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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

I only ever bought Pis because it was a mission focused company.

Now that they are in stock-price-go-up mode, I am inclined to buy and promote cheap clones, and I expect most will feel the same.

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> I expect most will feel the same.

I expect most won't care or even notice. Company ownership is probably not that important to the average consumer. They care about great hardware support and a good "ecosystem" of accessories.

If the consumers were non tech people, I'd agree. But isn't this a product aimed at hackers and tinkerers?

I know the first thought that came to my mind was: damn, I'll have to find new hardware when my Pi dies.

> isn't this a product aimed at hackers and tinkerers?

Who told you that?

It's more about who hasn't talked to me about RPi ever: regular people.

Regardless, I posed it as a question exactly because I don't know.

> We’re on a mission to put high-performance, low-cost, general-purpose computing platforms in the hands of enthusiasts and engineers all over the world. (https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/)

Maybe they got it from the marketing material?

So what do we believe marketing materials now? Next up: Google is organising the world's information, NOT selling ads! Raspberry Pi used to be a platform for education first and foremost, but you don't get very far with this so they took on some funding to get ahead. Anti-VC whining is quite tangential to the product itself.

You asked who told them that. I'm speculating, but I thought the answer might be that Raspberry Pi told them that.

> But isn't this a product aimed at hackers and tinkerers?

It was, but The appeal spread outside of that, which is why they are now going public and abandoning the precious niche mission and are instead aiming at mass market appeal.

They'll start noticing once the enshittification begins and expensive but hard to KPI-ify things like QC and documentation quality get optimized away.

I dumped them after they fought against competition by selling very limited stocks of the Zero at very low prices, possibly at a loss. They released just enough of them so that someone somewhere could always tell that they were the cheapest board available, but in fact they were pretty much unobtanium everywhere, except of course in "friendly" sites and forums where every post about the shortage was immediately replied with "I could buy one at XYZ...", where xyz inevitably turned out to be a shop with none in stock. This happened much before Covid19 and chips shortage hit the market, in fact competition had cheap alternatives in stock and I could buy some NanoPi and OrangePi, but the RPi had much better press. I'm considering to make an exception for the Pico for being a really interesting product, but my last Linux RPi has been the 4 and I don't plan to go further.

What you're describing sounds like ordinary supply chain difficulties, with no indication of any nefarious intention.

So they sold all the available stock they had as soon as they got it, at a reasonable price… and that made you dump them?

> So they sold all the available stock they had as soon as they got it, at a reasonable price… and that made you dump them?

Well, yes, of course?

Why burn billable hours on a design I can send to production?

Before the pandemic, I picked them up for $5 regularly at our local friendly computer store. They even had 0w's for $5 as a gimmick (they were supposed to be $10) with purchase limit of 2 or 5 (can't remember). I'd just pick up a couple every time I went to that store. I've got a sandwich bag full of them now.

I think it was very much the supply chain snags of pandemic that made them get weird high prices everywhere.

So your assertion is that Raspberry Pi was using a Zero as a loss leader AND that it was out of stock. And some how this was enough to stifle competing products? And the competing products you've cited all have "Pi" in the name because they only exist to fill the gaps that Raspberry Pi products don't fill. For example the NanoPi is a Zero competitor that differentiates itself by having Ethernet.

Raspberry Pi dominates the market because it was the first to enter it and provides a limited product catalog that has limited churn with comprehensive support and regular software releases. The same cannot be said for it's competition which historically offered horrible software support land quickly iterated on products meaning that support generally only existed for the very latest.

I know it's an anecdote, but I found out about them bundling the Zero with a Raspberry Pi magazine here in the UK few days after it launched, and I was able to pop down to my local tesco and grab a copy(and it wasn't the last one either). Since then I bought a dozen more for various projects around the house and it's never been a problem, Pimoroni or the Pi Hut always have some.

The foundation still owns the vast majority of the company

Yeah, and the openai nonprofit still owns a majority of the openai for-profit company.

Turns out that doesn't mean shit.

You can argue the complete opposite point with Novo Nordisk. It's up to the foundation to use it's influence

So if the foundation makes decisions that drive stock up in the short term, they make themselves richer?

Definitely won't be abused /s

Maybe, but I think part of the fear behind the IPO is that some bully type investor like Icahn will do a takeover/weigh-in and mess it up, towards a profit driven enterprise.

With major ownership held by someone else, this becomes less likely.

wait! The foundation sells Pis? What does the for-profit company do?

Hell, where did the foundation get its money before?

And the worth of that stake is now directly tied to stock performance.

If you need a simple home server or lab setup, second-hand 1L pc's (tinyminimicro) is a much better value-for-money.

I've a ton of Pi4s and one Pi5, but the ease of use, the simplicity of 1L pc's is - for the stated applications - a no-brainer to me.

Or if you don't mind the larger size and you just need a home server, you can get a used NUC.

I used a super cheap HP Pavilion laptop that was unbearably slow with Windows, but works great as a Mint server.

Then two used/refurbished Dell Optiplex's, great deals!

Do you blow away the OS and install Linux on them?

Curious because for me the affordability of a hobbyist PC is offset by the cost of Windows.

Cost of windows?

Why not just use the windows trial. Or buy a license key.

Windows license keys are absolutely everywhere. Maybe check the bios from some old laptops you own?

At my university we have this massive ewaste bin full of old pcs stickered with probably valid license keys.

Though you might be better off sticking with Linux anyway.

Yes they run linux just fine.

> second-hand 1L pc's (tinyminimicro) is a much better value-for-money.

For initial purchase they certainly offer much better bang-for-buck compared to the Pi4 & Pi5, but do you have any useful links to information about relative power consumption when mostly idle?

I currently have a Pi400 (back when I bought that the Pi proper was out of stock everywhere except the scalpers charging >£150/unit for even the low RAM versions, but I found a decent deal on a Pi400 kit) running as a router/firewall with a few other small bits & bobs in containers. I keep considering replacing it with a small PC like that – my main concern being running a core bit of the home network off an SSD, though also having a bit more performance (both IO and CPU) might at times be useful too, and the Pi400 I'd like to reuse somewhere it is visible for “this is what home PCs used to be like when I were a lad” nostalgia reasons. The reasons I haven't so far (other than momentum: the 400 is sat there working quietly needing no interaction aside from the occasional update and paranoia checks of the config/log/other backups) are possible greater electricity use, and great noise if the mini-PC is not entirely passively cooled.

Intel i5-6500 with 16GB does 7 watt idle.

So just the CPU at idle pulling more than twice the Pi, about the same as a Pi4 running a CPU stress-test, depending on what figures you take.

I had a look around and there are many values out there, just under 3W idle and about 7W spinning the CPU seem like reasonable values (to get better data I might have to try properly testing mine – I've got an overly fancy USB3 cable that displays the power passing through, so I could do that at some point, at least approximately).

Figures for mini PCs obviously vary by model, but also you see a lot of different figures for the same model (some of the difference could be due to differences in storage power draw, some don't say if they have an SSD or traditional disk, and some could be differences in ambient heat affecting draw for cooling? age may also have an effect on the efficiency of fan motors) but between 9W and 15W (mostly below 12) at idle feels like a reasonable guess based on those quick searches. This is lower than I was expecting. The official rating for an Optiplex 3070 (picking a random model from the popular ones) is “up to 1.2W” which is far lower than people have measured in their own tests so I'll not be trusting official values.

Of course the PiZero or similar would draw less than anything else I've already mentioned, though to be a router I'd need to add at least some NICs to that, some extra storage (given one of my concerns is running the router off an SD card), and would lose some CPU resource (the Zero 2 is roughly equivalent to a Pi3 there?) and a goodly chunk of RAM.

I use the Pis because the ecosystem and documentation. I tried using clones but they're often horrible when it comes anything outside the direct hardware. Also they have a ton of competition. Jumping back to STM32 is pretty trivial if you use open toolchains.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation put out a statement[1] on the IPO and how it relates to the mission.

In 30 words,

instead of receiving a share of the company’s profits each year, we will convert some of our shareholding into an endowment that we will use to fund our educational programmes.

While it remains to be seen how the IPO will affect future Raspberry Pi products, it's hard for me to argue against the Foundation diversifying its investments, especially in light of growing competition from cheap clones.

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/what-would-an-ipo-mean-for-...

> I expect most will feel the same.

I buy Pis because of their support, stability and out of the box experience is far superior to other cheaper clones. I have tons of cards which are paperweights without Armbian or self-rolled distributions, and even them some are feature-capped because of kernel-dependent closed source modules or out-of-tree drivers.

I can still download and install a recent version of RaspberryPi OS to my Raspi 1, customize the image even before it touches the SD card, and remove the card and install to a more recent Pi, and continue working.

More importantly, I can upgrade OS from version to version (Armbian doesn't support this, and they say it explicitly for example).

OrangePi, Radxa and Asus failed on all these fronts. I still peek and poke OrangePi 5B's Debian image since I can't trust them blindly, but can't use its AI and video (rendering/encoding) accelerators without its official image.

Oh, and my OrangePi Zero always crashes within a day or two if I don't practically disable its frequency scaling capability via governor. Even a good cable and adapter which can run a Raspi 3/4 without any hiccups can't make this postage stamp sized thing happy and stable.

P.S.: For everyone who thinks RaspberryPi brand and hardware will be enshittified: I'm not saying that it won't happen. What I'm saying is, let's watch how this moat evaporates, and who passes (said moat) and replaces them on their hill.

Well, you can expect all of those superior things to start going to hell in about a year or two. The enshittification will begin.

If that happens, I won't buy them anymore. The boards don't have an expiration date, and I can roll my own distribution "if it comes to that". Have done that in a professional capacity back then, can do it again.

With a publicly traded company that's not an if but a when.

You're right, but I refuse to keep my mind busy with it. I'll look around when I need a new SBC for the task at hand, and if RaspberryPi has enshittified, I'll just pass.

So it's an if from my perspective, since I don't constantly watch them and ask "aretheyenshittifiedyet?".

Support and stability will go down, they will cut support roles to drive profitability and they will release multiple variants of the same board to saturate the market so hardware support will get dicier. They may even roll their own distro as a way to capture the market.

When a company lists they switch from being customer focused to being share-holder focused. They will do anything and everything to make number go up.

Let's watch as it happens, shall we? I'm not saying it won't happen, yet I don't feel gloomy and dark about it. If they fall, another will rise and fill the void.

The market is healthy from that standpoint, but let's watch as it happens and see what happens.

Similarly my Orange Pi 4 (not the 4B or 4 LTS) no longer gets new images from Orange Pi themselves. Armbian's images had an issue with display out on the board for at least a year. I haven't checked if it's been fixed. And that's with a RK3399 which is basically mainlined in the Linux kernel.

There area already some privacy concerns. New Sony chip is likely embedded for future devices to enable edge processing.

Metadata of some processing will start leaking to external cloud whether you want it or not.

https://www.engadget.com/sony-investment-will-put-ai-chips-i...

https://aitrios-promo.wpp.developer.sony.com/en/services/edg...

That’s not built in to the Pi, and is way too expensive. It will almost certainly be a HAT. Complaining about this shows ignorance.

> That’s not built in to the Pi

Based on what? Even the linked article title says IN. Maybe they have different models, but based on all the wordings, it is very odd if it is HAT.

> Complaining about this shows ignorance.

If it is external HAT, then maybe. But until then, maybe not.

Edit: There seems to be AI kit available now, but it does not include this:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/ai-kit...

The "IN" probably refers to in one of the camera modules, or some other module/HAT.

Raspberry Pis don't use any Sony chips on the SBC, Sony image sensors are on the camera modules, and since they're talking about imaging, this makes perfect sense.

Nothing about the Engadget article says to me it'll be on board the Raspberry Pi itself.

They're also producing an AI camera.

https://www.elektormagazine.com/news/raspberry-pi-monitor-te...

The original press releases don't say anything about incorporating it into the base Pi hardware and I don't think they would, given that it would add extra cost and most people don't need it.

Yeah, AI camera integration might be actually the end result. This gives good assumption.

I re-read your comment minus the last sentence and I like it better.

> I am inclined to buy and promote cheap clones

Are you also inclined to support and develop kernel and OS level software for them? Because the lack of good support is why they remain woefully noncompetitive despite the lower price.

https://libre.computer/ sells SBCs that run mainline linux and boot with UEFI, which is better than Pis could ever say.

And once they make one that isn't slower than a Pi 3 I might actually buy it. Their entire lineup is obsolete, they're selling 2GB models like it's 2018 while Orange and Rock Pi are moving onto 16 and 32GB.

The only Raspberry Pi models I regret buying are the sub-4GB versions, since you're always one step away from needing swap.

This “a company is great until it goes public, then it is guaranteed to be crappy” mentality only displays a lack of understanding of how ownership structures work. It is more nuanced than what you are making out. An incredibly over-simplified view bred by the knowitall “fuck MBAs” attitude on HN lately.

Do you have examples of companies that improved on their mission and values after going public?

> knowitall “fuck MBAs” attitude

I love HN, but this is insufferable behavior. I also believe it’s why, despite our screeching, we accomplish absolutely nothing. You can’t accomplish anything when you’ve burned all bridges and then yelled “screw you.”

Sorry, what was this goal that was supposed to be getting "accomplished"?

It may seem dramatic to worry about the future of Raspberry Pi now that it's public, but I personally have seen enough mission driven companies go public, and have observed what happens when profit becomes the primary goal. You'll have to forgive me for seeing this as the beginning of the end of a beloved hobbyist SBC company. I expect the next few generations to be just fine, but eventually shareholders will start to squeeze, and the "profit above all else" mentality infecting public companies will set in, and then the enshittification begins.

I'll be looking around at other SBCs, but I'm hapoy enough with my current RPi boards, just no longer confident I'll be happy with then in the future.

An IPO is a cashout. It's almost always certain that there are many key players in the company who had stake that no longer do. This is not a "fuck MBAs" thing. It is much harder to keep a business aligned with its initial purpose (and even customer interests) when it is public.

Could you help me change my mindset with some good examples to the contrary?

google "enshitification"

Do they not have a fiduciary responsibility to their public shareholders now that they did not before?

If a random company with a very different mission (say, Intel) comes along and offers to purchase the company at a decent share price premium they pretty much have to take it, right?

Doesn't necessarily work that way (shareholders can sell their shares still)...

... but it's how it's marketed to people so they believe it and follow Friedman's doctrine like gospel.

Who does this marketing?

Everyone repeating the mantra about how caring for shareholder profits is the fiduciary duty of the corporation leadership, and how it's "a law".

At this point it's a self-propagating meme. I frequently encounter people, learned people, who act like it is a law or moral principle (in fact, corporations aren't even required to be for profit even when operating commercially, they are just an organizational structure). When questioned, nobody can cleanly point where they learnt it, but actual check shows that Friedman Doctrine[1] was never written into law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

Ah - I see. I don't think that's marketing; just a common misconception. But yes, I've seen that too. No idea if it's true or not. Presumably it changes depending on the country.

It's pretty much untrue everywhere.

That said, the misconception can be tracked down to one person in 1980... that sounds more like an idea that got marketed - whether by Friedman teaching in university in certain way, or his students continuing that, or people taking the idea from his paper and teaching that... or newspapers passing it further...

At some point you start to wonder cui bono?

If you are talking about a fiduciary duty to "maximise profits", no that doesn't exist.

I never get why people think this does exist. If it did, wouldn’t every company be obliged to get out of the business they’re in and start doing what would be most profitable right now? Obviously that would be absurd.

Switching gears is expensive, and if every company switched to "the most profitable thing" it wouldn't be profitable.

This automatically prevents them from mindlessly switching.

Yes, that’s part of why it is absurd.

Just as an interesting tidbit while we here are talking about UK companies it doesn't even exist in the US. The SCOTUS said so:

> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-354

I can't think of a single company that went public that has improved rather than massively regressed. Could you name one of these unicorns?

I want to move to radxa and orange pi but the community & documentation are lacking, along with the sourcing from China.

So what are some good alternatives?

My understanding that as of a couple of years ago most of the “clones” had various issues from pcb layout bugs causing ddram access issues, to poor documentation and poor Linux kernel support. Also availability was often a challenge. Getting a product that just works and is well supported by a community is worth a lot imo. Especially for hobbyist, less so if it’s one’s full time job, but then why are you using these things?

My impression is that the coming generation of chips are going to be completely integrated RiSCV chips with RAM integrated on one package. Akin to a microcontroller but that can run Linux.

Something like the SG2002

Ex: LicheeRV Nano

https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/02/08/licheerv-nano-low-co...

This is sufficient for "automation" hobby projects. You get the full Linux/OS creature comforts without the hassle of doing Arduino or Mircopython.

If you want a full desktop experience (or a project with video output) on a SBC it's probably easiest to go for a Intel SBC

RPi is getting squeezed from top and bottom price brackets

> This is sufficient for "automation" hobby projects.

and so is a $2 ESPHome..

For actually working with hardware Arduino is much more convenient than whatever abomination you would write in Python.

For anything that needs video output you should use a cheap Android. Anything else is just wasting money.

Thanks for the licheerv nano link, this thing [1] looks awesome!

Display out, built in amp, and 1GHz riscv for $10 USD [2]. Incredible.

1. https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/lichee/RV_Nano/1_intro.h...

2. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPnKu26

It's somewhat amusing a MIPI -> HDMI adapter [1] is more than the total cost of the SBC

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtj0TmG

I got an intel SBC for something that required non-ARM and I remember the power raw being surprising after having been spoiled by so many raspberry ARMs.

I've been looking into alternatives to the Zero 2W because I need something in the same form factor with more (processing) power; something closer to the Pi 3B+ or better.

My conclusion is that although there is some nice hardware out there on paper, the poor circuit designs and atrocious software support mean anything I can get that meets my requirements will be an absolute nightmare; and I'm a software engineer of 1.5-decades with an Electronic Engineering degree, so the bar is high for something to be too-much-effort.

Take the Radxa Zero 3W[0] for example; the WiFi doesn't work properly, GPU acceleration doesn't always work, the OS images are out of date and don't always boot, when it does there are power issues, thermal issues, performance issues. No Debian 12 expected until H2 this year, if lucky; Android OS images are Android 9 (we're on what Android 14-15 now?).

[0]https://forum.radxa.com/c/zero

I’m happy to buy whatever satisfies my requirements. But I do anticipate the enshittification will begin.

Waiting for the next company to fill the not-yet-enshittified gap.

I too worry about enshittification, but let's step back here. When you're talking about a price difference that can be made up in a few hours of work, the extra cost can be easily justified, because of the Raspberry Pi's secret sauce.

The secret sauce allowed me to search the web for guides on what I wanted to do and have a template to work from. Not having to spend potentially hours or days of my free time figuring out some obscure Linux issue or driver support problem made up for the extra cost of the board.

The secret sauce was always the documentation and software support, and if the cheap clones can master that, then the boys in England have a real problem, but that remains to be seen. A lot of that comes not from cost savings inherent to microcomputer technology, but because of the dedication of people who know how to communicate to software engineers and hobbyists.

My hope is that most of the price increases apply more to their industrial computing products than their hobbyist ones.

It sounds like you would be okay with a Pi clone though?

Like the OP, I have avoided the clones in the past because I wanted to reward the company that were "cause-driven" to do this. I too am less inclined now though.

That depends. Is "clone" a synonym for "compatible"?

If so, sure.

My concern is, I don't want to spend any time whatsoever messing with stuff like driver or architecture issues. Needing a few repositories for Debian packages is okay, but pushing it. I'm not here to configure a system; I'm here to work on a project I find fun or useful.

Ideally I take the latest RaspberryOS and slap it in and it "just works".

Add to that their patent of the PIO ports implementation, and I stopped being a fan.

You’re assuming that without a patent, the RP2040 wouldn’t immediately have counterfeits flooding the market without any hope of legal action. This has happened with the ATMegas, this has happened with the ESP32s, this has happened with the STM32s, it’s a valid concern. You’re also assuming there wouldn’t be legal-ish pseudo-compatible clones, like the GD32 clone series of the STM32.

> the RP2040 wouldn’t immediately have counterfeits flooding the market without any hope of legal action

That would be great. Here is the mission statement straight from raspberrypi.org:

> The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.

Cheaper clones from China would aid that goal, but of course, it flies in the face of a fake non-profit company.

And if you are only interested in preventing counterfeits, just slap the trademarked Raspberry logo on there. No need to inhibit progress with patents.

No, it would be terrible, as technology development is not free. Chinese clones are the epitome of your “enshittification.” They drive prices up for the real product and invade the market with garbage.

This has most recently happened in the 3D printing world, with Prusa versus BambuLab. Who actually develops an open source slicer? Who allows 3rd-party firmware? Who contributes to the community? Who abides by open source licenses? Hint: It is not the Chinese company.

But at least that GPL-violating, closed-source printer was cheaper.

But it was never Prusa's declared mission to get as many people into 3d printing as possible? So I don't see how this is relevant when comparing it to RPi's mission.

Well maybe the plan wasn't to become a martyr and die for charity. If they are providing value they should be able to thrive, not just survive.

> Chinese clones are the epitome of your “enshittification.” They drive prices up for the real product and invade the market with garbage.

The opposite, having no clones makes it easier for a group (like RaspberryPi) to enshittify.

Enshittification is where a group first obtains a large market share with cheap/free services and then pivots to squeeze as much out as possible. Having a competent clone is a strong preventative.

> This has most recently happened in the 3D printing world, with Prusa versus BambuLab. Who actually develops an open source slicer? Who allows 3rd-party firmware? Who contributes to the community? Who abides by open source licenses? Hint: It is not the Chinese company.

Bambu pisses me off too.

Unfortunately your parent is talking about patents, not open source vs closed source, or license violations.

> No, it would be terrible, as technology development is not free.

What about compatibility? Wouldn't it be good for competitors to be able to provide compatible PIO interfaces, so customers can churn from one SBC to another SBC without needing to rewrite their code?

> Having a competent clone is a strong preventative.

This causes a similar problem: people don't buy from the innovator, who needs more money to carry on innovating. They buy from the clone, who mostly only copies the innovator.

> They drive prices up for the real product and invade the market with garbage.

that's not how supply and demand works...

Why would he assume that?

I assume that their mission being "accessibility of computing to all", and the org communicating so much on their mission focus, they would be in favor of cheap clones.

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