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Comment by endymion-light | Hacker News Reader

can't wait to not be able to buy it, and also for it to be more expensive than a mini-computer

I buy a raspberry pi because I need a small workhorse - I understand adding RAM for local LLMs, but it would be like a raspberry pi with a GPU, why do i need it when a normal mini machine will have more ram, more compute capacity and better specs for cheaper?

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a lot of people buy rpis because they are the only reasonable option for connectivity with power. I'm not sure what other devices you can get that have gpio and mipi connectivity with the ability to (potentially) run vlms and llms on them.

I daresay they could charge more than a comparably specced computer (if they don't already) and they would still be a viable purchase.

Surely with this hat you don't have any access to any GPIO?

Unless i'm missing something - which is where i'm like why not just buy a NUC with similiar RAM for far less.

You do still have access to the GPIO. This HAT [1] stacks on top of the GPIO connector but passes through all the pins so you can still use them. This one is connected through PCIe so it shouldn't be blocking off any pins from use, unless you wanted an NVMe SSD hooked up!

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-ha...

Ah great! Yeah that makes the benefit a lot more clear. I'm used to hats that seem to lock you out of GPIO use

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