He has seemingly been doing a mostly second channel stuff lately. Those rarely make the front page as they are usually just "here is a thing I personally found interesting" projects.
Same. Also because the margins are so high due to competition on the buyer side, bottlenecked by production which will continue to increase until there can be price competition on the producer side again.
That's cope. We might get a small dip, just like we saw in stocks. Inventing machine intelligence unlocks a lot of automation and innovation. Any data centers the labs and hyperscalers manage to get online the next few years will get filled by demand.
The first real problem machine intelligence companies could solve for their own good is how to avoid the current bottleneck in compute. Until then they are as subject to usual market behavior as much as any other kind of business out there.
I think we'll see prices crash within 12 months, because I don't think the data center bubble will last that long.
Market bubbles bursting doesn't lead to consumer price drops. The reduced demand from data centres will lead to a reduction in manufacturing rather a lower price.
TBD whether RAM prices are like gas or electricity. Does it fall at the same rate demand drops, or is it like gas, where it falls much slower than it spikes?
Liquidation of data center equipment flooding the used market plus a sharp drop in demand for new chips with the withdrawal of the private stimulus money flowing in from private credit. I don't know that I would call it "voluntary", but I predict that's what's going to happen.
Markets can and do enter patterns of HODL'ing blathering idiocy and can stay there indefinitely.
Once consumers think something is some precious thing this is how they react. Whether its handbags with designer logos stamped on them, a pair of sneakers made for $5, flimsy pieces of paper with baseball players on them, or giant numbers representing cryptographic math solutions, people will irrationally indefinitely prop stupid things up at stratospheric prices forever.
Look at Patek Phillipe watches. They've cost like $500,000 for 200 years (inflation adjustment of course). It's just a watch...
If you look back at recent history, you'll see that something very similar happened to the GPU market during the Bitcoin boom---there was short term scarcity when miners were snapping up all the cards they could get their hands on, causing street prices to go through the roof, then prices dropped back to normal until the AI boom caused them to skyrocket again. The amount of hardware liquidated in the data center bust will be multiple orders of magnitude more than the bitcoin bust.
It's not as locked down as you might think. I was surprised how easy it was to root a couple of devices, one an old pixel and one a pretty new one
It's definitely a bit odd, the Android environment, but I didn't feel blocked on it. Also ended up unrooting one because termux and the built in debian VM on Android now give everything I need
Termux + X11+ XFCE is surprisingly nice on a vanilla phone
Presumably the only customers buying Pis right now are companies who use them in their products. There are much better options on the used market for people needing small computers/servers.
The prices are crazy, but the uncertainty makes the choices even harder. I have my eyes on a Framework laptop 13 for some time. I was considering buying it with less RAM now, and then buying more RAM later. Now what I fear is: by the time RAM prices become reasonable, we might as well be using DDR7 or DDR12 with UltraMaxProDIMM or whatever the technology will be then :) So, even with a custom-built desktop PC or a Framework laptop it would be a pity to have to upgrade everything.
Guessing you don't actually need it and you're just thinking of getting it for fun? Because if you need one and you only need 32GB of ram today then you could just buy that for now and pay the cost of upgrading whatever the ram price is in the future if you need to. And if you last until the DDR7 days when ram prices finally go down then great, you saved by not getting the full 64 GB
Not in my area at least. People gut the RAM from them now to sell separately for profit, and often the HDD too for privacy, so you're basically buying a paper weight that's a motherboard in a shell.
There's laptops or X86 tablets with soldered RAM but those are rare and vanish immediately if they show up at a good price.
If you’re in the U.S - look into Walmart’s ONN boxes. They’re cheap and have great performance. Specifically the ONN 4k pro. They’re not even bloated with apps. The apps that are installed can easily be removed. In addition, easy to side load apps and customize.
The X96 Max Plus has excellent Linux support (S905X3, 4 core A53 @ 1.9 GHz, decent GPU), 1GB NIC, 4GB memory 1X USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0. It's what I'm eyeing at the moment.
They currently go for ~60 USD which steep compared to the pre-ram crisis prices but nothing crazy.
For comparison sake, you can find a few really high-end routers that are faster but most are a lot less powerful than this.
The CPU/GPU actually allows you to emulate a fair amount, up to N64, PSP and Dreamcast (but definitely with some compromise) so they function great as retroboxes as well.
They sip power and run great as a small homeserver. You can even use them as a NAS for media (that you're willing to lose since you won't be running any form of RAID with 1 USB 3.0 port).
I did the opposite. I built an x86 version of Android TV because typical ARM Android TV boxes are underpowered garbage and the locked bootloaders prevent replacement of the OS. My x86 build on a NUC just flies and is 100% under my control without Google or OEM crapware.
There is Android TalkBack (for poor vision) which is available on first boot/factory reset that narrates the menu. Even with a completely broken screen you can get ADB set up.
That's very creative actually. Might be quite dated but most of the workarounds I've heard of involve plugging in a OTG cable that supports display-out and a mouse.
>The only thing I'm not a big fan of is the charging. Non-removable battery, already 8 or so years old, obviously the phone needs power to work. So I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard.
My family owned the Huawei P20 (acquired at the same time in the same promo, perhaps the same batch?). This product line seems to have serious issues with battery swelling. Each phone had spicy pillows at some point within 2.5 years of ownership. Even outside the warranty period, Huawei was willing to replace the battery for free at their cost at their contracted Toronto repair centre. Each of the repaired phones had their spicy pillows return within 6-9 months. I strongly suspect Huawei was avoiding doing a voluntary recall.
FWIW I have a P30 Pro that I used for 5 years without a hitch, and still sits fully functioning in a box serving as a backup in case my current phone gets damaged. So that generation likely did not have the same issue.
Doesn't Android have rather aggressive battery saving features which kill processes and put the phone to sleep after so long of being idle? Is there an easy way around that?
The battery is a free built-in UPS and isn't a fire hazard unless the charging electronics were designed spectacularly poorly. The BMS knows to stop charging the battery when it's full. All of these phones probably use the same set of well-known BMS chips, I would imagine.
There are many issues, first termux doesn’t have all packages and struggle to run some common ones. You have pages and pages of workaround in their GitHub.
Secondly, using a device on a battery to run 24/24 is nonsense, you are Puting a lot of work on the battery by constantly getting it at 100% and eventually it will break and with it your data.
Thirdly, these devices have just a usb port. Sometimes usb 2.0. What you gonna do when the 128gb is filled up ?
You know, a RPi 5 1GB is $77, 4GB is $109, 8GB is $170 and 16GB is $385. None of it makes sense, especially if anyone starts a reballing shop.
I was looking to try out Joel's TrueNAS on ARM this time with a Pi 5, a PoE and NVMe Hat ... I decided against it and ended up getting a good old cheap x86 compact NAS instead.
It also has twice the RAM of the original Raspberry Pi (at launch), plus WiFi, plus a lot of CPU power, and a powerful GPU, and a lot more.
I have a 16GB model and I use that much RAM for some specific development work on the Raspberry Pi platform, but now I wish they had never announced the 16GB model. It has created so many complaints from people who shouldn't and won't be buying it.
It depends a lot on your use case. For headless stuff (automation that mostly uses the GPIO, for instance, or running a few "old school" server processes), you usually don't need that much RAM. However, when used as desktop computers, 8GB becomes the bare minimum to run a modern Web browser with a few tabs...
ESP32 devices are still cheap enough but with a less-good ecosystems due to the Pi's popularity. I do plan on picking up a few Pi 2 Ws which are still selling at a MicroCenter near me for $18 with only three bucks of markup just for setting up a Pi-Hole and some other IoT project but yeah, looking at even the Chinese made boards like Raspberry Orange sees prices north of $70 which is just not worth it for something with this capability. At this point, why not just get a refurb'd thin client or mini-pc?
Esp32 is pretty damn powerful for the cost. We have one driving a display and keyboard, speaking and playing synthesize sounds through attached sound chip, driving an ADC over SPI at a high rate and talking Bluetooth to an attached device and talking wifi to the cloud. On a device that costs a few bucks.
As a 53 year old, I've been starting to feel like there's a very real chance I will never buy another brand new computer (for personal use), phone or gaming console in my lifetime, which would be very surprising if you told this to me ~2 years ago.
If my computer fails, I have plenty of old components from older systems that I can swap in. I also have quite a few old phones (my primary job over the past decade has been Android development, so I have older test devices that still function fine for my purposes). And consoles are just very optional (and way more costly than I am willing to pay) when they start costing $1500+.
Overall there are some positives from this, I'll be responsible for less e-waste. This is something I always tried to be cognizant of in the first place, but the economics will really force my hand even more.
Of course, things aren't all that great when we got into this situation due to technology running in large datacenters running on methane turbines.
If you need GPIO pins, ESP32 is good enough for lots of use cases. If you just need a small low-power PC, used enterprise thin clients and mini-pc's (google project superminimicro) offer more while still idling around 10W or less. Those can be still bought for like 40-100 USD with SSD and 8GB or more RAM included.
I think Raspberry Pi is worth it only for some niche use-cases with current prices.
Unless they're part of the executive branch that order doesn't apply. (Which is kind of too bad, under the "if it actually works it gets a name and isn't AI anymore" rules we need a new name... but This Isn't It.)
Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.
Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.
I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.
I have a 60 year old computer attached to my Minuteman III and it's doing fine. A 13 year old computer that still works is a computer that still works. And if it's worked 13 years, then it might last another 13 years (unlike the Intel NUC that died after 18 months.)
When you say, "my" do you mean "my personal property" and by "Minuteman III" are we talking about the missile?
Ignoring all of that for a second, and focusing on the generalized sentiment:
I have a 60 year old computer attached to my
[...] and it's doing fine
Well, I'm a huge fan of that, but that seems like a fixed-purpose system. What a lot of people want from personal computers is the flexibility of doing fun and new things: new software, games, whatever.
Even "browsing the web" is (highly unfortunately) not a fixed purpose, as web standards evolve and pages (highly unfortunately) get heavier and more JS-dependent.
Yeah, but the pages that use all the new fangled stuff are pages I don't really use. I'm sort of a fan of text. Whenever I have to launch X and start a modern browser, it sort of hurts my eyes. Whenever I want to do something fun, I launch MacOS 9 on my G3 iBook and monkey around with Hypercard. It runs just fine.
Absolutely. Amazon isn't the go-to place to pick up electronics. I think I picked it because prices there are probably the highest you'll reasonably find for Pi stuff. Though they often have availability when everyone else is out of stock (likely because they have a bit more mark up than most everyone else.)
If you just want a computer, an Ayn Thor is +$90. It comes with 1TB of UFS 3.1 storage, not one but two fantastic OLED screens, nice joysticks, speakers, and it's much much much faster.
And it runs a fantastic CachyOS (a super tuned Arch) install, called ArmadaOS,
https://armadaos.dev/
2026 has been pretty amazing, with the slow work upstreaming Qualcomm support really building. A bunch of really great chipsets have mainline support and actually work. The Thor is a bit behind SM8550, but SM8650 and SM8750 handhelds are also available (just a bit pricier, and non-dual screen yet).
Alas most phones don't have unlockable boot loaders. I'm anti-interested in the sad experience of Android, being unable to read my own files off my device. I really want to be able to read my chrome profile data, for reasons. Absolutely no go.
I'd much rather buy a 5 year old mini Dell (or Nuc or whatever) that I can reliably put Linux on than some kind of one-off thing like this.
Call me cynical after being burned countless times on niche-ass platforms. Even my Framework 13" has a flurry of issues I've never seen on more mainstream hardware. Life is too short to worry about bizarre firmware issues in hardware that no one is paid to support.
There's plenty of reason to be conservative and that's a solid recommendation. My own i5-8600t nuc continues to tick away!
I for one am delighted that you can buy a modern-ish high performance, modern processing node based system, that's small, that has such incredible capabilities, that's super power efficient. And that finally it runs a mean Linux!
Unless you have a true, irreplaceable need for a 16GB model, everyone should just pretend they don't exist.
Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at. Now that the people who need a desktop or server have re-discovered that they're better off using an actual desktop or an actual server for their purposes, we should get back to treating these like embedded systems boards.
> Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
Oh yup... I'm running unbound (DNS resolver) at home 24/7 on a Pi 3 from 2015 since years and years. Zero issue. I run that on a Pi because that one really needs to be on 24/7 and hardly consumes any resources (I mean: it's just DNS queries). But a Pi simply ain't good for much more than that.
> I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
I fully agree. For the proper stuff I encourage anyone to buy used enterprise gear with proper RAM (i.e. ECC RAM) and a proper CPU (like a Xeon).
I've got four NUCs too but the real workhorse is a used Xeon with ECC RAM.
> The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at.
I agree. I've got like seven Pi (I was an early adopter of those) but don't ever plan to buy another.
It's like you said: they lost the plot (not just the community: those who make them too).
Depends. "Old enterprise gear" doesn't necessarily mean a server or full tower dual-socket workstation. Minitower and even small form factor workstations exist with single-socket Xeon, ECC, and single-slot GPUs that aren't going to use much more power than a comparable desktop PC (which is the use case th GP has in mind).
> because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
The thing is, they are all x86. The currently available ways to get an ARM general purpose computer are... Raspberry, Raspberry clones of various degrees of shittyness, Apple's lineup and a few Chromebooks plus even rarer Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them.
> Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them
You might want to give Windows on Arm another spin if you haven't touched it lately, because you're either operating on very outdated information or you work in a very narrow field. Everything I tried throwing at it runs on mine. Exceptions are some drivers and kernel mode anticheat in games.
They got 3% of market share [1]. That's laughable, no one tests for that, and I personally won't touch Qualcomm crap with a ten foot pole if I can avoid it.
x86 is generally better, because it's a standardized platform that is universally supported. With ARM you inevitably run into headaches if you expect to run an OS that isn't provided by the manufacturer.
You actually get a surprising amount of this on x86 too. When I last upgraded my computer and plugged in my old hard drive to boot, it came up in single-core mode until I recompiled Linux with x2APIC support.
The difference, of course, is that it did come up. If an ARM system was incompatible like that it would have just blackscreened.
Exactly. ARM server motherboards do exist on the open market, though they're quite expensive. I picked up a pair of the 16GB RPis for a buildhost. In that release thread, someone had chimed in the same kind of "ignore the 16GB model" advice. I'm sure glad I ignored it back when they were only $120!
A price increase in one market can displace demand to other markets.
A workstation user or gamer might want a desktop PC loaded with DDR5. But they'll also consider a desktop with DDR4 or even a laptop with LPDDR4X if they get more for their money.
So a rise in demand/prices for DDR5 can trigger a lesser rise in demand/prices for LPDDR4X
> Is there a lot of new demand for the kind of RAM on a RPi?
Yes. Due to the way the RPi board is laid out, they can only support one DRAM chip. And 16 Gb modules are the most expensive ones available, they are the ones that go onto 128Gb and 256Gb sticks.
Right, and I learned in this thread that the same wafer processes are used to make these as the globally bottlenecked HBM chips in NVIDIA servers. It's a shame that hobbyists are competing with Big AI for these factory lines.
When one guy (or three) buy (or pinky promise to buy) your whole stock, and the rest of prospective buyers (a lot of them) cannot afford it, it's not "demand" as such.
The cost of 16GB Raspberry Pi is driven by the RAM. Everything else is a small addition to the BOM cost.
The 16GB was introduced when it was affordable. Now it's just becoming a mental obstacle for buyers who think they should only purchase something if they can get the top model. That's why I suggest everyone pretend it doesn't exist. Unless you really need it for something, the 4GB or 8GB can do most things.
Yep, the small form factor market is amazing now. A cheap N100 blows any RPi away and will be similar in cost and power consumption. You also get nifty things like a semi-usable iGPU and QuickSync which is perfect for transcoding.
When python crypto switched to a rust/cargo build process my installation script suddenly started to run out of memory on an Orange Pi, I forget if it was 1 2 or 4GB. I ended up having to run the build script in an emulator on my laptop before writing the image to the SD card. Armbian made it pretty simple but that was an annoying speed bump.
People are irrationally obsessed with the idea of a very small cheap computer that could replace their laptop or desktop, for no reason.
If you created a little cube the size of an Apple Watch with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, and maybe put a little LED screen on it, and it could run Linux and could be powered with POE and USB-C or something, people would feel an urge to just buy one, with no real use case for it.
The RPI was really good because it was a powerful SOC that ran Linux with lots of GPIO and easy to operate. Now there are a dime a dozen ESP32 based projects that give you the same flexibility. You should almost never buy a RPI for projects these days, its completely overkill
I was confused the other day when I was browsing ESP32 on Aliexpress and found models with a price tag of 30~60 euros instead of a couple of bucks. So those models have enough silicon to run a general full fledged OS. Picture me impressed!
As the sibling comment shows, the very latest ESP32 model (S31, not S3) can run Linux. But they can only access maybe 64MB of RAM, and most boards for sale will have significantly less.
In reality, though, the use cases where you need Linux and GPIO are very slim. It's overkill, an ESP32 is realistically more than powerful enough, and Linux isn't even good for GPIO.
On ESP32, its also quite fine to run FreeRTOS, and you can quite reasonably write cross-platform code which runs on both FreeRTOS and Linux, if that's important.
For a long time, this was the pivot point between a microcontroller and a bigger machine: Does it need to run an OS?
I've had a couple of RPI's running as home file servers for well over a decade with the only reboots being due to power failures. But today, the cost sensitive option would be a refurbished mini-PC.
Unless you designed a product around the RPI as your compute module, and now you're stuck. I was recently at the contract manufacturer that's building my company's product - they have a number of clients in this situation.
Welp there's been about a decade of warning between the Acquisition of Broadcom by Avago, and almost a half decade since they settled an anti-competitive claim around, surprise surprise, restrictive contract terms.
IDK why anyone would build a full product around one, versus the more sensible option of maybe prototyping with one while planning a shift, whether it's the 'Version 2' or something. Anything other than dependence in a full platform when half the point of ARM was how easy it is to get your own semi-custom spin.
There's a gray area in the middle where people want a Linux system in their design but just don't have the time or resources to spin a SOM carrier, or even know where to start. And then they see how people are using RPIs to drive 3D printers or robots or funny things and it just looks so easy. And it is. And I sympathize with them. But commercializing a product with it is dangerous, as we're now seeing.
I was recently surprised to learn that even my massive tower workstation has GPIOs in it - they're just not exposed to the outside. But all of the unused pins on the Super I/O chip for COM, LPT, floppy, etc, can be set to GPIO mode by setting a register bit.
More practically, if you don't have tight timing requirements (which a lot of the time you do, but not always) you can get a USB adapter and plug it into some random laptop.
They're all nice products and there's so so many more out there, but you would need a complete switcharoo on the kernel and devicetree and it's going to cause some pain.
> You could respin, but you can't get that Broadcom part because Fuck You, We're Broadcom™. So now you're looking at a whole new platform if you want to proceed. It's still cheaper to pay loanshark prices for RPIs... for now.
Beaglebone Blacks have and continue to exist. They were actually open and documented. They genuinely fit in their advertised power envelope. They have more and better I/O than an RPi. Had people used those, RPi would be a memory and Broadcom wouldn't be an issue.
Instead, everybody flocked to the RPi because it was subsidized and now have shocked pickachu face that things are expensive now that subsidies have been withdrawn because people want profit and/or can't keep up with RAM prices. ╮(°᎑°)╭
Broadcom is a known adversarial player to EVERYBODY. I feel zero pity for anyone who continues to use them and get burned. ¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯
I've been having that argument with RPi fans since the start, but it was hard to beat the price and support ecosystem that sprang up around it. Kind of like a hot dog - you don't ask how it got there and why it's cheap.
Later down the road when they still bitched about lack of documentation, or a viable bootloader that didn't need that silly GPU, or how to mount eMMC instead of SD cards that constantly fell out...they still didn't want to leave it.
I admire the project for bringing more people into embedded Linux, I just wish it was closer to the economics of how this business works.
For the record I'm a AM335x (Beagle) user and it's worked out just fine for me. Thankfully the Beagle community was a bit better than some of the other SOM vendors out there. And the Octavo SIP version is a nice thing to whip into a design when you need it. And I do like Freescale's iMX as well, that was where I got my start.
I remember a while ago seeing a lot of diy projects that were using raspberry pis when an Arduino or ESP32 was more than capable of being the controller in the project. Things that don’t require an os, just some control logic. At least that’s no longer an issue.
The RPI was good because, like the Asus EEEEeeeeee that started the netbook/*book revolution where the original kinda sucked but the later derivatives by other vendors were great, it showed that you could build a product that fitted somewhere between an ESP32 and a mini-PC and be successful with it, kickstarting an entire industry of better-designed and better-priced alternatives. So it doesn't really matter so much if they've gone off into the weeds when there are large number of alternatives available.
I just got a Minisforum UM870 Slim with AMD Ryzen™ 7 8745H for €304 (taxes included + €30 shipping), and sourced locally used SODIMM DDR5 RAM at ~120 EUR for 16GB: I'd certainly take a full-fledged mini PC at 450 EUR than a Pi at 385 USD + VAT + customs fee (pretty much the same price most likely).
Yes, I'm missing an NVMe SSD in there too, but I've got a bunch of older 512GB drives around from upgraded computers.
Power usage is probably lower on the Pi5, but likely not by much anymore in the idle state.
Indeed — but just a playful statement how many of these sticks being resold were actually bought at reasonable prices back in the day.
I also bought that 2x48GB set for... checking Amazon order history... $280 back in 2024, and I thought I was _splurging_ for the max my mini PC could take: it's listed at $1699 today :O
Yeah, I recently also bought DDR5 (new!) as I figured the prices won't be dropping significantly in 2 years so it won't matter if I delay buying a new PC. Had to basically just ignore the RAM price (one can try...), just look at the price of the whole upgrade and not think about how much cheaper it would have been previously :). A new reality, but hopefully not for long.
What about just a normal computer and an arduino you talk to over serial? Unless you have some reason to toggel GPIOs stupid fast or use the dedicated RPIO stuff, you would be surprised how much a good old ATMega can do
I can set up raspberry pi in matter of minutes to do what I want. Then I expect someone without experience being able to set up RPi in like an hour with help from the internet.
Arduino not so much. Maybe with AI it would be faster for me.
I have a Raspberry Pi 500 I regularly use as personal admin computer, it is great and just works for all the things you can do with a personal computer.
That's not to say I don't have much beefier work computers - I do - but for the rPi 500 is a perfectly cromulent home computer. It's a computer. I just plug it in, it works.
I'm honestly not even sure what a good use case is for a Raspberry Pi proper at this point. It sits somewhat awkwardly between things that microcontrollers can handle(*) and things that, as you mentioned, NUCs or old computers or used laptops (or even used phones!) with removed batteries can handle.
*: I am so glad we're finally out of the phase where people were using Pis for hobbyist tasks where an Arduino would have worked just fine. Especially now that there are so many cheap, accessible microcontrollers. ESP32s obviously, but Raspberry's own RP2040/RP2350 have been more useful to me than the Pis themselves ever were.
I've been buying new-in-box Pi 3Bs to run snapcast speakers around my house and host various sensors and physical switches. Honestly they're probably overkill, and I'm not even using GPIO.
My two Pi 3B+ are my TVs. They have a TV hat which decodes DVB 2 and tvheadend which streams channels. Then I use the Android clients on my phone and tablets over 5 GHz Wi-Fi to look at free to air channels. The clients do the channel selection part, then I watch the streams with VLC. I think that I could vibe code a simple web UI (tvheadend web UI is not simple)
In this way I have a TV that follows me around my house. I'm not stuck in a place to watch it. It's mostly for news and sports. Movies, YouTube etc are on phone and tablets anyway. A better smart TV mostly on my own terms.
I ended up buying a used Lenovo Mini PC for $200 from a local seller, found on Facebook. It's an i7 something or other with 32GB RAM, I think I got pretty lucky with the find. Much cheaper than a Raspberry Pi considering I didn't need the pins anyway.
If you do need something like a raspberry pi I think the Arduino Uno Q is a solid choice. The 4 GB RAM variant is iirc $80 or so.
I think you're right.
The 4B 8GB is the sweet spot for me.
Each new model draws more power, and the 4B was the earliest one with the combo of >1GB RAM, boot from USB, and gigabit Ethernet.
I use it as a mini NAS to avoid powering up my Synology too often (crazy electricity prices here).
It runs Tailscale, Samba, Docker, Postgres+pgbackrest, nginx, Pihole, and some bespoke apps I developed. Just looking at htop, I could probably get away with the 4GB model, but I wanted plenty of scope for adding more custom webapps and services like HomeAssistant.
At the moment, I'm using an iPad as a glorified USB audio mixer (with an external audio interface and the AUM – Audio Mixer app). It feels like overkill, and I'm pretty sure my Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM could easily handle the job, including some filtering and audio effects.
> Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
I'm sick and tired of this memory austerity. Don't go blaming consumers for issues that the ai companies caused. I should be allowed to want a 32GB rpi5 for €75.
it's like everyone simultaneously forgot that computers can multi-task. Maybe it was the launch of the iphone/ipads that caused this?
my answer:
i'd run an OS on ram, snapshot to an nvme periodically and still have enough ram for redis/sqlite/CI/build tools/ docker+network watchdogs/misc services..
.. AND STILL have enough ram to throw an 8b toy llm in there for good measure with a large context..
..at 5w.
if we get permitted to add a hailo board on top of that mythical 64gb rpi then a lot more fun opens up.
mind you my plans wouldnt change much if you said it was an intel N150 with 64gb of ram or some such, aside from the omission of the hailo hat.
If the CPU was more capable on the rpi5 i'd lean to VM host. If the GPU was more capable i'd lean to transcoding/caching system for a home media setup.
To be fair, it was a good option as a first home server for self hosting something lightweight, that was in the days when it cost about the same as a used NUC or even less.
I originally got it for more advanced embedded projects but eventually it was what started my journey on self hosting.
The 16GB pricing is just a symptom of the wider issue. We went with used Pi 3s because the price second-hand is almost what a new low-memory Pi used to cost.
For a basic home server, the Pi does ok on a trickle of watt-hours, whereas our home server hogs 12Wh just to be alive. So these dev boards still serve a purpose in many ways, but they’re all very expensive now, 16GB of RAM notwithstanding.
I keep thinking that the AI gold rush is not an AI gold rush at all. It is a way to monopolize computing in 2 steps:
1) AI really does require a scaleup in compute power. In other words: you will be upgrading your hardware or use old software.
2) the AI buildout means you can't buy the hardware, you can only rent it "in the cloud".
It only works, of course, if Amazon and Google and Meta and ... keep buying for another 2-3 years but that seems to be exactly what's happening.
Worst of all: monopolies used to at least require investment. But Amazon and Google aren't investing, really. They're still net profitable companies. It's almost insulting.
Classical monopoly (or duopoly) requires a moat. This is the moat they build. Everyone will just rent centralized intelligence - that's a promise to investors.
Yeah, but the key here is: the moat is not AI at all! The moat is they're buying all new computers (the key components). Every last one. So you can't get one, but you will be renting one, at seriously increased prices.
That's an interesting take. I had a similar thought about safety and how AI providers propagate that using cloud options is safer because hosting a server is open to attack vectors, and who would manage that best if not the big providers themselves.
The fact that Hugging Face was attacked not by a small amount of compute but such a vast amount of computation. It was only possible because its already so centralized by Open AI.
It feels a bit like cyberpunk where only the big companies in reality will have the resource to pull of such an attack.
It will stop when the data center bubble bursts. Right now a small group of companies are borrowing huge amounts of money to corner the market in compute in order to use it for AI. But there's no evidence that real AI revenue (as opposed to more borrowed money) will grow fast enough for them to pay for that debt, or that profit margins will be sufficient to make it worth it over the window they need to start recouping. When that realization hits the lenders and investors and the capital spigot shuts off, prices will crash. I think it will be very similar to a precious metals run-up.
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[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadThat a good point. Let's hope the RAM hoarding will eventually get us that and not bullshitting hallucination machines.
Market bubbles bursting doesn't lead to consumer price drops. The reduced demand from data centres will lead to a reduction in manufacturing rather a lower price.
There's no substitution good here.
Why would they ever voluntarily lower prices? They've price fixed multiple times.
The new floor is thousands of dollars for something that was $40 last year. Either suck it up or organize and fight back. That's up to you
Liquidation of data center equipment flooding the used market plus a sharp drop in demand for new chips with the withdrawal of the private stimulus money flowing in from private credit. I don't know that I would call it "voluntary", but I predict that's what's going to happen.
Markets can and do enter patterns of HODL'ing blathering idiocy and can stay there indefinitely.
Once consumers think something is some precious thing this is how they react. Whether its handbags with designer logos stamped on them, a pair of sneakers made for $5, flimsy pieces of paper with baseball players on them, or giant numbers representing cryptographic math solutions, people will irrationally indefinitely prop stupid things up at stratospheric prices forever.
Look at Patek Phillipe watches. They've cost like $500,000 for 200 years (inflation adjustment of course). It's just a watch...
I mean, sucks to be a buyer right now but as a developer I like where things are heading :( :)
Unfortunately there is no appetite for governments to step in.
The development experience of something like Android itself seems super unfriendly for beginners (as someone who is admittedly a beginner to it)
It's definitely a bit odd, the Android environment, but I didn't feel blocked on it. Also ended up unrooting one because termux and the built in debian VM on Android now give everything I need
Termux + X11+ XFCE is surprisingly nice on a vanilla phone
Most people realized that the Raspberry Pi was never a great desktop or server replacement a long time ago.
It's an embedded system and it's best when used for embedded applications.
These are still purchased and used by hobbyists, but the people who were trying to use them as servers or desktops are not the target audience.
For example I got several broken screen Huawei P20s from 2018, they were 10€ each. 128GB storage with 4GB RAM https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p20-9107.php
They boot up, you can install termux and then whatever is your choice of Linux software. I run several copyparty instances for friends and family
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux/
https://github.com/9001/copyparty
There's laptops or X86 tablets with soldered RAM but those are rare and vanish immediately if they show up at a good price.
Adafruit FT232H Breakout - General Purpose USB to GPIO, SPI, I2C https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264
(or even more cheaply a CH347T board which are dirt cheap on Aliexpress)
Both have decent Python support.
Slightly more expensive but you won't have to deal with battery health and the new ones come with a 1GB NIC and USB 3 ports!
They currently go for ~60 USD which steep compared to the pre-ram crisis prices but nothing crazy.
For comparison sake, you can find a few really high-end routers that are faster but most are a lot less powerful than this.
The CPU/GPU actually allows you to emulate a fair amount, up to N64, PSP and Dreamcast (but definitely with some compromise) so they function great as retroboxes as well.
They sip power and run great as a small homeserver. You can even use them as a NAS for media (that you're willing to lose since you won't be running any form of RAID with 1 USB 3.0 port).
There is Android TalkBack (for poor vision) which is available on first boot/factory reset that narrates the menu. Even with a completely broken screen you can get ADB set up.
>The only thing I'm not a big fan of is the charging. Non-removable battery, already 8 or so years old, obviously the phone needs power to work. So I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard.
My family owned the Huawei P20 (acquired at the same time in the same promo, perhaps the same batch?). This product line seems to have serious issues with battery swelling. Each phone had spicy pillows at some point within 2.5 years of ownership. Even outside the warranty period, Huawei was willing to replace the battery for free at their cost at their contracted Toronto repair centre. Each of the repaired phones had their spicy pillows return within 6-9 months. I strongly suspect Huawei was avoiding doing a voluntary recall.
Sometimes there are pretty good deals on laptops, especially off lease. I've seen some $400-500 w/ 32GB RAM pop up on Slickdeals every few months.
The battery is a free built-in UPS and isn't a fire hazard unless the charging electronics were designed spectacularly poorly. The BMS knows to stop charging the battery when it's full. All of these phones probably use the same set of well-known BMS chips, I would imagine.
Secondly, using a device on a battery to run 24/24 is nonsense, you are Puting a lot of work on the battery by constantly getting it at 100% and eventually it will break and with it your data.
Thirdly, these devices have just a usb port. Sometimes usb 2.0. What you gonna do when the 128gb is filled up ?
I was looking to try out Joel's TrueNAS on ARM this time with a Pi 5, a PoE and NVMe Hat ... I decided against it and ended up getting a good old cheap x86 compact NAS instead.
The pricing is off.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
It also has twice the RAM of the original Raspberry Pi (at launch), plus WiFi, plus a lot of CPU power, and a powerful GPU, and a lot more.
I have a 16GB model and I use that much RAM for some specific development work on the Raspberry Pi platform, but now I wish they had never announced the 16GB model. It has created so many complaints from people who shouldn't and won't be buying it.
If my computer fails, I have plenty of old components from older systems that I can swap in. I also have quite a few old phones (my primary job over the past decade has been Android development, so I have older test devices that still function fine for my purposes). And consoles are just very optional (and way more costly than I am willing to pay) when they start costing $1500+.
Overall there are some positives from this, I'll be responsible for less e-waste. This is something I always tried to be cognizant of in the first place, but the economics will really force my hand even more.
Of course, things aren't all that great when we got into this situation due to technology running in large datacenters running on methane turbines.
I think Raspberry Pi is worth it only for some niche use-cases with current prices.
ESP32 handles IO and streams data somewhere else that does any processing needed on more powerful hardware.
What on earth are these SKUs even targeting? 16GB in a raspi is nuts.
0: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inau...
Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.
I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.
Yeah, because a second-hand 13-year-old computer is gonna last quite a long time.
Ignoring all of that for a second, and focusing on the generalized sentiment:
Well, I'm a huge fan of that, but that seems like a fixed-purpose system. What a lot of people want from personal computers is the flexibility of doing fun and new things: new software, games, whatever.Even "browsing the web" is (highly unfortunately) not a fixed purpose, as web standards evolve and pages (highly unfortunately) get heavier and more JS-dependent.
You want the Pi Zero 2 W, which is under $20 when it's in stock.
You also need to buy somewhere other than Amazon, which is where sellers go to unload their inventory at exorbitant prices between restocks.
And it runs a fantastic CachyOS (a super tuned Arch) install, called ArmadaOS, https://armadaos.dev/
2026 has been pretty amazing, with the slow work upstreaming Qualcomm support really building. A bunch of really great chipsets have mainline support and actually work. The Thor is a bit behind SM8550, but SM8650 and SM8750 handhelds are also available (just a bit pricier, and non-dual screen yet).
Alas most phones don't have unlockable boot loaders. I'm anti-interested in the sad experience of Android, being unable to read my own files off my device. I really want to be able to read my chrome profile data, for reasons. Absolutely no go.
Call me cynical after being burned countless times on niche-ass platforms. Even my Framework 13" has a flurry of issues I've never seen on more mainstream hardware. Life is too short to worry about bizarre firmware issues in hardware that no one is paid to support.
I for one am delighted that you can buy a modern-ish high performance, modern processing node based system, that's small, that has such incredible capabilities, that's super power efficient. And that finally it runs a mean Linux!
Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at. Now that the people who need a desktop or server have re-discovered that they're better off using an actual desktop or an actual server for their purposes, we should get back to treating these like embedded systems boards.
Oh yup... I'm running unbound (DNS resolver) at home 24/7 on a Pi 3 from 2015 since years and years. Zero issue. I run that on a Pi because that one really needs to be on 24/7 and hardly consumes any resources (I mean: it's just DNS queries). But a Pi simply ain't good for much more than that.
> I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
I fully agree. For the proper stuff I encourage anyone to buy used enterprise gear with proper RAM (i.e. ECC RAM) and a proper CPU (like a Xeon).
I've got four NUCs too but the real workhorse is a used Xeon with ECC RAM.
> The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at.
I agree. I've got like seven Pi (I was an early adopter of those) but don't ever plan to buy another.
It's like you said: they lost the plot (not just the community: those who make them too).
The thing is, they are all x86. The currently available ways to get an ARM general purpose computer are... Raspberry, Raspberry clones of various degrees of shittyness, Apple's lineup and a few Chromebooks plus even rarer Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them.
You might want to give Windows on Arm another spin if you haven't touched it lately, because you're either operating on very outdated information or you work in a very narrow field. Everything I tried throwing at it runs on mine. Exceptions are some drivers and kernel mode anticheat in games.
[1] https://itdaily.com/blogs/workplace/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-pc...
The difference, of course, is that it did come up. If an ARM system was incompatible like that it would have just blackscreened.
This is not the same stuff as an H100 uses, and it’s not even made in the same facilities, is it?
I think it’s more likely that the volume is not large enough to make up for the previously crappy margins on cheap RAM products.
A workstation user or gamer might want a desktop PC loaded with DDR5. But they'll also consider a desktop with DDR4 or even a laptop with LPDDR4X if they get more for their money.
So a rise in demand/prices for DDR5 can trigger a lesser rise in demand/prices for LPDDR4X
Yes. Due to the way the RPi board is laid out, they can only support one DRAM chip. And 16 Gb modules are the most expensive ones available, they are the ones that go onto 128Gb and 256Gb sticks.
The cost of 16GB Raspberry Pi is driven by the RAM. Everything else is a small addition to the BOM cost.
The 16GB was introduced when it was affordable. Now it's just becoming a mental obstacle for buyers who think they should only purchase something if they can get the top model. That's why I suggest everyone pretend it doesn't exist. Unless you really need it for something, the 4GB or 8GB can do most things.
Why are so many people angry at a situation that doesn't exist?
The use cases above don't need a $385 16GB Raspberry Pi 5.
Did you notice they weren't even using a Raspberry Pi 5?
A 1GB Raspberry Pi 4, which would run those applications, is $35 and in stock: https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-1gb/
Even if using those, if it's not in a robot or a weatherproof box on a pole or something, then a usb gpio dongle on a pc or mac makes 900x more sense.
The fact that something is done does not serve as an example that something makes any sense to do.
Using a pi for a computer is like when women knit sweaters for things that don't benefit from sweaters.
They would be fine with the low RAM models.
This is my point above: Most people should ignore the 16GB model.
I need to `npm install strip`
If you created a little cube the size of an Apple Watch with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, and maybe put a little LED screen on it, and it could run Linux and could be powered with POE and USB-C or something, people would feel an urge to just buy one, with no real use case for it.
It controls whatevwhatever hardware, reads some sensors, etc.
Then when needed gets oders from a normal computer over network or BLE via some simple protocol.
In reality, though, the use cases where you need Linux and GPIO are very slim. It's overkill, an ESP32 is realistically more than powerful enough, and Linux isn't even good for GPIO.
I've even found routers in the dumpster, that can still run actual OpenWRT comfortably.
I've had a couple of RPI's running as home file servers for well over a decade with the only reboots being due to power failures. But today, the cost sensitive option would be a refurbished mini-PC.
IDK why anyone would build a full product around one, versus the more sensible option of maybe prototyping with one while planning a shift, whether it's the 'Version 2' or something. Anything other than dependence in a full platform when half the point of ARM was how easy it is to get your own semi-custom spin.
More practically, if you don't have tight timing requirements (which a lot of the time you do, but not always) you can get a USB adapter and plug it into some random laptop.
https://www.compulab.com/products/system-on-modules/?gad_sou...
I haven't cross refence but this looks like the Linux SBC that is inside the Eightsleep
https://www.compulab.com/products/computer-on-modules/cl-som...
Beaglebone Blacks have and continue to exist. They were actually open and documented. They genuinely fit in their advertised power envelope. They have more and better I/O than an RPi. Had people used those, RPi would be a memory and Broadcom wouldn't be an issue.
Instead, everybody flocked to the RPi because it was subsidized and now have shocked pickachu face that things are expensive now that subsidies have been withdrawn because people want profit and/or can't keep up with RAM prices. ╮(°᎑°)╭
Broadcom is a known adversarial player to EVERYBODY. I feel zero pity for anyone who continues to use them and get burned. ¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯
Later down the road when they still bitched about lack of documentation, or a viable bootloader that didn't need that silly GPU, or how to mount eMMC instead of SD cards that constantly fell out...they still didn't want to leave it.
I admire the project for bringing more people into embedded Linux, I just wish it was closer to the economics of how this business works.
For the record I'm a AM335x (Beagle) user and it's worked out just fine for me. Thankfully the Beagle community was a bit better than some of the other SOM vendors out there. And the Octavo SIP version is a nice thing to whip into a design when you need it. And I do like Freescale's iMX as well, that was where I got my start.
Yes, I'm missing an NVMe SSD in there too, but I've got a bunch of older 512GB drives around from upgraded computers.
Power usage is probably lower on the Pi5, but likely not by much anymore in the idle state.
So how much was it new?
I also bought that 2x48GB set for... checking Amazon order history... $280 back in 2024, and I thought I was _splurging_ for the max my mini PC could take: it's listed at $1699 today :O
Yeah. SODIMMs are cheaper, a 16Gb stick will likely use 2Gb chips. RPi boards have space for only one DRAM chip.
If you don’t need GPIO just go with NUC/Minisforum.
Arduino not so much. Maybe with AI it would be faster for me.
That's not to say I don't have much beefier work computers - I do - but for the rPi 500 is a perfectly cromulent home computer. It's a computer. I just plug it in, it works.
*: I am so glad we're finally out of the phase where people were using Pis for hobbyist tasks where an Arduino would have worked just fine. Especially now that there are so many cheap, accessible microcontrollers. ESP32s obviously, but Raspberry's own RP2040/RP2350 have been more useful to me than the Pis themselves ever were.
In this way I have a TV that follows me around my house. I'm not stuck in a place to watch it. It's mostly for news and sports. Movies, YouTube etc are on phone and tablets anyway. A better smart TV mostly on my own terms.
If you do need something like a raspberry pi I think the Arduino Uno Q is a solid choice. The 4 GB RAM variant is iirc $80 or so.
Be careful, Sam Altman might be reading this!
Not only that, I bet most hobby use cases can be served fine by the older and cheaper Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4 models, which are still being sold.
I use it as a mini NAS to avoid powering up my Synology too often (crazy electricity prices here). It runs Tailscale, Samba, Docker, Postgres+pgbackrest, nginx, Pihole, and some bespoke apps I developed. Just looking at htop, I could probably get away with the 4GB model, but I wanted plenty of scope for adding more custom webapps and services like HomeAssistant.
I'm sick and tired of this memory austerity. Don't go blaming consumers for issues that the ai companies caused. I should be allowed to want a 32GB rpi5 for €75.
my answer: i'd run an OS on ram, snapshot to an nvme periodically and still have enough ram for redis/sqlite/CI/build tools/ docker+network watchdogs/misc services..
.. AND STILL have enough ram to throw an 8b toy llm in there for good measure with a large context..
..at 5w.
if we get permitted to add a hailo board on top of that mythical 64gb rpi then a lot more fun opens up.
mind you my plans wouldnt change much if you said it was an intel N150 with 64gb of ram or some such, aside from the omission of the hailo hat.
If the CPU was more capable on the rpi5 i'd lean to VM host. If the GPU was more capable i'd lean to transcoding/caching system for a home media setup.
If I had one wish to the manufacturer it would be: PLEASE produce a 3B++ with the same periphery, but some things higher speced:
- 4K HDMI with hardware acceleration for 4K video
- faster Ethernet
- USB-C connector for charging
- Don't you dare to remove the headphone jack and the analog video out
- Don't you dare removing the full sized HDMi jack
- If the CPU can be faster without much cost increase, do it, if not keep it as is
That is it.
I originally got it for more advanced embedded projects but eventually it was what started my journey on self hosting.
At $385 - not so much.
For a basic home server, the Pi does ok on a trickle of watt-hours, whereas our home server hogs 12Wh just to be alive. So these dev boards still serve a purpose in many ways, but they’re all very expensive now, 16GB of RAM notwithstanding.
1) AI really does require a scaleup in compute power. In other words: you will be upgrading your hardware or use old software.
2) the AI buildout means you can't buy the hardware, you can only rent it "in the cloud".
It only works, of course, if Amazon and Google and Meta and ... keep buying for another 2-3 years but that seems to be exactly what's happening.
Worst of all: monopolies used to at least require investment. But Amazon and Google aren't investing, really. They're still net profitable companies. It's almost insulting.
The fact that Hugging Face was attacked not by a small amount of compute but such a vast amount of computation. It was only possible because its already so centralized by Open AI.
It feels a bit like cyberpunk where only the big companies in reality will have the resource to pull of such an attack.