get a mini pc (Beelink SER5) and its pretty good. But as you said... power consumption and fans make it has less lifespan.
Thinclients are also another good option. I recent bought one to run Proxmox and a few containers on. You can pick up a 6th gen Intel in a thinclient for about the same price as a NUK (and often less), but with dual sodimm slots, sata and m.2, upgradeable internal wifi/bt (m.2), usb 3 and c and some even allow use of the desktop version of the processor, just make sure your cooling solution is up to scratch.
My PFsense installation, including Snort, PFblockerNG and VPN is running on a Celeron J3160 and it handles it extremely well. Load average is between about 3% and 10% on average.
Yes I tried that too. It was a reasonable option - win10 on the Dell thin client ($30 ebay) was faster than RPi4 windows for arm.
@@nikthefix8918 I am running a cloud and a server on mine and it uses hardly any resources. I am going to install a full OS on it and see how that goes. I might need to upgrade the ram, at least it's not soldered.
Anything that won't run Win 11 is going to get so much cheaper as we get closer to 10's EoL. Ill definitely pick up a couple more.
Yes! I needed a new raspberry pie about a month ago and couldn't believe how ridiculously expensive they had become. I ended up getting a CTONE Mini Micro PC Intel 11th Gen N5095 and absolutely love it! Such great performance and the cooling fan is nice and quiet. And who knows when the next raspberry pi will come out? If ever?
I prefer meat pies.
Raspberry Pi Foundation did not increase the price. You looked to buy from scalpers.
@@gordonhill8164 Ah. Makes sense. Still, this experience motivated me to switch to different hardware altogether.
An option are used client PC's. Those that companies use at work stations for example. You can get them for 35 USD and already with powersupply etc. Mostly they are even much stronger regarding CPU and RAM, compared to a Pi.
I couldn't agree more about the Raspberry Pis. I have moved on too. I bought a couple of Beelinks this year. One is the Ryzen 5 5600H variant, the other, an 12th Gen Core i5-1235U variant. The i5 is slightly faster for tasks and the Ryzen 5 does 3D gaming much, much better for anyone curious. Both are very small, run very well, are expandable and overall, much more interesting and powerful than any raspberry pi in any configuration.
Yes we should support companies who don't rely totally on China.
The Pi is assembled in the UK (by Sony), but like every other electronic device, a lot of the components come from Asia, (principally China).
Jeff Geerling recently interviews Eben Upton, who answers a lot of the issues raised here.
These computers are NOT made by Sony. They are made in South Wales (united kingdom) in a factory that was previously owned by Sony.
My option has been to use old laptop mobos.
Used SFF PCs from Dell, HP or Lenovo with 3rd or 4th generation Core-i5 series CPUs in them are also very cheap on eBay at the moment due to the amount of "sheep" rushing to upgrade their PCs for that Windows 11 rubbish.
Works most of the time. Those dell lattitudes are usually decent.
I disagree with the author/influencer. As a security consultant, I always check the hardware supply chain, and I do not trust Chinese origin electronic companies, or Chinese-based companies, due to subversive and latent and covert practices still being embedded in either hardware, firmware, or software. And these alternatives are sold quite cheap, setting up online "drop-shipping" style US or Canadian e-commerce portals.
While some or few electronic components may be still "sourced" from China, the Raspberry Pi is still built/fabricated in the UK by a UK organisation. And the hardware, software, and firmware is open-source (except few components like the antenna which is restricted by commercial license terms).
Prices are not increased by Raspberry Pi foundation, but by "Scalper" websites, that hoard the already affected supply of newer boards. Raspberry Pi has always maintained to keep the price point in check, without frivolous upgrades, that's their philosophy.
Lastly, it is meant to be hobbyist kit to *learn* and *hack* embedded electronics. It was never meant to compete with commercial electronic devices or industrial solutions such as Intel products or the like.
So, in summary,
1. UK organisation,
2. Trust,
3. Open-source
4. Cheap (original price)
5. Only for hobby & learning (not for commercial applications)
6. No frivolous bells & whistles
Excellent summary - thank you.
No mention of the GIPO's on the PI? I like the PI because it is to easy to implement various devices and sensors. Curently I use a PI running open source Mycoco as the control system for my greenhouse. I've looked at the little PC's but no easy way to interface with external devices.
There is a USB GPIO like amzn.to/3ICwEns
Yes, I belatedly forgot to discuss this in the video. But this is how you enable GPIO
I've been watching the supply of Pi's slowly improve lately. They are making about 600,000-1,000,000 per month and the availability is only slowly improving because the demand is so high. There are several recent interviews where they go through the numbers and the situation. It's great to have options, and the Pi's will be more available as we go forward. We'll probably even see a Pi 5 at some point that should be interesting. For some things the alternatives are fine, for others the superior support of the Pi has value. It's good to have choices.
*available to scalpers
@@ultravioletiris6241 if only people would treat these as PS 5s, don't buy, and make scalpers lose their money. Screw their greed.
Even though their availability may improve - if the price is too high & still not competitive with similar products - I think they will lose the market share they may have once had, when they were much cheaper.
@@janburn007 Pi's are still very cost effective at MSRP - prices have changed very little, some models have increased 5 dollars due to supply chain increases, most things have gone up more than that. Don't pay scalper prices and add to their motivation. Pi alternatives can be useful in some projects, however most of them fall far short in support and ease of use especially if GPIO is part of your use-case. It can add a lot of time and frustration to the development process. Increased availability of the Pi will eventually collapse the scalpers market.
@@alanb76 “at MSRP”
Lol. Regular customers will never get Pis at those prices again. Scalpers are most likely going to continue abusing their privileged access until the reputation of Pis become so poor that the whole scheme collapses. Its really too bad that they abandoned their core mission -affordable access to EE/CS for even children outside of the west- so quickly and so totally. The problem is that the initial cheapness led to huge market share, which means that 99% of projects/tutorials/kits are made for pis and yet the vast majority of kids are no longer able to afford them.
But yea if you’re some hobbyist with disposable income then it still makes sense to buy them. Computer hobbyists already build $3000 gaming PCs or have server racks at home, so obviously they are the primary market for the scalped overpriced Pis.
The whole reason for Pi existing was budget PC building and education... no longer being budget means it isn't necessary anymore. You can get better boards with better instruction sets for nearly the same price, so why bother?
Are you sure, that the RPI is produced in China? All my RPis declared to be make in UK, exept my very first RPi1B (256MByte). Of course the supply-chains depends on China, but this is also true for every complex product.
Guaranteed. Now some parts may come from elsewhere but the finished RPI comes from China. I discussed the UK connection in the video
@@robbraxmantech You mean that the production line(s?) in South Wales (UK) and Kenya (Pi Pico) are fakes? This can be very dangerous and expensive for the manufacturer, due he declare it as 'make in UK'.
Ill keep recommending raspberry pis. Ive been using an rpi4 8gb since the beginning (before?) Covid and it has done amazingly well as my media server and player
The best thing about raspberrys IMO is that their are extremely standardized, if you want to run a homelab, getting several Pi 4s means that when you want to expand you add another Pi, when one dies you get another pi, it's always the same hardware, same feature set, you never get surprises.
All the nuisance of a board will vary from mini pc to mini pc, but when you always deal with the very same model of board, there are no surprises, you know what you get.
Sadly they are not available, and they are NOT $35~ (or $55 on the 4gb model), they have become expensive and hard to get, making the whole appeal for me gone.
I was looking for a Pi 4 for a project and came to the same conclusion that these Mini PCs are a better choice at the moment, and ended up buying a Beelink Mini PC
Recently I bought an Orange Pi5, but the dev team simply does not deliver! It takes forever to upgrade the firmware. So sad, because the chipset is on point - perfect for portability and some basic work (it is possible to run even KDEnLive or Gimp, not that it is worthed, but simply possible).
This is why I've avoid the PI alternatives. Nobody has the support of the PI but these days the PI is also the slowest.
The problem is the development support. We like it or not but raspberry pi is the only single board comp which has a lot of software support by the community. However, yes there is supply chain problem and comparing with other boards example orange pi5, raspberry pi 4 is slow
Only one question, how would you replace the GPIO pin connectors with those machines?
Yeah, this guys rant isn't great. It's like he didn't really source well. If all you need is a platform to spin up Tor and VPN, you could even go MIPS (or it's probably RISCv5 these days). Gotta love how the world economy is pegged on one or two countries for its parts, which is just an easy viral vector with the cramped quarters.
@Rob - The component shortage has hit everyone - EVERYONE - surprisingly hard. I have friends building specialist mesh networking systems and lead times went from "how many do you want" to "wait time over 1 year" on almost every single component, he showed me on Altium. The Chinese supply chain collapse has hit everyone who doesn't have political clout in China (like Apple seems to), those sourcing non-Chinese components all of a sudden find themselves competing for dwindling stocks with those who did. Chinese OEMs have the advantage of being literally down the road from wholesale operations and often have first dib at components, etc. - they can apply local pressure and suppliers KNOW that the international clients are going away at some point so they want to favour their domestic makers. Eben Upton referenced the logistics problems they've been dealing with for a LONG time after COVID rattled the entire component supply chain. They had to balance enterprise compute-module supply contracts with retail stock availability, the latter which seems to have been hit REALLY hard by scalpers and price gouging and the former by frightened industrial customers who are buying as many as they can to maintain buffer stocks internally in case of failure or expanded requirements. Pis are indeed manufactured in the UK in a Sony facility in Wales I believe - they of course are made from components manufactured in China like everyone else. German cars are jam packed with parts that have come straight from China, disaggregating them from the supply chain is something that’s actively going on right now and is part of the gradual collapse of globalisation as we used to know it; expect component supplies to be very weird and often quite strained for a very long time apparently.
I do think a lot of people - myself included - have mis-used Pis but to be fair that's not something you can realise until you've used one in a practical capacity. The flooding of the used market with those lovely little micro-sized corporate desktops makes them a wildly more attractive option at the pricepoint the Pi should normally sit at - and I think that's a vastly better option for many who want that contained auxiliary desktop system. Older notebooks are also superb for this as they are designed from the outset for low power consumption and even their usually shot batteries can provide even brief UPS protection to an extent. I see the future for SBCs like the Pi - which I think will definitely return to dominance especially upon release of the Pi 5 - as being more with edge computing solutions, low power/cost messaging and task hubs, etc. Desktop use is its own kind of hell it seems - and is abnormally affected by the lack of software support which really does affect almost every non RPiF product more than it does theirs, even with wonderful projects like DietPi and Armbian filling that desperately desperately desperately need function.
NUCs being x86 based sees them benefit heavily from almost every area with OS development, particularly for security releases where I’d argue that it’s generally a superior platform if you’re building most security products (unless you really need the lower power profile for mobility, etc.). Updates for *nix based anything is just that much faster and I can’t see this changing given how ARM chips tend to be used in real life.
I've been getting the Libre Potato computer off Amazon for a while now, just picked up another one last week - $35 and it's pretty much identical to a RPi 3B+. Only difference is it doesn't have WiFi (I hard wire everything I can so I don't mind.) Otherwise it's almost identical.
Interesting. I'd never heard of Libre Computer before. I'll have to put that on my short list!
Yeah the s905x has come a long way since it dropped way back when. I generally get way over what this board can handle and have low memory issues but it a solid board for most small IoT task once you know what your doing. just wish their was more more libraries for the GPIOs.
Just ordered one to update my RPI3. Isn't the potato faster?
Rob, from what you've said I can tell you that you've been using RPis for projects it wasnt directly designed for. You want a portable, low-price desktop replacement of which there are plenty in recent years. Pi is more of a microcomputer build to be tinkered with by hobbyists.
This is a great and informative video! Thank you Rob!
One more comment to get the facts straight. Raspberry pi4’s are mostly assembled at a Sony factory in the UK. Raspberry pi Pico boards assembled in Japan. The processors come from Samsung in South Korea or TSMC in Taiwan, only. Raspberry pi was initially assembled in China, but only a few are assembled there now. There are, of course, some parts that come from China, as with all products, including Intel’s. Pi made 6 million Pi4 last year. The problem is the demand was probably closer to 12 million. It’s taking them a while to catch up. The Pi Foundation made a conscious decision to prioritize delivery to small businesses so as to not put them out of business, rather than to make the limited stock available to hobbyists. Whether that is right or wrong can be argued, but it’s not like they haven’t been building pi boards for the last 3 years.
New Sub! Dryden, Michigan
I Love My RPi's 2/3/4, but I've been Telling people, Give me your old computers, Dont Trash Em.
Back in the Early 2k's I could turn Virtually anything into a Fully Functional Linux Desktop.
Now I Tear Down Trash PCs I collect & teach my Daughters how to build computers or Build BATOCERA Game systems for themselves
Great Job!
im dying to know, are you recording your videos on a boat? that background looks stranglely like a boat.
Have you considered looking for a solution with open source firmware, such as the RockPro64?
Raspberry pi foundaation has shifted their focus to industry and abandonded their roots, the hobbiest and educational market. The reasons for all the scalping is because the businesses that the PI foundation is focusing on supplying turn around and scalp them. The foundation is to blame for the shortage as a result, and they can eat my shorts. I wont deal with PI again
That isn't even remotely true. The actual, AUTHORIZED, Raspberry Pi retailers (like adafruit, microcenter, digikey, canakit, pimoroni - etc etc) have never raised prices or scalped their portion of the allocated supply which was pre-designated for the hobbyist. The reality is that there are many businesses which rely on the raspberry pi ecosystem for core components in their product offerings. And if the hobbyists where prioritized over these businesses then it would cause companies to go under and people to be unemployed. That is why the Raspberry Pi foundation made the decision to supply these businesses over the retail (hobbyist) market. But all that being said, the supply is recovering extremely well and I would be surprised to find anyone having an issue finding a raspberry pi for MSRP. The shortage is OVER.
Don't worry... I'll sell my Raspberry Pis online and as soon as I do, the price will go way back down. That's what always happens to me.
You might be better off keeping it as a collector's item or "family heirloom"!
Me too!!!!
Rasberry Pi 5 double spec of 4. Due out end of Oct. I'd like to buy something soon for a light browsing with 2 hd monitors. What is your take on this new offering?
Rob, they prioritiesed industry and education. The PIs will be back at regular pricing by Q3 this year.
What a coincidence, Intel NUC and RPI both were introduced in 2012 (if my research is accurate).
Old laptops and mini PCs have always been an option for small linux servers and such. That is not why RPi's became popular. Their small form factor, low power requirements, and GPIO pins is what made them special. So, your suggestions do not address the main reason most people buy RPi's. Other SBC systems like Orange Pi , Odroid, Beagle bones, etc come closer to the mark.
Yea we need a true affordable alternative to Pis. As you mentioned, mini pcs are not a direct comparison at all
Mini PC's can use a USB GPIO. I put it in the description
@@robbraxmantech it would still be great to have some recommendations for cheaper options that have most or all of the features of pis. Pis are a lot easier to build into things due to size and useful in certain engineering projects due to portability.
Don’t get me wrong, i just got one of those mini PCs (HP EliteDesk, $115) and its awesome. I’ll probably get a second one. But as an electrical engineering student i also want to find an affordable device that fills some of the niches of the Pis.
it seems like there's no advantage to have the x86 instruction set if you're running Linux. In fact, usually you get less performance/efficiency for your dollar when running linux than on an x86 than you do on a number of other non-x86 machines
The orange pi 5 is a very good alternative in the price bracket
I too have a lot of Raspberry Pi's most of which now live unused in a cardboard box. I cannot buy an 8Gb Pi 4 for either love or money and more often than not Pi's are perpetually out of stock. The major issue has become that the Pi does not have an M.2 interface but insists on fiddly SD cards that eventually die after a year or two.
I am now using Intel NUC mini computers instead of Pi's. Edit: I actually wrote this before I reached the NUC section in your video. The NUC's are pricey, but they are available AND can be upgraded with RAM and M.2 SSD's or SATA drives..
Thanks again for great material insight/breakdown
Do you think AI is affecting the price in some way?
With the Raspberry Pi 5 coming out in a few days, does that change your opinion at all?
While I am as frustrated as anyone about the lack of Pi 4, I’m surprised you made this video now. @JeffGeerling interviewed Eben Upton last week. They’ve been making 500 K Pi 4s per month in Wales UK for industry for some time. Eben said Pi4 will be generally available to hobbyists by 3Q23. I just bought one at standard price last week from PiShop. So the crunch is about over, but the real question is whether the pi is still relevant.
The Raspberry Pi 5 IS OUT (and slowly shipping). Does your recommendation to DROP PIs get changed by that?
Thanks for doing the Home Work..
You're comparing Apples and oranges here .. how's the NUC similar to Pi ?!?! .. we liked the Pi because of the simplicity, the unification of software/hardware kernel drivers.. sure , you can use a Nuc or any other PC mini board and run linux distros on it .. but, good luck compiling various and specific kernel drivers for the hardware, if they aren't natively supported.. so, we're back where we started a decade ago , a few steps backwards..
China isn't the only Raspberry Pi factory. In fact, most are made in the Sony factory in Pencoed Wales. There is also significant production in Japan.
The stock problem is because businesses are buying all of the stock up before it becomes available to regular people. The Raspberry Foundation made promises to address this in 2023, but so far I am not seeing any real improvements.
An alternative to a Raspberry pi 4 ( for your router) is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+. i saw a conversation with Eben Upton, boss of Raspberry pi and he said they would never run out of them and , to be fair, they are lovely little boards that dont get the recognition they deserve, add to that the community size of Raspberry pi ! Eben said they are expecting the stock to get back to pre-covid levels by the end of this year, Oh and Raspberry Pis' are NOT made in China they are made in Wales , granted there are some 'specials' made in China but the vast vast majority are made in Wales U.K.
The problem with the PI 3 (and I still have many PI 3's) is that the USB is 10mbit only vs the gigabit on the PI 4B. If there's still some PI 3's they're not going to last since I doubt if they're still being manufactured.
@Rob Braxman Tech pi3 have planned production till 2026.
Have you used, have experience with beaglebone?
Meanwhile, two months later, Intel has decided to leave the mini-pc market..
I have two of the first gen NUCs and still use them as HTPCs. Both running debian server with KDE flawlessly. In fact one of them was the DC3217IYR, the limited edition red case with golden dragon on it. It sits proudly in my living room still.
Very interesting to hear your opinion on this subject as a professional provider of IT solutions. Nice to see the solution can be done by making use of domestic sources of hardware.
Not having raspberry pi's minute power consumption is a deal breaker. If I just needed a device that would run a Linux box, I can just get an old laptop
Ok but there are mini pcs that have practically the same wattage as a Pi. Have you even compared them lol?
Do you recommend any specific adapter to break out any General Purpose I/O (GPIO) ports for the NUC?
Another reason for the shortage is horders like me. I have 2x model 4B's and I got another 2x 4GB PI4B's earlier this month because I saw them in stock and I knew there was a shortage.
I only use one.
Honestly, I have a stack of PI 4B's in here that I could resell.
Hey, it's Capitalism and you're allowed to do that. I just wish people would ignore scalpers completely (whether it's for Pi's, concert tickets, etc.) and just give them no reason to profiteer from limited demand, even though that's Capitalism too.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 more like fear of missing out than capitalism
What are your thoughts on the pi 5 shipping late this month.
In Italy you can find a 150€ nuc with a Celeron j4005
Good option for a little home NAS or another stand-alone device, but not that easy to implement into most project builds.
So you only ever do projects that are "easy" then?
The man's got a point, at first I thought it was a marketing scheme, but now it's just ridiculous. Alternative boards like the Orange Pi support Raspberry Pi OS and other Linux distros.
The NUC is 12-19 volts if my reading is correct. How well would this run on a 'camper' battery --- I use my PI as a media server (plex) and want to be able to use it when I do not have shore power
What about the power consumption? I have some Raspberry pi's that I have been running since 2019 (24 hours a day 7 days a week) for sharing internet bandwidth etc (honey-gain and Earn-app etc)
WARNING: caught the Mirai virus running on my Orange Pi 5 Plus (Debian 11 image from Orange Pi)
I bought a pipo x8 pro for 160 usd it's a little Celeron pc with a little 7 inch touch screen embedded in the top running win 10. Runs on 12v 2a so can run off battery. Has all the usual usb HDMI lan etc. So much better deal than a raspberry pi
I have several Pi's (none for sale) and I always 3D print the cases for them. I bought all of mine before the plandemic
Sad what happened to Raspberry Pi. They now are mainly focusing on supplying companies. Another controversy came when they recently hired a former police surveillance specialist. I'm curious if volunteer developers will continue with their change in priorities.
Hi @RTPTechTips, Love your channel, I'm learning a lot from you! 😄Keep up the great work! 🥰👍💯
@@viperzero8501 Hey thank you! appreciate the feedback. 🤓
...and you have a new subscriber here too. Just had a quick scan of your content, some very interesting looking videos in there so looking forward to settling down with a coffee or beer later to have a viewing session!
Of course they are gonna sell those precious Pi where the money is - enterprise. A lot of companies and industries use Pi’s and have ecosystem built around them since they were cheap. Now these companies are stuck - they don’t want to pay the cost to gravitate away from Pi and so they are paying top dollar to procure new and replacement boards. It’s a great racket for the Pi folks and they have been milking it hard for 3 years plus now!
@@terrydaktyllus1320 Hey thanks for checking it out!
back in 2019, i bought a bunch of raspberry pi zeros (with and without wifi) for $5 and $10. i'm super glad i did, because that is a nice board size for just stuffing an intelligence into an ordinary object
Well I have bad news. Intel killed the NUC series recently.
I have a 8GB pi and run a windows 11 in it. It works.
You could have just suggested buying old laptops for a fraction of the price. They have powerful CPUs, cost less, and relatively lower power consumption than the intel nuc, although nowhere as low as the pi
Rob, can the Dopesplay (13:50) be used with Libdem 5 or Ubuntu Touch? If so and desktop mode can be activated then one’s Linux mobile could become a Linux laptop!
Possibly. But I haven't tried
they have made hardware as good or better but the support is just not there for beginner hobbyists to learn compared to the Pi .
new options are good.
What about Intel Celeron based laptops? Many of them can be had between $60 and $150 at places like Microcenter. A Microsoft Surface Laptop SE 11.6" is $130 and includes a built in "UPS" keyboard, trackpad and monitor all in one. It's limited to USB type C Gen 1 but at over 3Gb/s real world speeds, that might be enough?
What inexpensive desktop computer would you recommend WITHOUT ANY WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY for doing stuff where you need a high level of security like air gapped crypto stuff and under $250?
The video recommends several. And check out the links in the description
@@robbraxmantechSorry I just edited my post to add, without wireless connectivity. I will check out your suggestions to see if this applies to any. Thanks.
PI has Wifi.
@@robbraxmantech Yeah, except the rasberry pi zero non-wifi version. Problem is the zero seems a little under powered for running a bitcoin full node. Not to mention the price gouging.
@@martinlutherkingjr.5582 Wow! There's still people out there falling for the Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme?
If you get a NUC, get the one with the quad core Pentium instead of the Celeron. I don't remember the models I have, but, I have two of the Pentiums and one of the Celeron dual core ones. The Celeron is noticeably slower. I think I've had the ones that I have for around 10 years. I'm running Windows 10 on them. They are a bit slow, but, usable. I mainly use them for Remote Desktoping into work, which they work totally fine for. It seems like Intel isn't really focusing on the low end ones anymore as near as I can tell.
question from the start is, why you need a shortage to have your software running on other devices. There are sooo many other low energy devices you seem to overlook. Odroid or Libre Computer have similar devices with good prices.
I have 2) raspberry pi’s 2 gig bought before the shortage of 2021. I used one as a OMV server, the other is a security cam server. I’m slowly moving away from the pi, moving to unraid w an old PC
PI uses
Just to let you know, Raspberry Pi computers for the British market are manufactured by Sony in their factory in Wales.
Oh yay secret trojan spy code buried in the processor with IME (Intel) or PSP (AMD/ARM)
glad to see Braxman is genuinely concerned about his customers' privacy with his products and isn't just another grifter
did you checkout the upcoming Raspberry Pi Model 5?
Whilst I do understand why you're not a huge fan of Chinese devices, but there are a number of N95, N100 and i3-N300 based mini PCs available from multiple Chinese manufacturers worth various options such as M.2, 2.5 GbE (some have multiple LAN ports) and other features. And the performance and power usage is quite decent.
I posted some of those in the description already. At least the ones I found on Amazon
Yes, Raspberry may be held to ransom by suppliers and profiteering gougers at the minute, but a replacement for the enormous international Pi community (unique selling point) is going to be very hard to replicate in the short to medium term for Pi clones, if ever. Additionally, there has been an extensive financial investment and implementation of Pi's globally, which will be difficult to displace. Once the Pi's comes down in price, due to greater availability, I would suggest there will be a massive uptake in purchases again.
Unfortunately it is already displaced. I invested a lot in the PI4. 3 years is a lot of time and I didn't want to make a video like this until I ran out of choices.
@@robbraxmantech Sadly you may be right!
@robbraxmantech I just took a quick look at The Pi Hut, and they have in stock all variants of the Raspberry Pi 4B, the 3B+, the Zero, the Zero 2, the 3A... they just lack the Compute Modules right now.
It looks like the supply shortages have effectively ended. And we can now preorder the Pi 5. So, does this video still hold up?
Very happy with this video/info. Thank you !
Raspberry pi's are so expensive and hard to get a hold of but the alternatives aren't that great in terms of software, support, and updates. I've gotten a few banana pi's and orange pi's that don't work properly or the OS build is broken. This is a great opportunity for someone else to take over the market but they haven't done it yet.
Orange Pi and Banana Pi do work properly. You're just "on your own" a bit more with those boards - but I've built Gentoo Linux on a number of both those board models and it works fine, even though it takes time and effort to do the builds.
Upton did a recent interview on another channel, where he says the pi are now built by Sony in Wales, so I am not sure if this guy is correct about it being made in China. He stated the reason they still divert a lot to industry is because a lot of them are relatively small businesses and would possibly go bust without a supply of pis that their designs are based on.
He said that production is ramping up and should hopefully get better soon.
Everyone ramped down through covid, that is one of the reasons for high worldwide inflation. Everyone went back to living but all the factories were still not back to full production, hence shortages.
The NUC is OK but not really a substitute for a pi. They are much larger (12x.?), much more power hungry, so not really a substitute for embedded products. They can be a bit erratic on power on start up if used in an embedded mode with common power loss/restart on power reconnection mode ie they don't power up. Avoid celeron processors,, they always had a reputation for being rubbish and I am surprised anyone still uses them.
Yeah, this guy is full of shit.
I bought a 4B not long ago at list price. The supply problem seems to finally be resolving.
I agree, the RPi's were not worth the money that the scalpers were charging. At MSRP they are quite cost effective and the tech is mature and stable. At over $100, they were not particularly attractive unless replicating someone else's build that specifies a Pi.
There is a method for booting the Pi from a USB device. A small SSD might make for a faster boot. I haven't found boot speed to be a real issue, though.
Used thin clients are more powerful and cheaper these days.
I've given up on the RPi , I have a Pi 4b with 2 G.B. that I use for my field ham radio, and also a zero w for a dedicated Hamclock. I wanted to build a second field radio with RPi but I've nixed the whole idea. I blame scalpers .greed. Raspberry had a good thing for awhile and their heart was in the right place. But i think that they toast
Given the interest in privacy, what about the Intel management Engine?
You know, that BIOS hardware back door Intel has supposedly baked right into the the cpu now?
watch that recent video on IME. There's some new things in there you will learn
About a year ago I started using SBCs on small robot projects. I had a Pi 3b lying around, so I started with that. However I wanted to use an SBC with a smaller form factor. Pi Zero and Pi Zero 2 lines were unavailable. I tried an Orange Pi but it ran so hot it fried the CPU within hours. I moved to Banana Pi and have been very satisfied.BPi will be the only SBC I wil use from hereon in.
Thanks for the info.. I was curious about the SBC market and if it had recovered, obviously it hasn't, I've looked at the Asus tinker board and the UDOO SBC made in Italy
Honestly the issue is now much better than a years ago where I could not finish project (not even start) because of shortage of pi. I have no issues directly with buying things from china - much bigger issue is west being in trade war with china + too much globalization (yes suppy chains should be much more local everywhere) and also all the shitcoins mining + covid car commmpanies cancelling chip orders then buying out with high prices below anyone else for any purpose making economy fall apart...
One more thing: Even though pi can go as high as mini pc-s like this, that does not make a mini PC a suitable SBC... No built-in gpio and other peripheries, bigger size, sometimes less passive heating possibilities - and to many use cases way too high power consumption compared to something arm or riscv based which fares much better. That is if you buy a stronger mini PC for a router if something with lesser capability could do the same job in 10-15W max with external drives and all to it... Then it sounds a bit more worse from that on isn't it?
I got lucky as covid was springing - I was having my second 2u server rack Mount kit being finished up... Now 24 pies on the rack... And few more here and there.. Great low powered solution
Can you add GPIO to NUCs? The GPIO ports are about the only reason left I would pay $200+ for an RPi.
Here's an example USB GPIO amzn.to/3ICwEns
I would add one more mini pc I am using. This is the Zotac Zbox CI325 nano. You can get it for about 170 US$ with 256 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM. It comes with two 1 Gb/s LAN interfaces. I am using it for Kodi clients and one is running my firewall. The WLAN-Modul can be removed without any problem, if not needed. Lubuntu runs very smooth. Best off all it has no fan.
I agree. Time to move on. I think the more powerful microcontrollers (ESP32-S3 and soon to come ESP32-P4, NXP, STM32) offer more than ever before at a stupidly low price, and above that you have the ex business 1L i5 PC's on ebay sub $100. The gap has closed on RPi4 like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star Garbage Disposal Unit.