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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the result of boards like the $9 C.H.I.P. stealing their thunder a little. (Which should actually be able to run Debian, unlike the Pi - Debian Jessie has built-in support for that generation of Allwinner chips.) The Pi has not actually been all that cheap lately compared to the competition. There's no reason they couldn't have done this years ago; like that Allwinner chip, the BCM2835 is an old, slow processor whose R&D costs were probably paid back long ago that they wouldn't otherwise be able to sell. This is especially true of the BCM2835, which is an ARM11 chip that's not widely supported outside the RPi ecosystem.

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Olimex alleged[1] that the '$9' CHIP was being sold at a loss (which I guess is par for the course for a Kickstarter project).

>The Pi has not actually been all that cheap lately compared to the competition.

I'm not a big fan of the RPi Foundation & it's relationship with BroadCOMM, but which competition are you referring to? I tried searching for RPi-like boards a while back but only came up with HardKernel & the bananaPi, and I don't think either is a proper competitor.

1. https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/how-to-get-in-the-ne...

The Orange Pi PC is competing fairly directly with the Pi 2, for $15. (Though it does apparently have some thermal throttling issues and isn't yet supported by the upstream Linux kernel without patches.) Annoyingly so in some ways; they haven't bothered to pin out many SoC features that the Pi lacks, like line-in support.

Oh, and that Olimex article smells of FUD. As they themselves point out, the price they were quoted for the SoC in the C.H.I.P. wouldn't be competitive - it's the same as a modern quad core SoC for a outdated single core. It's not a new die either, just another (possibly repackaged) version of the old and cheap Allwinner A13, so there's little in the way of R&D costs to recoup.

This could even act as a custom chromecast-ish device. Still cheaper too!

(Although it lacks WiFi AC that the new chromecast has, and probably way weaker graphics, but a cheap WiFi adapter or ethernet and having most stuff streamed should be workable.)

> (Although it lacks WiFi AC that the new chromecast has, and probably way weaker graphics, but a cheap WiFi adapter or ethernet and having most stuff streamed should be workable.)

This irks me a bit with the new "$5" RPi. Yes, it's $5… For a device without a power cord, without networking, and where you need adapters (and/or solder on a UART) to plug anything into it.

So... you will need to buy a power adapter and an Ethernet cable? That will come to, what, another fiver?

There's no ethernet port. So, also an ethernet adapter. But there's only one USB port (µUSB, too, so you most likely need an adapter to regular USB). So if you want more than just ethernet, you'll need an USB hub. But the RasPi's power supply has always been weak, so better get an actively powered one…

And soon you're paying four times as much for the accessories than for the RasPi.

This is an awesome board for embedded development. Not as powerful or I/O rich as the Beaglebone Black, but add $6 worth of CAN transceiver chips and a 12V->5V switching power supply and you've got an incredibly powerful automotive compute unit. The Pi 1 was a bit underpowered for what I'm doing, and this might hit the sweet spot while dropping $35 off my unit cost for small quantities. None of the issues you mention affect that calculation at all.

Who uses ethernet anymore?

That's exactly what I'm going to use this for, too. Right now I have an original Pi B logging GPS and OBD data, but it's crammed into a small storage spot in the car and is a big waste of space. I'm super excited to be able to cut my project to less than half its original size. I don't need ethernet (other than for debugging), four usb ports, etc. etc. I think this is going to be fantastic for creating homemade embedded devices.

Do you have or did you follow a write up for this? I know I would be interested in reading how you set that up!

I don't right now, unfortunately, but a writeup is next on my list of projects after the carputer is complete. I'll post it here if there's interest. For learning about the OBD protocol, though, these resources have been very helpful:

The ELM 327 data sheet (this is the chip in most OBD devices you'll find on amazon): http://elmelectronics.com/DSheets/ELM327DS.pdf

Wikipedia's article on OBD PIDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs

"A complete guide to hacking your vehicle bus on the cheap & easy": https://theksmith.com/software/hack-vehicle-bus-cheap-easy-p...

There's a PyOBD python module out there (my carputer is built in python), but it's a fairly simple process so I just rolled by own using pyserial.

How exactly has the power supply been weak? I've been running three PIs (A+, B and B+) for a few years with no problems with just simple cell phone power adapters. However, I'm not plugging any extra hardware into them...perhaps that's why I haven't run into problems?

Yes, the parent was talking about lacking power through the Pi's USB ports thus often requiring a powered USB hub.

My issue is with the Pi's use of micro USB for power, I'd rather it use a barrel connector, it's not like it doesn't have the space. Yes, I know the choice is based on the presumption that everyone already has a micro USB power adapter from a cell phone. The use of micro USB for power on this Pi Zero makes a lot more sense given the form factor.

> However, I'm not plugging any extra hardware into them...perhaps that's why I haven't run into problems?

Yes. Phone chargers provide plenty of power for the Pi itself, but once you add several USB devices like wifi/ethernet you'll need beefy ones.

But even that is normally not much of a problem, because (especially on the B+) each device has their own port. If you plug several into a hub, however, you'll quickly exceed the hub port's power rating. Hence the need for an active hub.

USB-OTG cables with power supply exist.

Ethernet USB adapters tend to be very flakey. (At least that's my opinion/experience.)

It was my understanding that the ethernet on the Raspberry Pi sat on the USB anyway.

Not just an ethernet cable, I think. From the images it looks like there's no Ethernet port on the RPi Zero.

Would be neat with an ethernet adapter with Power-over-Ethernet plus a simple micro-USB converter/USB-OTG cable. Yes, I'm aware that might raise the price a bit...

Other than hack value, I don't see it as a replacement for a $35 Chromecast. Even then probably better to root a Chromecast due to all the hardware benefits mentioned above.

How rootable are they, and will that break updates?

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