I ordered a BananaPi board years ago but then life took me places where I didn’t have time or energy to follow up. I’ve recently rejoined the hobbyist homelab market, so I’ve quite interested. I’d read that drivers could be an issue with non-Pi boards but haven’t ever found out. Which boards / companies are recommendation-worthy at the moment?
Asking twice because two people had similar replies and I’m looking for feedback, not because I want to spam the thread.
You can expect them to drop at maybe one more good product, as going public is what companies do when they want to raise a lot of funds for some project
But after THAT, when it turns out that the new product is just… Making money instead of making ALL the money, the investors will take over and from then on it’s fucked.
But yeah RPi has alternatives now. No need to tie yourself to them when they DO sink.
I ordered a BananaPi board years ago but then life took me places where I didn’t have time or energy to follow up. I’ve recently rejoined the hobbyist homelab market, so I’ve quite interested. I’d read that drivers could be an issue with non-Pi boards but haven’t ever found out. Which boards / companies are recommendation-worthy at the moment?
Asking twice because two people had similar replies and I’m looking for feedback, not because I want to spam the thread.
The question is always: What do you want to use it for?
When raspberry started the landscape was very difficult. Small computer boards were expensive, now there’s the N100 if you need a tiny cheap computer. Microcontrollers were really dumb and unconnected, now there’s the ESP32 which has WiFi and Bluetooth and decent performance. Right in the middle of this wide spectrum is the raspberry pi and its clones.
This is a very different situation than in the introduction era where PCs were heavy and expensive and microcontrollers were dumb. There was a much wider niche for the raspberry then. For a small server I would now get a $100 N100 from aliexpress. For embedded electronics I would grab a $10 ESP32. Only in the middle is the raspberry pi, but the problem is, it’s only in the middle in terms of performance, not price. A raspberry pi with case, PSU, storage etc costs more than a decked out N100, while actually being slower.
The only remaining usecase I see for a pi 5 would be an electronics project where you need some more compute than a microcontroller can provide, like some machine vision project. Otherwise:
Do you want to make some electronics IoT thingy: Get an ESP32
Do you want a small light computer or server: Get an N100
Ad soon as they go public, their product is their share price. And even before then, since most growing private companies seek out private investment long before going public.
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is this the ‘jumped the shark’ moment for companies? as soon as they go ‘public’ you can no longer assume their product is their priority.
Exactly. I’m not worried though. There are so many alternatives these days.
I ordered a BananaPi board years ago but then life took me places where I didn’t have time or energy to follow up. I’ve recently rejoined the hobbyist homelab market, so I’ve quite interested. I’d read that drivers could be an issue with non-Pi boards but haven’t ever found out. Which boards / companies are recommendation-worthy at the moment?
Asking twice because two people had similar replies and I’m looking for feedback, not because I want to spam the thread.
Would be really nice to name them when posting such a comment…
Here’s one nice list which also reflects the status of their usefulness. Physical availability varies widely, though.
https://www.armbian.com/download/
Yes
You can expect them to drop at maybe one more good product, as going public is what companies do when they want to raise a lot of funds for some project
But after THAT, when it turns out that the new product is just… Making money instead of making ALL the money, the investors will take over and from then on it’s fucked.
But yeah RPi has alternatives now. No need to tie yourself to them when they DO sink.
I ordered a BananaPi board years ago but then life took me places where I didn’t have time or energy to follow up. I’ve recently rejoined the hobbyist homelab market, so I’ve quite interested. I’d read that drivers could be an issue with non-Pi boards but haven’t ever found out. Which boards / companies are recommendation-worthy at the moment?
Asking twice because two people had similar replies and I’m looking for feedback, not because I want to spam the thread.
The question is always: What do you want to use it for?
When raspberry started the landscape was very difficult. Small computer boards were expensive, now there’s the N100 if you need a tiny cheap computer. Microcontrollers were really dumb and unconnected, now there’s the ESP32 which has WiFi and Bluetooth and decent performance. Right in the middle of this wide spectrum is the raspberry pi and its clones.
This is a very different situation than in the introduction era where PCs were heavy and expensive and microcontrollers were dumb. There was a much wider niche for the raspberry then. For a small server I would now get a $100 N100 from aliexpress. For embedded electronics I would grab a $10 ESP32. Only in the middle is the raspberry pi, but the problem is, it’s only in the middle in terms of performance, not price. A raspberry pi with case, PSU, storage etc costs more than a decked out N100, while actually being slower.
The only remaining usecase I see for a pi 5 would be an electronics project where you need some more compute than a microcontroller can provide, like some machine vision project. Otherwise:
Ad soon as they go public, their product is their share price. And even before then, since most growing private companies seek out private investment long before going public.
Legally the product is no longer their priority, maximising shareholder profits is their priority.
Not many companies manage to not get twisted to a worse product for the customers, though their ads get really good
really sounds like the stock market is just human greed distilled and removed from all direct responsibility.
i cant understand how anyone can defend it. it is a cancer