[Jeff Geerling] This is no joke: the SBC hobby is dying
Posted by kikimaru024@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 166 comments
Posted by kikimaru024@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 166 comments
andree182@reddit
Maybe then don't buy the most powerful SBCs just to blink 2 leds and show a video on VGA display?
E.g. milkv duo is \~7€, and can boot linux, ESP32s are even cheaper (as the video said)...
respectfulpanda@reddit
The sbc hobby is being priced out of being a hobby.
1731799517@reddit
I don't know, how many computers do you need to run at the same time? Cause compared to basically any other activity its still dirt cheap.
Demented_CEO@reddit
A lot of hobbies are... at the same time, I feel that software has become increasingly bloated and resource hungry that if you really want to get something cool done for a small project, that's still viable.
Haunting-Public-23@reddit
At current hardware price points it may make sense to keep to whatever you have now and upgrade some time in the 2030s.
What to do for the next 5-6 years?
I'll get severe downvote but why not take up pickleball?
It's sedentary lifestyle-friendly that pensioners in their 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s plays it.
Anyone reading this in their 20s, 30s, 40s and even 50s can easily do it. I haven't played a sport since the mid 90s.
Personally I wish I upgraded my 2019 MBP 16" Core i7-9750H laptop with a 2024 MBP 16" M4 Pro so by 2030s I can skip the AI data center tax
3VRMS@reddit
Just got a decent soldering station, an Arduino kit and some cheap ESP32 chips to get into electronics.
Lots of free tutorials online and just fixed some broken hardware I've kept for years that had broken wires or failed solder joints, gonna start learning how to program this year. Just need to get some safety glasses, flicked some molten solder on my face, almost got in my eyes.
Getting into hobbies is still get accessible, one just needs to look lower at what one already has and try to distract oneself from an the negativity that one can't really change. It sucks to be the reality and takes effort to move on, but there's plenty of things you can get into at very low costs, just need to stop looking at the high end, especially if it's no longer made for "hobby" tier.
Just spent like 60+ dollars buying about 20 books on Audible during recent sale. Those can last a long time in entertainment value and can potentially be live changing.
Also I try to focus on history, not news. Learning just how bad things are across history for everyone, and seeing the same patterns again and again as well as how things have genuinely, undeniably improved in many ways builds a lot of gratitude and competence in navigating through things. I noticed this directly counters all the negativity I get from trying to keep up with the latest news as a hobby, which often makes me feel negative and lash out in stupid ways, even if such acts don't actually have any positive impact if I look at things objectively.
Haunting-Public-23@reddit
Skills that tend to be sedentary lifestyle in nature that does not increase cash flow or add to streams of income may not be the best option for longevity while avoiding/reversing/delaying cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other NCDs.
The $60+ may be better used with active calories and change of lifestyle.
But that's just me wanting to have a longer lifespan than my parents, grandparents and older relatives.
3VRMS@reddit
Meanwhile half those books I purchased are on finance and 1/4th are on health 😅
zshift@reddit
This depends entirely on your use-case. Lots of programs are being rewritten in the rust language with significant memory and performance gains.
wintrmt3@reddit
I like rust, but the most popular rust gui lib is tauri, which is pretty much Electron for Rust, with the same bloated JS bullshit for UI.
zshift@reddit
Tauri isn’t exactly electron, but it’s definitely an unusual architecture. You have a rust binary acting as a server that communicates with a native webview. You save a little on not running nodejs, and binary size is reduced by using a webview, but yeah, UI is still entirely running a web browser.
GUI is still not a solved problem in rust, though I’m keeping a close eye on Slint, as they’ve made pretty good progress.
VenditatioDelendaEst@reddit
The distaste for electron bloat is driven mostly by CPU and memory, not binary size. The ~native webview~ is a different browser on each OS (and not even really a thing on Linux), so there's no guarantee it looks/works the same everywhere without continuous testing.
nanonan@reddit
Rust isn't some miracle solution, you can certainly write bloated inefficient code in it.
zshift@reddit
I didn't intend to imply that it's a miracle solution, which is why I specifically stated it's based on your use-case. But it would be disingenuous to say that we haven't seen some apps rewritten in rust that perform better, especially when you look at boards running micro python or nodejs.
FUPA_MASTER_@reddit
No, no. You see, Rust a miracle language. If we just rewrite everything in Rust utilising AI, we will reach software nirvana!
ysisverynice@reddit
Why optimize when you can shove the cost of not doing it onto someone else?
gahlo@reddit
Thanks PS4, XBOne, and Steam.
jnf005@reddit
What does it have to do with it? If anything, PS4 and Xbone forced a lot of dev on optimization, they have okay graphics but incredibly weak cpu, even for the time they release. Looking at Geekbench, a desktop Jaguar CPU (which clocks higher evem) score less than a C2Q Q6600 on single core, that's absolutely abysmal for a 2013 machine.
gahlo@reddit
To be fair, maybe I'm misremembering it as the PS3/XB360 generation that caused part of the issue. Their one, one of those gens lasted so long and had such weak CPUs that towards the end of the generation they could no longer uncompress files and run the games at acceptable levels at the same time, which lead to game sizes exploding. This, combined with game sales becoming digital-centric, means that all the developer has to care about when it comes to managing file sizes is whether or not it can fit on the base configuation of a console. Outside of that, game size became an issue the player has to deal with sorting out.
Demented_CEO@reddit
Aside from a small handful of games that weren't sports titles, support for PS3 and Xbox 360 faded rather quickly after the newer consoles came out. It's arguably the PS4 and Xbox One that had a longer generation, likely in part thanks to the mid-generation refresh with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.
Nintendo has a slightly different cadence now and the focus of Nintendo systems aren't on raw graphics power, so focusing on just Sony and Microsoft alone it's misleading to say the PS3 and Xbox 360 had "weak" CPUs. In fact, the PS3 Cell architecture was ahead of its time and Sony sold it at a loss.
PS4 and Xbox One both transitioned to the AMD Jaguar architecture, which even at the time of release was not a very powerful x86 CPU. However, it made porting games much easier due to the common architecture shared with PCs. This is also the generation that more heavily leaned into digital.
PS3 and Xbox 360 of course introduced the concept of downloadable patches, content (DLC) and some fully digital (mostly indie) releases, but game sizes absolutely weren't exploding at that point yet. The largest Xbox 360 game is Lost Odyssey and that was only around 22GB to download.
(Note that at the time, Lost Odyssey wasn't even available as a download game and was released only as a physical game spanning four discs. The download version was only made available when Microsoft added it to their backwards compatibility program on Xbox One. Some PS3 games were double that.)
wintrmt3@reddit
Cell SPUs are accelerators on the same die as the CPU, but the actual CPU was 3 weak in-order cores, and SPUs are horrible to work with anyway, they did not have proper memory access.
Super-X2@reddit
The PS3 CPU only had one actual core not counting the SPUs. It was a dual-thread PowerPC core. The 360 is the one that had the 3 general purpose cores, basically 3 of the cores the PS3 had.
It was even worse than it seems since both systems reserved resources for the OS, 1 SPE for PS3 and 1 PPC core for the 360.
wintrmt3@reddit
Oh yeah, you are right, my bad.
gahlo@reddit
Okay, so I did have the generation correct.
Potential-Ant-6320@reddit
I wrote incredibly small firmware friended micro controllers. I have a highly featured radio bbs that runs on 70kb. It’s so much more fun to program lean.
pixel_of_moral_decay@reddit
Why have hobbies when you could work multiple jobs?
astrobarn@reddit
Take up birding with the rest of us
HIGH_PRESSURE_TOILET@reddit
my dream would be to get the macbook neo's a18 board as its own SBC. bonus points if it runs linux. but it will obviously never happen haha
geerlingguy@reddit
We can dream, can't we?
The best so far on the Arm side outside of Apple are Qualcomm's chips, but they're only marginally better for Linux support so far :(
Ok_Antelope_1953@reddit
Corporate/datacenter focused ARM chips actually have fantastic Linux support, pretty much at par with Intel and AMD. The consumer focused companies don't give a flying fuck.
VenditatioDelendaEst@reddit
I vaguely recall there being one workstation ARM product that gets mentioned offhand on linux kernel mailing lists by the ARM-involved people, but I looked it up once and it was priced like an x86 workstation, so...
geerlingguy@reddit
Sadly true.
Ok_Antelope_1953@reddit
Holy smokes you are literally Jeff. I almost veered into mansplaining territory there. I should pay attention to usernames!
HIGH_PRESSURE_TOILET@reddit
along the thread of day dreaming, I wonder if there's any chance that there will be a new nvidia jetson nano with the new mediatek cpu from the GB10 or Jetson Thor (but with less cores obviously). That thing is actually surprisingly competent, around m3 level in single core according to certain benchmarks.
No_Contest2996@reddit
I mean a Mac Mini Neo would sell like hotcakes for $300, especially in fun colors
Raining_dicks@reddit
Why even stick with the Mac Mini form factor? Just give an iPhone with no screen and 2 type C ports
No_Contest2996@reddit
Somewhere in between for better cooling and some basic ports.
mach1alfa@reddit
from the videos i have seen, better cooling can squeeze >10% performance out of it, that said, the way the chip is packaged (ram stacked on top of the cpu, and then wrapped in resin) means it cant conduct heat fast enough to the heatsink, so it will throttle regardless
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Pi Zero's still cost $20 and can do 99% of all of the Pi projects you are supposed to be doing for the hobby side. SBC's are being priced out of being desktop computers which they were always terrible at and you would have to be an idiot to buy one for that use case, they mostly ended up unused in draws for those people anyway.
TheBraveGallade@reddit
i mean, a lot of hobbies are expensive. i feel like SBCs and gaming are still on the cheaper side?
TritiumNZlol@reddit
Anecdotally, I tried to buy some sbcs during lockdowns, found them way too expensive/unavailable then, and haven't really seen the price drop since.
hearwa@reddit
Same.
zxyzyxz@reddit
Depends, some hobbies can be very expensive, like golf or motorcycles, computing is actually fairly cheap all things considered. But then again, it's just an example of the K shaped economy.
bhop_monsterjam@reddit
The Pi company had their Mr Krabs moment with industry and never looked back
Garland_Key@reddit
Buy old surplus laptops and nucs.
Zarmazarma@reddit
Old mini-PCs. I bought a mini-PC with an intel atom from 2016 a few years ago to serve as a seed box. It had 4GB of RAM of 250GB of storage, plenty for what it is. Runs Lubuntu great (at 4k30fps, no less!) and works on 5w of power (it's powered by mini-USB...). Cost me $15. There's plenty of them out there.
spryfigure@reddit
Don't buy them if they are too old. Try to get NUC10 or 11. That seems to be the sweet spot now.
kvn864@reddit
the part of Pi's being great is that it started off by being $35 computer, times are changing --
JescoInc@reddit
I bought a Pi Zero 2WH for $35 on March 28th, 2026
A Pi Pico 2 WH basic kit for $16 on April 1st, 2026
A companion to the Pico 2 of GeekPi GPIO Expension Module with Screen for $33 on April 1, 2026
A Sipeed Tang Nano 20k FPGA for $46.40 on March 30th, 2026
So, I don't believe the times are changing too much, just demand for higher spec SBC.
AwesomeFrisbee@reddit
Why do you need so many though?
JescoInc@reddit
Oh man, if only knew of the size of my collection, i'd completely understand why you'd ask a question like that.
The short answer, I like to tinker in various embedded context at the bare metal level.
The slightly longer answer, because I like to torture myself.
TheBCWonder@reddit
What kind of stuff do you write?
JescoInc@reddit
Right now, system monitoring dashboard for the SBC, I haven’t come up with a project where the bare metal system interacts with a host system or handles tasks for other systems yet
TheBCWonder@reddit
What do you code it in? I've only used C for basic stuff (MSPM0 stuff)
JescoInc@reddit
I've used both C and Rust.
https://github.com/RPDevJesco/tutorial_os
Due-Cupcake-255@reddit
that was pretty much its only selling point. The hardware/software was never all that good. but they managed to penetrate the market and now businesses are stuck with the hardware.
fb39ca4@reddit
You can buy a 2GB Pi for $60, which is the same price after inflation.
max123246@reddit
Wages sadly have not raised with inflation
Too_Right_For_You@reddit
They have. Look at facts instead of believing nonsense
ZeroAmusement@reddit
I believe there was a big loss and things had been catching up to inflation but aren't caught up.
Where are you getting your facts?
Mango2149@reddit
https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/wage-growth-tracker
berryer@reddit
The zero, which has about the same specs as the original pi (but with a newer processor), is $15 and still plenty strong for most embedded tasks. The original was never great for JS-heavy web browsing, though.
Krt3k-Offline@reddit
SBCs that are just fine for tinkering are still cheap, just stuff that has compute power is getting expensive. Which makes sense. Issue is when people don't associate the former with the SBC hobby anymore and only think about clusters and servers
evthrowawayverysad@reddit
This, 100%. It's incredibly frustrating as a maker to watch people building 'server racks' and 'ai clusters' out of hardware designed for embedded projects. [Case in point](https://youtu.be/8SiB-bNyP5E).
There's purpose built hardware out there already that doesn't require you buying ridiculous numbers of SBCs to make cutesy clusters for *half* the price, or go cloud based for probably even more of a saving.
Demented_CEO@reddit
This is something that I've taken note of when it comes to Geerling and other influencers. They actually influence the market in their own way and Geerling has been a strong contender of building a NAS or compute cluster out of a Pi or other SBCs and the prices certainly fluctuate accordingly.
It's one of the reasons I don't really care much for his projects, as they tend to drift far from "tinkering" and more into "shoehorning X to do Y, even though there are Z many other ways better suited for Y, but let's do X because it's a Pi".
peakdecline@reddit
Building a NAS out of a Pi + HAT isn't a bad project. Its space and power efficient. A NAS does not require much compute power, the modern Pis have more than enough to do it.
Zaprit@reddit
bit crap for bandwidth though on anything other than a pi 5, given that usb 3.0 can't even do the full speed of SATA III
peakdecline@reddit
Sure. I guess in my head I just defaulted to RPi 5 since its now well over 2 years old.
For my home needs it's more than enough.
Exist50@reddit
I mean, isn't that kind of the point of such a hobby? I mean yeah, of course you can run out and just buy a server or an off the shelf NAS or whatever, but the whole process to get it working is part of the appeal.
taxiscooter@reddit
I don't think they're talking about the projects; they're talking about self-awareness about the demand that it induces and the crowd it brings in. If I make videos about a cool place near my house, then a lot of tourists come in and crowd out the regulars to take photos, am I not partially responsible for it?
Pi was cool (and Zero is still cool) but the "omg run Plex and retro games on it" crowd was its downfall because they were never going to stay attached to the core concept. Even if prices stayed low there was bound to be dissatisfaction over PCIe bandwidth, 8k support, etc.
Exist50@reddit
But they never was a singular "core concept"? The Pi was originally for education, but what made it take off for hobbyists was its ability to do any number of different things. There was never a single, canonical use case.
Nor do I see why it should be regarded like some finite resource. Someone buying it for their own purposes doesn't diminish it for yours. Just feels like gatekeeping. And frankly, if that's your argument, you should be much more focused on the industrial adoption than other hobbyists.
dystopianartlover@reddit
I mostly agree, although its more that his projects are bad value, building out systems that are needlessly expensive and not a benefit for anyone unless accomplishment of the system building or benchmark is their sole gosl.
GraXXoR@reddit
That was on the understsnding that those companies wanted to sell units and have stock they wanted to shift.
Blaming those guys for doing crazy stuff is asinine
narwi@reddit
well, you are lucky then, pi 4b with 1gb ram costs \~ 40 eur.
1731799517@reddit
Eh, its still cheaper in $/performance that back when the PI was released, considerably.
marcusalien@reddit
It is mostly memory not computing power that is pushing the price up.
Krt3k-Offline@reddit
Memory is also a form of compute capability
marcusalien@reddit
Here’s an analogy for you: System on a Chip = chef 👨🍳 (does the cooking = compute). Memory = kitchen counter 🍳 (holds ingredients while cooking).
DXPower@reddit
This sub could really use less of your patronizing and infantilizing comments.
Krt3k-Offline@reddit
All still part of the kitchen
marcusalien@reddit
And it is mostly the kitchen counters that are going up in price
EndlessZone123@reddit
picos and esp32 have been great for tinkering. Pi Zero 2 have been the cheap SBC I would buy but I also want Pi 3s with more ports they are not very instock anymore.
The moment you compare SBC to Mini PCs is where you lost the plot on cheap SBCs. I very rarely need the function of a SBC (GPIO, Arm, Low power) when I also need performance of a Mini PC.
diskowmoskow@reddit
Yeah, i am seeing cool projects with esp32
Maximum-Objective-39@reddit
Basically we're outstripping the rate at which computer power can get cheaper, but people still want more features and the new and more modern boards.
CrispyDave@reddit
Unless you particularly need a really tiny form factor or the IO options there's a million old business machines out there cheaper than most SBCs.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Less about the form factor and more about the power usage.
The old machines have vastly more performance, but with normal power usage most sbcs are using 1/5th to 1-10th of a standard lightbulb, thats almost free imo. Whereas the older machine is likely to cost in electricity the value of an sbc in about a year.
spryfigure@reddit
I have a server running on an Intel NUC -- NUC10i3FNK, so it has a i3-10110 CPU. I recently measured the true consumption at DC in while it was doing its server things. Draw was 4W, or 200 mA.
Can't see a lot of SBCs beating this, until they run at below 1W.
FinBenton@reddit
Idk I got old dell optiplex miniPC with 4-core intel and it used 4-5W on desktop, I have a new beeling 8-core amd miniPC which uses 8W while hosting bunch of VMs and websites, its more than a Pi but its still not much.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Im fairly certain whatever you are using to measure the wattage is very incorrect.Even doing nothing at idle those should be pulling more than that. I habe two machines that are similar.
I suspect normal usage that optiplex should be using about 28w, and the tdp of the cpu is about 35w, and maybe theres a gpu?
A basic search gives me these results.
"Typical Power Consumption by Form Factor
FinBenton@reddit
I tested with regular wallplug meter and also ikea smart socket which are known to be pretty accurate, both showing same values, these have just integrated graphics and they are running ubuntu. Seems to be inline with that reported ~5.5W idle.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Yeah, ok, theres nothing wrong if those are the idle wattages, but it sounded like you were saying the 4.5w was the wattage you were pulling during normal usage, even moderate usage then brings it up to 30w-100w according to my search results. Or 28w with my personal experience with a similar gen 2-core. Either way that 3x-9x the wattage of an rpi5 under load. Or 20x an rpi3 under load.
Now maybe you're barely doing anything computational on the server so it never goes above idle, then you could get by with an old budget sbc like the rpi3 that you could probably buy used for $20.
FinBenton@reddit
Yeah I mean both of them have 2 ssds in Raid1, both have 3 VMs running hosting 5-10 small websites, also doing some YOLO image AI detection from my security cam, cpu is almost at idle doing all that. On the beelink I also have 4b LLM doing classification to filter out ads from my RSS feed website every 30mins, during that it jumps from 8W to 50W for a few seconds as it maxes out the GPU but other than that it stays very close to idle consumption.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Thats cool, but you're definitely pulling a lot more wattage on average than your idle.
MrPapis@reddit
You dont seem to understand load on a CPU. If you're running things on 1-5W SBC that wont magically turn into a 20-100W load on a laptop.
Fact just is if it can run on a SBC then any traditional PC will probably run it at idle ish power doing the same thing.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Actually thats exactly how it works. Sbcs are much more efficient then the 10 year old x86 cpus in optiplexes most people are talking about.
Its partially about arm, partially about node, and partially about tdp. Old x86 cpus are designed to use a lot more power than mobile cpus, its pretty simple.
MrPapis@reddit
You right i was trying to get at that it doesnt matter much if its 0,5W or 8W, but in small operation 24/7 IOT world obviously even if 8W is still very little, it still accounts for something over time. Especially when we are talking years.
So the conversation comes down to what do you need and why. Ultimately SBC's are good for constant small tasks where a higher power PC can be a cheap entryway to something that maybe isnt as long running or demands multiple tasks that isnt viable with SBC's.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Yeah thats true, im mostly just critical of the person before you stating their idle wattage as if it was their regular wattage, i have a very similar machine to their optiplex except 2 core and even on light usage i would describe it as pulling 28w. Though the 6700u is basically modern so i can believe it would have better efficiency.
mylegbig@reddit
Depends on the office machine. Thin clients like the Dell Wyse 5070 only use a little more power while being somewhere between a pi 4 and 5 in performance, while having expandability, much better I/O, and can be had for dirt cheap. The extended versions even have a pcie slot. I have four of them.
dystopianartlover@reddit
Yeah, celerons are pretty low power, thats true, j series arent bad on comparable server performance either. I think, especially the 4 core ones make a good alternative to an sbc especially if you want a gpu or x86 and dont need gpio (which most people dont).
EVRoadie@reddit
PiHole is one of those reasons, along with your own VPN and Cloud Storage for free. I like the thought of something with really low power draw, but with the latest increase in prices, I'm now looking into mini PCs from Dell and Lenovo.
Proud_Tie@reddit
Don't need a pi to run PiHole, mine's running in a proxmox container.
casino_r0yale@reddit
Why spend 5 watts when you can spend 200?
TSP-FriendlyFire@reddit
My entire rack is using 125W and that includes the router, switches, wifi AP, a Pi-KVM for emergency remote access, and a full fledged PC repurposed from old parts which runs 20ish Docker containers and has 36TB of storage.
You're both vastly overestimating the power requirements of a container running on an average PC and vastly underrepresenting the utility of having such a PC.
casino_r0yale@reddit
Sure, but most people considering adding PiHoles are running consumer routers and not much other hardware, and getting a whole PC for that is overkill. If you’re already running a homelab then another vm is nothing.
TSP-FriendlyFire@reddit
I gave my parents a mini PC rather than a Pi, it's not that much more money (especially these days), it's more reliable and upgradable and it has more features if we ever need them, and ultimately it's not that much more power consumption.
BloodyLlama@reddit
Dont need a pi to run a dns sinkhole. For example my opnsense firewall is running adguard which does precisely they same thing.
ea_man@reddit
Then you project don't need a SBC ;)
CrispyDave@reddit
Thanks for repeating my point.
ea_man@reddit
What's the point of comparing "million old business machines" to a SBC? How much an 20$ Pentium consume? Can you run that on battery?
Also are you aware that you can buy now a OrangePi, which is a SBC, for 20$?
CrispyDave@reddit
Read the thread title you're posting under.
SBC aren't a cost effective option for budget computing any more compared to old business machines.
And if you really think businesses are still disposing of Pentium computers in 2026 I'm not wasting my time with you any longer.
ea_man@reddit
Dude, the title is not the Word of the Lord, as I told you:
If someone convinced you to do inference AT HOME with a SBC: you were the fool
CrispyDave@reddit
I'm sorry my post offended you so bad but bore off.
ea_man@reddit
I'm not offended, I got a OrangePi Zero SBC in front of me that I paid 21e, I just bought it because it was so cheap, not that I needed.
But hey you should jump of from this "SBC hobby", it's clearly too expensive for ya.
dsoshahine@reddit
Maybe everyone could start optimising software again. Pi with 16GB seems like total overkill.
Tired8281@reddit
lol the hobby isn't dying, it's just changing from acquiring new devices to actually using the devices we've already got.
iseon@reddit
When youtube revenue depends on pointless 8-raspberry pi clusters I suppose the YouTuber in question would feel like it is dying. People who actually do reasonable projects can likely get a suitable board at a reasonable price
Specterhead@reddit
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. It turns out computing power has been fantastic for a long time, and most things can be accomplished with what we already have.
con247@reddit
I truly believe that any laptop with a sandy bridge or newer Intel CPU, Zen cpu, 12gb of ram, and an SSD of 256gb is enough to meet anyone’s basic needs for email, browsing, word processing, excel, etc.
I’m a power user and I was using a 2014 rmbp until this past November
Tired8281@reddit
When I replaced my 1's and 2's with 3's and 4's, the 1's and 2's went into a drawer. Now they're coming back out. I can test out ideas on them, that, if they work the way I want, I can put the effort into making an ESP do it.
geerlingguy@reddit
How dare you insinuate we could actually finish a project instead of getting it 70% of the way there and moving on to the new shiny!
Tired8281@reddit
Lookit Mr. Progress over here, who gets 70% through his projects! ;)
horatiobanz@reddit
This guy and Rasberry Pi's need to get a room already...
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Reddit: The Pi 3A, 3B and Pi Zero all still exist, are still very cheap, and can do 99% of the Pi projects you can find. No one here is mentioning them because no one here actually does the Pi Hobby they are crying about. If you really want to SBC as a hobby and not the highly regarded SBC as a desktop thing tech tubers like Jeff do then its still a cheap hobby.
Jeff doesn't really every do any real SBC as a hobby Pi projects, instead of crying faux tears for low effort engagement maybe he could do something with a Pi Zero instead. Stop being part of the problem Jeff.
myztry@reddit
It is still an interesting time.
I purchased a Raspberry Pi 500+ and that thing is ridiculously overpowered. I was interested in building an Amiga 500+ (ironically) replacement only to find systems like PiMiga on Raspberry Pi emulating an Amiga that emulates a Macintosh. Nested emulation! How ridiculous is that!
I think the greater problem is that people have become complacent with the amount of power these single board computers (SOC) have become.
The original entry level raspis SOCs at like $3 per chip let people forget just how much money the founders of personal computing (pre IBM-PC compatibles) and the consumer put into making all this happen.
It's all cheap as fuck. Just your perspectives are skewed.
Uptons_BJs@reddit
Tbh, I think the original Pi being so cheap was a lucky fluke.
The original Pi was $35 - why? Because it reused a flop Broadcom SOC. The original BCM 2835 is derived from the BCM 2727, the SOC designed for Symbian^3 that Nokia used. The original was pretty much the main board of a Nokia. (I wonder if you can get Symbian running on those)
Because Symbian^3 was a mega flop, Broadcom probably had a billion of those sitting around they can’t sell, so it was super cheap.
But now? Not only does it use a Bespoke Broadcom chip, the OEM manufacturing it is Sony Technology Centre in Wales. Sony doesn’t even build the PlayStation there because manufacturing in that facility is so expensive.
hugeyakmen@reddit
Before the ram price increases the Pi 5 entry level model was about the same as the original Pi when accounting for inflation, the Pi 4 was still available for even less, and the Pi 2 W really made it more affordable than ever. But these price increases have really ruined that
zdy132@reddit
On the other hand, pi 5 8gb was dangerously close to n100 machines. Still cheaper, but not by much. I was worried that Pi 6 would be as expensive as x86 machines, little did I know where the SBC market would be now.
v-a-g@reddit
Bought a couple pi zero w from microcenter for $5 🥲
crazy_goat@reddit
Not only that, but the power and utility of each release increases. It's able to be used in more applications, which increases demand.
Exist50@reddit
Honestly, probably not a big expense at the volumes they're shipping.
Isn't production split between there and China?
geerlingguy@reddit
AFAIK, all the boards sold direct to consumers or to companies outside of China are manufactured in Wales. Boards used in products that are built in China, or sold direct in China, are built in China... could be wrong though.
dystopianartlover@reddit
No, the first three models all had different cpus and their prices all went to $15 over time for years, before coming back up.
ea_man@reddit
My OrangePi Zero here was 21e, I guess my first Orange PC was US $16.50 on aliexpress on Order date: Oct 14, 2015
ahfoo@reddit
This actually happened during Covid. I live in Taipei and the electronics shops were banking heavily on transitioning to IoT toy stores and were full of robotics and remote controlled vehicle kits that people would play with but because of Covid they had to get rid of all that as it encouraged people to touch things other people had touched. Almost every single shop folded and the prices also went through the roof.
What's happening now is similar --further supply chain disruption.
narwi@reddit
Everybody is being priced out of computing wth decent memory sizes. Probably time to write software that manages memory constrainst well again.
turbotronik@reddit
The original raspberry pi had 256MB of RAM… it wasn’t launched as a computer with a “decent memory size.”
UtahBrian@reddit
My Atari 2600, which I ran dozens of state-of-the-art AAA games on, had 128 bytes of RAM, which is less than half of 256 MB.
einmaldrin_alleshin@reddit
The Atari could only work with 128 bytes of RAM because ROM was used for program memory.
WittyDestroyer@reddit
Less than half... Technically correct... But the actual fraction is 1/2,097,152 lol
TwoCylToilet@reddit
Half of a millionth*.
NearInfinite@reddit
Technically correct but kind of underselling it.
ea_man@reddit
vanKlompf@reddit
And it's still cheap
Homerlncognito@reddit
A lot of interesting software can't be optimized to run well on a small amount of memory. I haven't played with SBCs since Pi 2 came out, but I assume most of that software is somewhat optimized unlike a lot of modern "desktop" apps.
narwi@reddit
I guess this is sort of true, but a lot of software that used to run in a handful of megabytes now requires a couple of gigabytes and does not really do much more than it used to.
xiaodown@reddit
Part of it is because the pi5 uses LPDDR5. That’s the proverbial good stuff.
ElementII5@reddit
Just get something with cheap like a radxa and put armbian on it. Raspberry Pis are premium SBCs. SBC is alive and well you just have to follow the spirit of it again.
soulmagic123@reddit
Everytime I do something now I feel Like I say "whelp that was my last xxxxx .
"Welp that was my last nfl game" "Welp that was my last trip to Disneyland " Welp that was my last Major League Baseball game" "Welp that's the last pc I'll ever build"
jarchack@reddit
I was going to say, you could always try Arduino but it's basically the same story. https://i.imgur.com/0VcqW4k.png I'm hanging onto all of my hardware and not upgrading for now.
soulmagic123@reddit
I like the game in this trailer, don't get me wrong, but I've directed video game trailers before, and for a while for a living, and if your going to experiment be bold, but if everything is up, nothing is, contrast is your friend, slow moment, big moments, payoffs, contrast, I would always draw the same squiggly line on the board, first the line starts flat; anticipation, then it quickly escalates, payoff hits that's a class start, being it back down, contrast, then crescendo, huge pay off, explosion, bam, then call to action. Yeah it's cliche but it also works, the artistry is in how far you can push, how quiet can you get before going big, the artistry is in the contrast, the story telling even when there's not much a story, maybe the metaphor is the buying of the game, then opening then playing, the being satisfied , who knows but there is a psychology to it.
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mastershake2013@reddit
Bah, I'll believe it when I see it. This hobby is always dying, that hobby is always dying. Only none of them ever do. So tired of hearing about what is dying, when none of it ever does. No hobby ever died. Ever. It got more expensive thanks to the full "regards" that always run governments, but it can't die.
wickedplayer494@reddit
But you can't say the R-word and call what's happening to the SBC market what it is, lest you get dogpiled.
Hyedwtditpm@reddit
Unless you need the Rp specific features, minipcs make more sense. Rp doesnt have the price advantage anymore.
FullOf_Bad_Ideas@reddit
what do you do with 16GB Raspberry Pi?
snollygoster1@reddit
Shoehorn them into any project you can, and don't worry if you'll actually utilize the RAM. It's about the "futureproofing" for in the future when you put it in a drawer and forget about it. Then rinse and repeat.
snollygoster1@reddit
I said this the other day but one of the biggest anti consumer moves of the Pi 5 was using 5V5A for 25W rather than anything standard such as 9V3A. The Pi 5 basically went from "run on that junk cell phone charger in your drawer" to "buy our charger and a heatsink".
Veedrac@reddit
It's completely reasonable to be upset that compute is getting more expensive, but it is simply incorrect to claim that ~$300 for a high end piece of durable hardware, and ~$50 for a lower end board, is unsustainable spend for a hobby. Concerts for a major star often go from $300 to $2000 for a single event. An MtG booster box can only be drafted once and costs $100. The average enthusiast might have a collection of $300 headphones or keyboards. LEGO sells tons of $200 high end sets, and some push past $500. Enthusiast bikes go $3,500 at mean and much higher at the high end. Spending $hundreds on a jacket is not uncommon for people in many states. Access to sporting infrastructure like tennis courts is not always cheap if you're in the city either.
Again, totally valid to be sad when a hobby rapidly gets more expensive, but its also worth noting that this brings high end SBCs from an atypically cheap enthusiast hobby to a standardly priced one.
JapariParkRanger@reddit
People still play draft?
this_knee@reddit
The complaint is about the way the trend line is looking and how that’ll extend into the future. Less so about immediate situation.
usedUpSpace4Good@reddit
I think the issue here is specifically with the higher end boards. As a hobby, sure. 16GB device is nice, and for some it’s a necessity. So then move down stream. The issue is in the memory. If you can get by with less, you can still have this as your hobby.
Sibexico@reddit
Look at prices of everything else. We received new prices for the server's components past week, the price of, for example, ECC DDR is skyrocketing like a crazy, x3 for less than a year...
Key_Pace_2496@reddit
"Dying"... It's been dead for a while bros lol.
li_shi@reddit
Someone probably still can do a small sbc with relatively low price.
Just not much memory.
ea_man@reddit
Aye, OrangePi, \~25$
rebelSun25@reddit
Every business in the space wants to cash in on the infrastructure spend. The nature of things is consumers can't compete with low interest loan budgets of a megacorp.
Just keep in mind, there's additional bonus in having consumers hardware poor. Local compute is the enemy of cloud compute revenue. They'll pretend it's not true as long as they can until the tipping point shifts the conversation as redundant