May as well just buy a used laptop or desktop.
Good luck when that market gets squeezed too.
Who’s the completely fucking idiot buying them at that price? Surely no one is that desperate.
Seriously what the fuck. I thought these things were $25. I haven’t followed tech since last the last time I built a PC in 2022; I can’t believe the chip shortage has gotten this bad. (Fucking AI)
At this point we can probably take an efficient full-blown PC in a mini format, and get something sensibly similar for less. It might even be possible to throw some GPIO USB in there if that’s what you need.
It’s been like that since the Pi was around $150 tbh, at least when looking at used hardware as a comparison.
You could use and esp32 and connect over serial for gpio
Man I remember getting pissed I couldnt get a Pi4 for less than $50, paid $30 for my Pi3
Near peak bubble.
It is now, just a shitty computer. It used to be a learning platform, but that price tag is not a learning price.
It became somewhat inevitable once companies started buying mass amounts of Pis for every purpose because they were so cost-efficient.
It used to be an education nonprofit, but it effectively became an industrial SBC supplier.
By now we’ve learned not to buy RPi again
I bought my first Pi in (I think) 2014. It’s one of the things that got me into IT. The low price was an important feature, since I was much less reluctant to experiment and take risks with hardware that cost as much as a family meal. But nearly $400 the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
I guess I’m lucky in that I got a pi 5 back when they were selling at MSRP. I have a couple Pi 4’s, two 3’s (one I can’t find anymore sadly), my original Pi 1 model B, an also lost Pi zero W that I successfully soldered the GPIO pin headers to, and a Pi 400 I bought on a whim.
When people ask me about experimenting with Linux I usually tell them to either emulate it in virtualBox or buy a Raspberry Pi if they want a bare metal experience. It was specifically because the Pi was cheap and thus low risk if something did go wrong.
Most of the time bunch of wireless esp32 bundled a mini pc do much better.
What the fuck.
Manufacturing for AI has increased demand for material and lithography. The price has followed accordingly.
And as Sam Altman says, “your RAM is wasted and idle anyways, gotta feed my silicon god” (“you’ll own nothing and be a serf”).
Nah the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been going down this route since covid, long before AI was being crammed into and consuming everything.
Hardware hoarding by corporations who were allowed to accrue so much money they can afford to buy up hardware just to keep it out of the hands of their competitors.*
Oh, I know. I’m just flabbergasted that a pi costs nearly $400 bucks. Last one I bought was 29.99 and that felt expensive.
You could get a framework 13 mainboard for this much and use it for the same fucking purpose but it would have way more functionality.
I’m a big supporter of RPI, purchased many different models over the years to run various services in my homelab. At this price point it doesn’t make any sense at all. Its USP was very low cost hardware to run Linux. I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for them.
I recently repurposed one of my old Pis to run LibreElec for me. It barely chugs along, and there are many issues. Thought I might buy a new one, not realising just how much they cost now. It’s frankly absurd.
I could buy a much more capable NUC second hand for less.
They think they’re Apple or something!?
I could get a used office desktop, and its monitor for less than this, and it’d be more usable.
Raspbery PI done lost its mind.
Might as well just pickup a mini pc.
Depending on the use case, this is solid advice. I’d suggest checking on eBay for older, used machines that that are still pretty powerful compared to a Pi and are also quite cheap.
A mini PC and an Arduino is the ticket.
I’ve also had good luck with Orange PIs. Just checked pricing and they’ve gone up but not pushing anywhere near $400. I know Banana PIs and a few others are out there but I am less familiar with those.
Definitely going to check out Orange (and Banana) Pis. Thanks!
Can I run a mini-pc via PoE?
PoE can go up to 70W according to wikipedia. A few years ago, a cheap NUC would draw ~50W with heavy loads. And they would have probably been more capable than a Pi5, GPIO excluded (and you can add this to anything with USB. You might even be able to do something with a low-speed M2 port.)
Sure, just need a PoE adapter for it.
PoE splitters exist
Mini pc costs a grand+
I bought this one to run my Home Assistant. $329 Canadian.
That has 8GB RAM. The only reason the Pi in the headline is so expensive is the 16GB RAM. As others mentioned, the 1GB or 2GB options are a fraction of the cost.
The 8GB Pi5 is still around $250 though and will be much less capable than that mini PC.
Nah, just a used one off eBay. Just now, I saw some i7 8700s w/32GB for <100$.
It will use more power, but it’s going to be a lot faster for most tasks.
Wanted to suggest solar but added cost won’t make sense without multi use
I picked up a mini PC in July for 500 that I think goes for 600 today, 16GB ddr4 ram 1TB drive, 25 watt, integrated video card with 3GB, very quiet. It runs way more retro games than my pi3, also using it for a media PC and some light DAW & development work with no problems.
I remember when being double the msrp of rpi4 was crazy…
I cant imagine buying a Raspberry Pi anytime within the past 5 years, let alone the past 2… If you don’t need your money that badly, give me a shout, I’ll put it to better use.
