Raspberry Pi alternatives

[Kevin Cole]

Quoting a recent post seen on Mastodon verbatim:

> First #RaspberryPi earned a shitstorm by hiring an ex-cop specialized in hidden surveillance.
>
> Now they accept an investment by Sony for their proprietary AI engine to be included
> in the next Pi. Which "only sends metadata to the cloud".
>
> Here's a fine list of alternatives to that now-garbage company:
>
> - https://pine64.com/
> - https://beagleboard.org/
> - http://www.orangepi.org/
> - https://www.banana-pi.org/
> - https://www.hardkernel.com/
> - https://www.friendlyelec.com/
> - https://www.olimex.com/

[Chris Combs]

to go slightly further and name machine models, here are some I've been enjoying,

ARM

- Pine64 "Rock64" (note: this is not the same as "Rock Pi"). Fast, fairly smooth bringup. although it has a strange HDMI output glitch during heavy RAM congestion that has to be fixed with a uboot recompile

- Orange Pi Zero LTS. tiiiiiny!! runs Armbian okay. The i2c bus is locked to 400khz. Runs a little hot, so recommend a fan. and compounding that issue, the onboard SoM temperature sensor is faulty

x86

- Dell/Wyse 5070 thin client. A little large. Decently fast, costs like $75. has SODIMM slots and one SATA NVMe, no i2c/spi available but there are USB or HDMI/DP/DVI versions of most things you'd need, and an Arduino's easy to add too for gpio. works perfectly with mainline Ubuntu

- Dell/Wyse 3040. Ditto above caveats. No onboard SATA ports or RAM slots. Closer to Pi dimensions, works perfectly w/ Ubuntu.

- Atomic Pi. Has some GPIOs, unlike the thin clients. 16GB eMMC onboard. they caught a lot of flack for rebranding surplus SBCs as a new "pi" and they need a dumb adapter for DC-in, but also 100% Ubuntu.

less recommended...

- the other Orange Pis are all over the place and they are pretty poorly documented in my somewhat-limited experience.

- I have been getting up to speed on BeagleBones and boy howdy in 2023 the docs are a mess. Kind of a shame from TI.

- I loved the Next Thing C.H.I.P. but the company is long dead and the third-party firmware tools are a little tricksy. but it does have onboard LiPo management. also there is no HDMI, only composite, unless you add a "DIP" (think HAT). Very slow too, think Pi 1B performance. but they're cute and easily snuck inside projects.

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Chris Combs.

Artist in Washington, D.C. (he/him)

http://chriscombs.net

[Ethan Waldo]

https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/hardware/5b

Uses the new RK3588 so it'll be the best performer.  You can get the A with the RK3588S for cheaper, instead of B, if you don't need pcie and other features.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

[Ethan O'Toole]

> Quoting a recent post seen on Mastodon verbatim:

Lol

>> First #RaspberryPi earned a shitstorm by hiring an ex-cop specialized
>> in hidden surveillance.

Vague. Was this cop catching adults having sex with babies? Fentanyl
distribution?

>> Now they accept an investment by Sony for their proprietary AI engine to be included
>> in the next Pi. Which "only sends metadata to the cloud".

After looking around, all I see is talk about the availability of a camera
module that Sony produces. Sounds like a business sector looking for a way
to offload some of their stuff.

Is their any actual information indicating that the Pi will require any
sort of cloud tie in? I can't find any talk of that, just that Sony wants
to sell it with something else.

Smells like over reaction.


- Ethan