Comment by stdatomic
12 hours ago
It used to be that raspberry pi was a cheap pc. Well it's not longer cheap.
And at their price point, you could just get a mini PC and have better performance, or if you want to use it as a microcontroller, you can just use an arduino, esp32, or an actual microcontroller for a fraction of the price and power consumption.
So, what do people actually do with these pies?
I've got one set aside to play with v4l2m2m. Once that's working, it should improve video encoding support in my OSS project (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash)
The form factor. It's tiny compared with mini PC. Unlike other SBC, the software support's good that it just work as advertised (GPIO, graphic hardware acceleration, etc.). If you're using it for work, it also has stable supply chain / commitment that you can ensure to be able to obtain a unit in at least the next few years.
But you're right. It's pretty overpriced for its performance. If I'm after the GPIO I'd just use a microcontroller. If I'm setting up a headless server I'd just use pretty much any other SBCs or mini PC. I'm personally not a big fan of Raspberry Pi.
The cheap Raspberry Pi's still available as Raspberry Pi Zero tho, if that's what you're after.
Getting a mini PC with ARM and first class Linux support from the OEM.
Exactly. I think they are a bit more long lasting, but that is debatable.