| General > General Technical Chat |
| Pi "foundation" gets fatter |
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| bd139:
You're not wrong there. It is the most ubiquitous. The problem is fundamentally that the products are only 80% done. |
| LoveLaika:
And if you want 100%, you'd be using something else that's more expensive. In a nutshell, from what I've read (feel free to correct me), the problems with Pi seems to be with either OS, power, or the fact that high-performance computing just can't run off of a micro-SD card. But last I checked, the Pi 4 seems to be pretty powerful for all it claims it can do. (Anyone ever used the off-brand Pi clones like the Banana Pi or Orange Pi? They seemed kind of laughable when I saw them a long time ago, but now, they look rather surprising. Or maybe, in light of this thread, what's the sketchiest Pi-like board?) |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: djacobow on September 27, 2021, 01:20:47 am ---I've used various RPi's since the beginning in all manner of projects, and I even sell some RPi "shields". I generally like the platform for anything with network + io twiddling, but bd139 is absolutely right about storage and reliability. The platform has been just atrocious for eating sdcards. For personal use, that alone has driven me off the platform. --- End quote --- I've had Pi systems run for years on the SD card. But in any case, you can boot a Pi 4 from a USB stick or the network now. And on older Pi's that's still possible although you do still need the SD card. The SD card boots the system, but that can be a very minimal system that straps the USB stick and boots the rest from there. Besides, buying half-decent SD cards is not exactly difficult - I've a 64GB card in my dashcam that I estimate has gone through almost 500 E/W cycles (across the whole device) without any obvious problems. It would have cost under £20 so not exactly expensive. A Pi will never reach so many cycles in any typical application. I replaced a NAS system - which consisted of a ~4GB NAND flash plus 2 x 2TB SATA disks, with a Pi 4 and some USB3 to SATA adapters. The old system with its 400MHz Samsung ARM chip was capable of ca. 10MB/s read/write rates - although not much more than the 10/100 ethernet port limited it to. The replacement Pi 4 is capable of over 110MB/s even using software RAID. Over the Gigabit ethernet interface with SMB server I still get ca. 80MB/s. It can also play 4K video H265 and so on. And it cost £50. No competition! The NAND flash in the NAS also had some bad blocks which was causing random kernel panics... that's allegedly "industrial" flash memory. |
| MadScientist:
--- Quote from: bd139 on September 27, 2021, 05:59:15 pm ---You're not wrong there. It is the most ubiquitous. The problem is fundamentally that the products are only 80% done. --- End quote --- The point is the intended market “ doesn’t care “. Pis are not aimed at professional applications, , they are teaching aids, hobby tools , experimenters bits. The Pi foundation was spot on in its targeting. ( as was Arduino ) Microsoft made billions out of half baked software , what they did right was identify a need and fill it. It doesn’t really matter if the Pi has a string of faults , it’s not what it’s intended buyers care about. That’s why it’s successful. The 2040 for instance is clearly designed as a teaching system , it’s not a standard featured microcontroller etc. --- Quote ---Dave pointed out that the Pi was aimed at the education market earlier, which is correct. This is my main objection. If you've ever spoken to anyone who had to run the piles of excrement in a school environment, you will understand why this fails. Also why there's a large box of broken ones at my daughter's school which are scrapped. --- End quote --- The school arena is probably one area where Pis flopped , not really due to the Pi , but largely because schools don’t have the technical expertise to handle a low level device, they have been much better utilised in third level applications where more expertise was available The hobbyist /maker market is what gave then their success. |
| rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: tom66 on September 24, 2021, 10:51:02 pm --- --- Quote from: eti on September 23, 2021, 03:16:32 am ---They’re fools. They need to hand the reigns over to someone competent, or just dump the whole thing. --- End quote --- Yes, fools who've sold 40 million+ SBCs and completely revolutionised the industry, leading to countless "me too" single-board computers. I remember before the Pi a typical ARM system on board like the Pi would cost hundreds, have buggy drivers and limited support and be twice the size. --- End quote --- Bullshit. The BeagleBoard started a few years prior and was the first board that provided Cortex A8 for the masses, with actual complete technical documentation and true open source drivers and distro. Sure, it indeed cost $150 on its introductory pricing, but later the BeagleBone was dropped to $79 and it had the same level of support and even more distros. When Raspberry Pi was released at the fictitious price of $35 (heavily subsidized), just a few months later the BeagleBone Black was released costing just $10 more with the same level of support of the prior Beagles. All of that was readily available to be assembled and purchased through the distribution. I don't dislike the contributions of Raspberry PI to the toys and other curious folks, but I dislike the rewriting of history that follows along such heavy marketing-based companies. --- Quote from: EEVblog on September 27, 2021, 01:00:08 am --- --- Quote from: Doctorandus_P on September 25, 2021, 02:58:13 pm ---I have never bought, and will not buy a raspi. I dislike their marketing hype and lack of openness and their broadcom connections, which is a company very hostile to hobbyists and tinkerers. --- End quote --- Are people forgetting that the RPi was designed for the educational market by a charity organisation? It was never meant to be an industrial or hobbyist SBC. --- End quote --- Don't forget that the Raspberry Foundation was run by the Director of Marketing of BCM. They had severe ties to their main supplier that, even still, were unable to break through their own datasheets, binary blobs and supply chain to enable others to manufacture or create their own boards. |
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