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justin66 2 hours ago [-]
Why would anyone buy a Pi when they could simply burgle the home of a friend or neighbor and steal their computer?
static_motion 2 hours ago [-]
It's amazing how much they've lost the tinkerer audience over the last few years. Unless you really need the GPIO, there are far better and cheaper alternatives for a low power computer.
soupfordummies 27 minutes ago [-]
Do tell! I know Microcenter has a house brand for Arduino now but I didn't see much in the way of "knock-off brand" for Raspberry Pi
Reubachi 15 minutes ago [-]
a RPI is just a SBC with GPIO pinning (which isn't at all unique to RPI.).
The main reason it was/is the popular behemoth is not because of it's tinkerability, but because it got mainstream appeal and RaspianOS is polished enough for the average windows user to go "wow, neat."
THere is no "knock off pi", there are many many popular SBCs with the same performance at cheaper cost (O-Pi, arduino), not to mention the mini PC space (NUCS, ie intel asus.)
noahnathan25 2 hours ago [-]
You could just use an old second-hand phone for under $60. You’d get a built-in battery, much more RAM, and a screen included. For the output, just use a $3 ESP32 connected over Wi-Fi or USB. Seems like a much better deal for a lot of projects.
Reubachi 12 minutes ago [-]
Making any recent second-hand smartphone a SBC-equivilent field computer is always a custom job/not scalable.
OF course, that shouldn't matter for most tinkerer jobs like a CarPi. But anecdotally, I tried using my old iphone 13 (idk why I tried this) and then a couple old galaxies for my car project taking data from bluetooth dongle and relaying to a custom gui I made. Of course also dealing with power cycles and screen, data trasnfer etc.
Very, very quickly it became easier to justify buying a SBC for the same project
hn3ufz62f7 2 hours ago [-]
Swapped a Pi for a used Dell micro in my closet rack and the thing I didn't expect to miss was GPIO, had to add a cheap Pico for the fan and sensors.
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
If the Dell is old enough, you can use a printer port for some GPIO. Pretty trivial to use.
iamnothere 2 hours ago [-]
There are now cheap PCIe cards that provide 40-pin GPIO headers, check eBay. You might need an M.2 to PCIe riser if you don’t have a PCIe slot.
sriramraja251 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
RugnirViking 2 hours ago [-]
feels like a lot of money.
I suggest you get a jetson nano instead if youre doing robotics or anything serious with an RPI.
If you just want a cheap computer, you're probably better off with a second hand laptop, probably cheaper too
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
I've been making clusters from decommissioned thin clients, but they are mostly for the sake of managing clusters, not any useful compute. The workloads are Hercules emulating a VM/370 with or without MVS, and various SimH emulations of vintage computers of various sizes.
The main reason it was/is the popular behemoth is not because of it's tinkerability, but because it got mainstream appeal and RaspianOS is polished enough for the average windows user to go "wow, neat."
THere is no "knock off pi", there are many many popular SBCs with the same performance at cheaper cost (O-Pi, arduino), not to mention the mini PC space (NUCS, ie intel asus.)
OF course, that shouldn't matter for most tinkerer jobs like a CarPi. But anecdotally, I tried using my old iphone 13 (idk why I tried this) and then a couple old galaxies for my car project taking data from bluetooth dongle and relaying to a custom gui I made. Of course also dealing with power cycles and screen, data trasnfer etc.
Very, very quickly it became easier to justify buying a SBC for the same project
I suggest you get a jetson nano instead if youre doing robotics or anything serious with an RPI.
If you just want a cheap computer, you're probably better off with a second hand laptop, probably cheaper too