I would avoid using SD cards and go for something else like M.2 or NVMe for storage. SD cards tend to be on the lesser side in terms of performance, failure rate, and silicon quality in general.
Whilst the headlined article is interesting, it's a case of the new and shiny distracting from regressions in what already exists.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is lacking in some fairly basic support that the Pi 4 has. There's no TianoCore, no NetBSD, no FreeBSD, no OpenBSD, no OmniOS(CE) … in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS. A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with.
So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.
Raspbian works perfectly fine. Most of those other operating systems don’t really have the best GPIO support which is where Raspberry Pi shines. I’d just get a cheap mini pc if I wanted to run something else.
RPi dropped the ball relative to the competition. Orange Pi boards outperform them for a fraction of the price. There are very few use-cases where Raspberry is preferable.
> in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS
How do you figure? E.g. OpenWRT, Ubuntu, Alpine Linux, Kali, and Zephyr all offer official image support. Others have unofficial support, e.g. I think FreeBSD actually falls in this boat.
> A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with.
If only we could have somehow predicted this. I mean who could have predicted that a company that has never released hardware documentation and screwed over individual users in preference to corporate users during shortages would get in the way of porting other OSes. <shocked Pikachu face>
I mean, it's not like people have been bitching about this for more than a goddamn decade.
If only we could have forseen this <rolls eyes>.
An RPI5 4GB is exactly the same price and form factor as the Beagle Y-AI. You can help the folks trying to do this right or not. The choice is yours.
I’ve noticed most of the replies to your comment address the first half, and none (as of right now) address the second:
> So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.
If by “this” you mean the MicroSD Express hat from the article: this is a hobby project produced by a hobbyist, who seems to have no plans to sell or mass produce it.
It is unfair to the creator for you to lump it in with, and draw a conclusion from, the works produced by Raspberry Pi Holdings.
As someone who runs a business that sells thousands of Raspberry Pis, the idea of encouraging more users to store data on microSD cards is quite concerning to me.
The introduction of the m.2 HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 has been a game changer, not just in terms of speed, but also in significantly improving disk/filesystem reliability.
I guess all I'm saying is, for the love of God, if you've got a choice and need to store data on a Pi5, please use the m.2 HAT + SSD from Raspberry Pi. Unlike other fruit companies, the prices for the SSDs are quite reasonable.
If MicroSD Express adds direct PCIe support in that tiny, uncooled form factor, it would be nice to see some actual benchmarks with that Hat due to throttling.
Raspberry Pi gets a lot of negative comments these days, with unfavorable comparisons to mini PCs at similar price points, which is certainly justified. But I don't know, it's not completely rational, I still love my Raspberry Pis. Especially a Pi 5 with an NVME SSD is a beast in terms of performance. They use very little power, they are tiny, the programmable GPIO pins are awesome. There's still a sense of magic, which for hobby use, is more important than the raw numbers. I just don't get the same "sense of tinkering" when booting a PC.
I would be curious to see if some qualcomm/snapdragon mini PCs could embrace the tinker-ability and power consumption approach and add some nice competition there
Imagine you’d like to experiment with a remotely accessible webcam - for instance, streaming over RTSP - without necessarily running YOLO or other detection models on the device itself.
Which board-and-camera combination would you choose?
19 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 45.3 ms ] threadThe Raspberry Pi 5 is lacking in some fairly basic support that the Pi 4 has. There's no TianoCore, no NetBSD, no FreeBSD, no OpenBSD, no OmniOS(CE) … in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS. A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with.
* https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms/tree/master/Plat...
* https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/#index6h2
* https://www.freebsd.org/where/#download
* https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
* https://downloads.omnios.org/media/braich/
So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.
https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202
How do you figure? E.g. OpenWRT, Ubuntu, Alpine Linux, Kali, and Zephyr all offer official image support. Others have unofficial support, e.g. I think FreeBSD actually falls in this boat.
If only we could have somehow predicted this. I mean who could have predicted that a company that has never released hardware documentation and screwed over individual users in preference to corporate users during shortages would get in the way of porting other OSes. <shocked Pikachu face>
I mean, it's not like people have been bitching about this for more than a goddamn decade.
If only we could have forseen this <rolls eyes>.
An RPI5 4GB is exactly the same price and form factor as the Beagle Y-AI. You can help the folks trying to do this right or not. The choice is yours.
> So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.
If by “this” you mean the MicroSD Express hat from the article: this is a hobby project produced by a hobbyist, who seems to have no plans to sell or mass produce it.
It is unfair to the creator for you to lump it in with, and draw a conclusion from, the works produced by Raspberry Pi Holdings.
If you’re going to use pcie lanes anyway then stick a m.2 at the end of it to benefit from mass scale of nvme drive production.
I also have a general distrust of sd cards and their write levelling. Maybe just rotten luck or fake ones but they never seem to last
The introduction of the m.2 HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 has been a game changer, not just in terms of speed, but also in significantly improving disk/filesystem reliability.
I guess all I'm saying is, for the love of God, if you've got a choice and need to store data on a Pi5, please use the m.2 HAT + SSD from Raspberry Pi. Unlike other fruit companies, the prices for the SSDs are quite reasonable.
Which board-and-camera combination would you choose?