Comment by lynguist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lynguist | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It’s not possible. My job depends solely on the Raspberry Pi and the software stack is built on top of Linux on Raspberry Pi 3 or newer.

When the supply of Raspberry Pis was drying up, we started recycling returns to make them work again, but even that would not be sustainable.

There is no real alternative, nothing with a functioning Linux kernel and hardware that doesn’t die because of low/high temperatures or humidity or the like. The Raspberry Pi is engineered to a higher standard.

Only since December 2022, a next-generation Rockchip ARM board is shipping that’s based on Cortex A-76 and has 8K video out, but it is expected to get mainline Linux support only in 6.3.

Raspberry Pi works, the rest is just tinkering. Raspberry Pi supports some important niche economies, whose dependents would also break apart, if they didn’t get them. Medical sector, laboratory analysis, etc, etc.

—

What I want to add is that the Raspberry Pi 400 always stayed in stock, and I’ve bought one for my child. So you’re also wrong on that aspect as well.

> What I want to add is that the Raspberry Pi 400 always stayed in stock, and I’ve bought one for my child. So you’re also wrong on that aspect as well.

Not in my part of the world. In the US, Chicago area, the Raspberry Pi is carried by Microcenter. They seem to have a steady supply of the 3 Pico variants. It ends there. I think I've seen the 400 on average one or two days/month for at least a year. 3A+ same. A bit less for the Zero/Zero W and even less for the 4B variants. I haven't seen a CM4 at Microcenter ever that I can recall. I found 3 US vendors who will take a backorder for the CM4. I've had one on backorder with all three since 3rd quarter 2022.

> that doesn’t die because of low/high temperatures or humidity or the like. The Raspberry Pi is engineered to a higher standard

This can't be overstated. I've continuously run a few fanless Pi Zero W cameras w/motioneye in the Mojave desert for years now, none have failed.

What do you see as the show-stopper for the BeagleBone, that prevents its use in your application?

The whatbone?

edit: flippant jokes aside, they suck. They are the opposite of tough. I have a dead one, it was easy to kill, and I heard the same story from many others who got all hot and bothered by the specs.

That's a non-answer. What exactly killed it? I could answer with equal validity that I've had one for 6 years and it's still fine.

What sort of abuse has it withstood? I vaguely recall a blog I was reading at the time had a bin full of dead ones. Maybe we both were incompetent, but you certainly don't hear much about em these days, do you?

edit: I've had Pis run for years. Years.

It has unprotected 3V inputs. Naked, it shouldn't be subjected to any (electrical) abuse. It's a SoM and a few other devices, not a PLC. That said, I'm not particularly kind to silicon and I have overvolted the pins pretty frequently since I keep forgetting that they're not spec'd for 5V.

The reason you don't hear much about them in the consumer space is that Raspberry Pi's are far more popular there. However, for commercial/industrial uses, SoM's are used everywhere.

Fair enough, but ubiquity of a single device creates a froth of creative energy that generally does not originate from purely industrial spaces, which is why so many devices have coalesced around the pi.

I imagine that from an objective standpoint, the pi is actually not any more inherently robust than a beaglebone, except for the critical mass of users doing development of its os, synergizing with the hardware devices that also appear. Beta was the "right" choice from a technical standpoint, but then I spent years not being able to watch anything that was on VHS, which was everything of course.

I completely agree that it's the ecosystem that gives the Pi its value. No argument from me there. I've shipped Pi's on commercial projects and recommended them for others (and been outvoted: old habits die hard!). I just don't want anyone thinking that they're any better, electrically, than the many other options out there.

> What I want to add is that the Raspberry Pi 400 always stayed in stock, and I’ve bought one for my child. So you’re also wrong on that aspect as well.

It's out of stock everywhere in the UK right now and it has been that way for as long as I can remember.

Out of interest, was it possible to apply for access to the OEM pi stock? I don't know how the whole thing worked but wasn't their strategy explicitly designed to help people in positions like yours?

https://www.itpro.com/hardware/370314/raspberry-pi-ceo-eben-...

try the nvidia jetson nano (for industrial application), we switched to that and its worked pretty well for us. A little faster for some workloads too

I see that Nvidia are selling these again, but are they providing anything newer than Ubuntu 18.04 (now unsupported) to go with them? Are industrial customers just rolling their own distributions?

are you referring to the Rockchip RK3588?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com