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Comment by dcminter | Hacker News Reader

Is that really true? I thought the pitch was always, pretty much in order:

• GPIO for hacking - basically an Arduino but a real computer

• Low power use (practical to run from a battery for some purposes)

• Tiny form-factor

Price seemed to be more of an "it doesn't matter that much if you break it while hacking with it" factor than a reason-to-buy.

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I think the problem with your bullet points is that something like an ESP32 beats a Pi at all of these criteria (as well as on cost), and can be wired/wirelessly tethered to whatever PC you have handy if you actually need a bunch of compute.

With the exception of the Zero, Pi has always been playing in the realm of "this is a real computer, except cheaper". And that's a pretty crowded space these days.

"Low cost" is/was part of their mission.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/files/about/RaspberryPiFoundatio...

That's very interesting.

Incidentally that slide deck mentions the pi zero - which is still very cheap (the 2w is about $20 where I live), so I guess they're still honouring that even if their fancy one is pricy-ish.

Edit: I also found this article from before the original pi release https://hackaday.com/2011/05/06/miniature-pc-packs-a-big-pun...

The comments in that thread are very focused on the price point (many doubting it could hit $25, which it actually did reach) so I stand corrected; it was clearly part of both the marketing and the attraction.

I think most people buying RPis for the GPIO would be better served by a small microcontroller devboard like the Arduino Uno acting as the intermediary between the computer and the wires. This way if anything goes wrong (overvoltage, short) then the Arduino takes the impact and is much cheaper to replace.

All of these are true (even more so) for the Pi Zero.

Why would someone buy a Pi5 when they can get more power for the same price?

It's become a dual-use device, hence the obligatory comparisons.

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