That is surprising. I guess it's still economical for them to use these horrible computers despite the fact the mean time between failures is at best three weeks.
The first one I owned had some kind of electrical fault that bricked and destroyed my TV.
The second one I owned had a fault where a few of the capacitors on the back fell off upon me plugging it in for the first time.
The third one I tried had a fault where it would spontaneously shut down if I had any USB devices plugged into it for any reason at all (in this case it was a mouse and a flash drive).
The fourth one I owned had the same problem, and the way I fixed it was desoldering its onboard wifi receiver running it at an absurd underclock and overvolting the USB2 input with my bench power supply.
With that said, let me talk about their hardware.
The USB-C implementation on the raspberry pi 4 violates the USB spec. When this was brought up to the engineers over there, they completely memory holed the problem, saying it works on USB2 chargers through an adapter. I call bullshit because during normal use it will draw more than 12.5 watts (which exceeds power limits on USB2 cables).
I have never seen the micro HDMI port on anything made before 2013 so the adapters required to make it work with modern TVs may as well be proprietary ones sold by RPi.
The camera input connector is encrypted for some reason, so if you wanted to use a camera through there it has to be one of raspberry pi's.
Despite them claiming it's opensource, it really isn't. The only thing that they have made opensource is the schematics which are largely useless for integrating into your own designs. The main processor onboard (and a handful of other ICs) isn't even commercially available. They claim it is, but that's only if you order it in minimum quantities of a few hundred thousand or something.
So in order to use the RPi4's most basic features, you need a proprietary charger, a proprietary camera, and a proprietary video output dongle. These things are more locked down than most laptops.
And that's just the problems with the RPi4. That has absolutely nothing to do with the litany of problems the past versions have had, which I don't feel like listing here. One of the issues that comes to mind is that the RPi 3 had a problem where it would spontaneously shut down if the lights in the room flickered wrong.
Worst of all, because these clowns have mindshare it means that other more well-behaved SBCs will never get any form of community tech support or large enough marketshare to make any notable change.
I have a power supply that is so weak that Pi would reboot when I plug a USB keyboard in it. Solution: never use weak power supplies on Pi's.
> I have never seen the micro HDMI port on anything made before 2013 so the adapters required to make it work with modern TVs may as well be proprietary ones sold by RPi.
Pi Zero uses mini HDMI due to size constraints. Pi 4 has 2 HDMI outputs! Instead of adapters, I always prefer "right" cables. More expensive but convenient. E.g. https://www.amazon.de/Snowkids-zukunftssicheres-TV-Kabel-unt.... Also, ironically, my 2012/2013 ASUS Zenbook has a microHDMI port.
> The fourth one I owned had the same problem, and the way I fixed it was desoldering its onboard wifi receiver running it at an absurd underclock and overvolting the USB2 input with my bench power supply.
Have you tried 2-3A power supplies? E.g. https://www.amazon.de/Anker-PowerPort-Wandladeger%C3%A4t-kom.... Though I found the "official" supply cheaper and went with it.
> One of the issues that comes to mind is that the RPi 3 had a problem where it would spontaneously shut down if the lights in the room flickered wrong.
Most likely your power adaptor would not be able to maintain stable voltage when your lights flickered.
Anyway, have been running 3B+, a few Pi0s for a few years and this is the first time I read about so many problems with Pi's falling on one head. To keep my SD cards alive longer, I use DietPi and had only one SD card die on me over ca. 10 pi-years of uptime.
> more well-behaved SBCs
I am all ears!
>Pi 4 has 2 HDMI outputs!
Two full-sized HDMI ports could fit on the board. At least, I could fit them. I question the competency of all the engineers working there.
>Most likely your power adaptor would not be able to maintain stable voltage when your lights flickered.
No. It was due to the wifi/bluetooth tranceiver not being potted and it would hard-reset if disturbed too much by the photoelectric effect.
>Anyway, have been running ...
Anecdotal evidence. They are built like absolute trash and it's a miracle anybody says they work for any reason.
> more well-behaved SBCs
Wake me up when someone makes one with ECC ram. I will not entertain using one unless it does.
They are made from the floor sweepings in Sony's factory.
You don't hear about the failures because most people just buy them and throw them away. I would venture to guess that about 60% of their customers are one-time buyers that try to power it on once and throw it away because it doesn't work. The other 40% either won the lottery or put up with its constant stream of shit because they have a near monopoly. The same is true for 3d printers.
Out of at least a dozen people I know using them, every single person has multiple RPis that has been in pretty regular use. On top of that you have a plethora of documented uses and projects across the internet, ranging from home automation to arcade machines.
You seem to be painting an entire community with the same brush, but most of the people in this community would gladly help you solve the issues you seem to be facing. Perhaps the issue lies not with the RPis but with how you're using them....
In reality, fully working raspberry pi boards are normal. I must have at least 10. I admit I no longer use the original model (so slow) but last time I tried it worked just fine. I think that's pretty great for the money, especially considering the state of the market before they came along which I think you might be forgetting.
The power supply tends to be much shorter lived. I severely oversize those and even then they like to stop working after just a few years. The SD card is the shortest lived component by far, but it lasts longer and has a better failure mode if you disable swap. (Why do pi distros enable swap at all?)
Oh, and of course, since version 3 the power cable is the hardest component to get right. You need a very good cable, and you probably don't even know the specs on most of the ones you have...
I had a 3B running as a car infotainment system with hard shutdowns at least daily for three years. Sold that car and it's now in a drawer, but slated for use in an arcade perhaps.
I've got another 3b running as a Unifi controller that's been running for 2+ years.
I've got two 3b and one 4 running OctoPi (3d printer server) without issues for 3+ years.
Given the mass adoption and heavy usage of RPis, I would venture to day most people don't find them to be "horrible computers". I think in 5+ years the only time I've had an RPi fail at the hardware level and die was due to powering it via the 5V headers and accidentally reversing polarity. Might have also shorted one out when an enclosure was flooded due to bad weather seals.
All anecdotal, but I find most of the time when Pi's fail it's often either voltage sag, poor quality sd cards, or excessive writes to the SD. The SD cards are definitely a weak link in the RPi ecosystem.
Whenever possible, ensure your Pi isn't reporting undervoltage and look for ways to minimize writing to disk (or attach a USB drive for any heavy writing necessary).
Here's a list of over 400 boards. There's also a .csv file to downlaod for offline quick comparison. https://hackerboards.com/