
What’s Wrong with the Raspberry Pi - thunderbong
https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/
======
dijit
It’s nice that the rpi project has been received warmly but I think it’s
success has come at a price here.

If anyone remembers why the rpi started life: it was to get cheap affordable
hackable “computers” in front of kids and hobbyists for programming purposes.

The affordability and ease of use has become a bar that everything else is
measured by “that’s x times more expensive than a pi” is a common response
when better solutions for your use-case exist.

The raspberry pi has made many compromises to be at the price it is. No
dedicated Ethernet controller, no SATA bridge, no eMMC-

It’s literally the definition of suffering from success because now it seems
people don’t judge it on what it was meant to do; just on what it’s possible
to do with it.

It’s worth remembering that it is not meant as a one size fits all general
purpose computer. It’s a hobbyist programming board.

~~~
sandworm101
Price point? It isnt cheap. Im in canada. Getting PI after tax/delivery is
about 50$. Want a power supply, sd card and basic case? That will be closer to
100. My last netbook cost less than 200. My current phone 100. The PIs are not
cheap. In canada, and i assume a great many other countries, they are very
expensive toys.

~~~
jesseb
Which is pretty disappointing considering the original plan of a $5 computer.
I think they lost sight of their original goals pretty early on.

~~~
ysr23
Yeah, except this was never their orginal plan.

There _is_ a $5 computer (i think the zero still costs that in microcenters).
But that was never the original plan

------
KaiserPro
The Pi is _easy_

Yes, the SD card sucks massive balls, PSU issues are less of a problem now
that most people have decent fastcharge USB lying about now.

The support that the PI is worth _every_ tradeoff. It is not a server, You can
use it as one, but you have to spend some money, and do some work.

Yes, I'd love a pi with emmc and proper ethernet. But, I don't want to have to
support it myself. Virtually all the other pi clones require significant
engineering time from me, _or_ are in a black hole of support, stuck on a
hacked version of ubuntu 14/16.

For a real datastore, you need a proper atx board with more than one sata
port. That means paying > £200(PSU, case, ram, motherboard). I have one of
these, and I don't use it for anything other than storing data(no I don't use
own/next cloud. I like my stuff reasonably secure.)

The pi is great for what it is. You're trying to make it do something its not
designed to do, and its fighting back.

~~~
Brakenshire
I don’t understand why other boards can’t get themselves fully on the Linux
mainline, that would take away at least a part of the rPi advantage. There are
still a lot of limitations there relative to an x86 computer, although I’m not
clear how much those are limitations of the Linux Arm ecosystem, and how much
those are to do with the lack of mainline support, the need for blob drivers
etc. I wanted to test out a webcam on rPi, there’s as massive difference
between just being able to install VLC from repositories as you can on x86,
and what you have to do on rPi, to compile a special version to work with the
rPi’s proprietary graphics/video stack.

~~~
momzer
> I don’t understand why other boards can’t get themselves fully on the Linux
> mainline

They're slowly getting pulled in kicking [1] and screaming [2]. I just
installed the mainline arm64 version of Archlinux onto an Orange Pi Zero Plus,
and I was pleasantly surprised that I only had to compile one out-of-tree
driver (rtl8189fs for WiFi).

[1] [https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort](https://linux-
sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort)

[2] [https://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_U-Boot#Status](https://linux-
sunxi.org/Mainline_U-Boot#Status)

------
giobox
No mention of SD card failure rates? By far one of the biggest shortcomings of
pretty much every generation. I'm aware USB boot (only relatively recently)
exists, but this lacks the cheerful simplicity of slotting in a ready-
formatted SD card, especially for "appliance" style applications of the Pi.

~~~
jpalomaki
Would be quite handy if there was a model with built-in SSD level flash
storage (8, 16GB or something like that) and option to write the image on that
storage by just connecting the device to computer USB port.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Surely that would make the problem worse? Flash storage wears, and is
inescapable with current tech. Building it into the device is the worst of
both worlds.

~~~
StavrosK
Are all problems due to the SD card itself? At least with the RPi 2, I've been
having some problems where I need to jiggle the card in the connector to get
it to boot, but maybe that was just placebo. It definitely would refuse to
boot 90% of the time sometimes.

~~~
kingosticks
I did have that problem with the original pi and it's big sd cards. But never
with the micro sd cards.

And there were issues with the spring-loaded slots although I've never had
issues with that either.

~~~
StavrosK
Now that you mention it, yes, this problem was almost exclusively with the Pi
2 and the 3 has never given me any such issues.

------
billsmithaustin
Nothing wrong with pointing out the Raspberry Pi’s tradeoffs. Of course
someone could write an article about the tradeoffs of _any_ single board
computer. For most of them, the list would start with “More powerful but no
community to support it.”

I own several Raspberry Pi’s. One of them is taking time lapse photos of a
skyscraper going up two blocks away from my office. It had trouble uploading
the photos every morning around 7am. It tended to catch back up at night. The
problem went away once I replaced my 2amp power supply with a 2.5amp model.
Day photos produce larger image files than night photos. My theory is the
Raspberry pi had trouble processing and uploading the larger image files while
running under voltage.

~~~
cptskippy
I never even knew this was a problem until just last night. I wanted to play
with OpenCV and so I setup a Pi plugged into a 2.4a ps and got the undervolt
icon immediately on boot.

I had always used Pi's in headless mode with first boot enabling SSH and
connecting to my network so I had never seen the power/temp notifications to
question anything.

Now I'm wondering the best way to validate the Power supplies and USB cords
powering all my other Pi projects scattered around the house. I'm less
concerned about the power supplies and more concerned about the cables.

~~~
Odenwaelder
I'm having great success using Anker PSUs and cords.

~~~
cptskippy
Thanks, I've always heard good things about Anker.

I've always bought Aukey power supplies and battery banks and been very happy
with them, however I bought a batch of USB cables once that were rubbish and
won't ever buy cables from them again.

------
CaptainJustin
Raspberrys are pretty fantastic.

I have a docker swarm cluster consisting of two Pis and two ODroids[1].

What HardKernel has done is quite interesting - taking the idea further. They
continue to support the same pin io. However you can get boards with stronger
processors, more memory and Gb lan. I would like to the the folks at to
consider exploring models with different specs. I would love to see an
octocore with 4GB memory and GB lan able to read MMC at +100MBps.

[1]
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/UNZyeKdM41DV2cE99](https://photos.app.goo.gl/UNZyeKdM41DV2cE99)

~~~
bjoli
I have 2 odroid boards for my computing needs and a couple of raspberry pis
for any DIY projects. The extra power of the odroid boards is hard not to
notice.

Still no POE hat though.

------
lisper
Arrggghhh:

> There are other affordable alternatives out there where developers have
> given more consideration to those issues.

Like what?

~~~
flo123456
If you want to run something heavier, like Nextcloud it’s a good idea to
consider an Atom board. It comes real SATA connectors and USB3 and you can get
them for 70-80€.

If heard good things about the Beaglebones, but never used them myself.

I‘m not a fan of the Odroid board, because they require custom Linux or
Android and at some point those are not updated any more.

~~~
kbumsik
> Atom boards

It's more than a double price of RPi. It's definetly not afforable for
education purpose.

> Beaglebone

I love this SBC but it is seriously underpowered than RPi in 2019. It focus
more on real-time embedded system performance and rapid hardware prototyping.

~~~
fock
> If you want to run something heavier, like Nextcloud You get that in this
> case Atom-boards or the odd AMD Geode are a lot better than any of the *
> -droids out there?

The RPi has it's own specialties, especially the price. For 40USD (give or
take) you get a system: \- which might be running proprietary FW but still has
it documented and allows you to run any OS you can imagine; \- is (partly)
manufactured in Europe!; \- has an actual company/community behind which is
caring for the product/itself way more than the "let's make some-money from
the rich DIY-guys in EU/US"-* droid-company

------
pygy_
Another unfortunate issue is the DRM infection of the camera.

The Pi camera communicates with the GPU through a standard MIPI connector, but
it is equipped with a DRM chip and will reportedly refuse to work with boards
that are not equipped accordingly, with the proper secrets.

[https://hackaday.io/project/19480-raspberry-pi-
camera-v21-re...](https://hackaday.io/project/19480-raspberry-pi-
camera-v21-reversed/log/53217-pi-camera-driver-makes-deal-with-the-devil)

------
bobowzki
We are developing an add on for the Raspberry Pi (tujasdr.com) and I spent
some time looking at alternatives particularly because the Rbpi lacks OpenGL 3
support, which would have been nice.

There are a lot of boards with stronger hardware which are maybe great for
general use, but they very often lack good drivers, for example many support
I2S out but very few support I2S in.

Also the community support for the Rbpi is great.

------
alkonaut
What are the best options for a device that doesn’t cut as many corners? Say
I’m spending thousands on som home automation gear, and many hundred hours on
configuring e.g home assistant - then I don’t care whether the controller
costs $39 or $299.

Are there similar projects with good high quality enclosures, dedicated power
supplies? Are there any that support some kind of atx-like shutdown signals
(requires quite a bit of hacking to do that for an R-pi)

Do I need to go to a “real computer” such as a NUC to get this, or is there
something in between? I like the simplicity of single board with everything on
board including the possibility to run of a memory card - but I’d like
something I can trust will run for years without a failing power supply
preferably _without_ having to spend a grand.

~~~
mustardo
Closer to a real computer but the fit-pc's are nice I've run a fitpc2 for over
6 years as a home server [https://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/product-
selection-charts...](https://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/product-selection-
charts/)

~~~
ralphhughes
Really nice to hear that. After having Pi's for years, I've just picked up 2
fitpc2's, one I've made into a small headless DVR for my single IP camera
(running Shinobi\Node)

The other I was hoping to put Kodi on to sit behind my TV, but Kodi on Linux
refused to start up telling me there was no hardware accelerated graphics
available.

------
maxme2
If anyone is interested, I updated the script (linked in this article) to
check if your Raspberry pi power supply and cable are good enough:

[https://bia.is/2019/02/02/raspberry-pi-check-your-power-
supp...](https://bia.is/2019/02/02/raspberry-pi-check-your-power-supply/)

~~~
sidechaining
Hey, I tried running your script but it doesn't terminate at all.

’wget -O -
[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/maxme/d5f000c84a4313aa531...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/maxme/d5f000c84a4313aa531288c35c3a8887/raw/f1d8e1a181ad13ddf56b45a162de564203c49676/raspberry-
power-supply-check.sh) | bash’

------
childintime
It really is time for a RISC-V based Raspberry Pi, with as much open
peripherals as possible. That would be a fantastic platform. Mediatek might
have something in the works already.

------
avip
Love the pi but lack of sleep mode makes it inadequate for off-grid IoT. No
dual sta/ap mode also a problem. Over/under voltage indication cannot be
relied on. All in all great for hobbiest grade, should not be used beyond.

~~~
steverweber
Seems that the hardware is capable of sleep mode.. however the devs are not
supporting it in their closed source firmware. Grr.
[https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1281](https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1281)

Sadly the open source alternative is lacking the human resource to replace it.
[https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-
firmware](https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware)

------
destitude
For easier technical comparisons of what is out there:
[https://www.hackerboards.com/home.php](https://www.hackerboards.com/home.php)

------
leowoo91
Other than being worried about open source os, that shouldn't be where to
stop. What about the hardware? Open source SoC specs are starting around 100k
afaik (example: sifive)

------
pilooch
Many thanks to the author for this very informative write-up. We are putting
our open source deep learning codebase to run on raspberry with good
performances for us, near 3fps for image object detection but we had little
insights on how things truly worked internally to the pi. Again, very
interesting, thanks.

------
rcarmo
I see a lot of folk mentioning SD card failures, but truth be told that I've
yet to have a corrupted card since the Pi 2 and the move to microSD (or if I
did, I forgot about it). Even considering I've run a cluster of the things and
have three running 24/7 for well over a year...

~~~
alias_neo
It depends on the use case, I have a dozen or so Pi's, one, which was logging
hundreds of lines a second and loading/executing lots of code/config had cards
die every other week, others with less load have had no issues at all.

First I used Samsung cards, it eat a bunch of those for breakfast, then I
switched to SanDisk, which did the same.

They all failed the same way; permanent read-only state.

The problem is that some did so silently, for weeks the pi was writing things
to it, but none of the data was lost until a reboot, where the FS instantly
travelled back in time.

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt: "The GPU cores run a real time operating system called ThreadX. This
operating system is closed source and rules the system without the open source
Linux Kernel being aware of it."

------
agumonkey
My favorite is the pi zero .. too bad the W version is twice the price. It's
tiny, cute and capable enough as a fat microcontroller.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Technically true, but "twice the price" is still just $10.

~~~
agumonkey
I know, it feels spoiled to say that, it's just that the wifi/bt chip doubles
the price.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
That's fair:) It is a little funny that we've gotten to the point where
(apparently) the entire SoC is as cheap as a wireless chip:)

------
patrickdavey
I love my pi! Today I took the 5 mins to install PiHole and it's great! No
more ads on any device on my home network. Lovely! :)

------
lucidguppy
One thing I don't understand is why there's no added arduino on the board as
an option. The a la mode isn't the same form factor - and an arduino chip
would be cheap to add and provide so much embedded options like adc and much
more pwm. Every project I've done included an arduino and it's a pain that
they don't sell a combo in one board.

~~~
rcarmo
Because it would increase the price. Their focus is on having one SOC that can
do most things, instead of specializing it on, say, GPIOs.

~~~
lucidguppy
If they combined a pi zero with an arduino - it would be the cost of a model
3... same price.

------
triiif
O

------
cmsj
tl;dr “the Pi is no good as a NAS”.

Pi wasn’t meant to be a DIY NAS, so use something else. No HN post required
about this really.

------
entity345
Keeping in mind what the Pi is aimed at, including the price point, it
actually has more features and power that one could have dreamt of.

When people say it is "lacking" something it should really be interpreted as
them saying that it is not a good match for their project.

~~~
ijb03qv7
It is lacking because right now there are better, cheaper alternatives, no
matter what your use case is.

~~~
fock
So, please elaborate and produce those alternatives. I know none which are
documented in a way that you can get next to any ARM OS up there without too
much hardship. Of course you can get an STM-based µC, but I guess this is
something else than a full-blown Linux-machine@40USD.

~~~
ekianjo
Odroid is a better alternative these days.

~~~
TuringTest
Oh, yes? How good is it in community support, learnability and cheapness? You
know, the original points of the Raspberry Pi.

~~~
ekianjo
What do you mean by learnability? It's Linux anyway. What you learn for the
Raspberry Pi can be reapplied to any other board out there. The only aspect
where compatibility depends on the board is the GPIO part.

Cheapness? Most ARM boards are in the range 50 to 60 USD and I don't know in
what world that is not "cheap". Plus, at such prices you can get stuff you
just can't buy with a Raspberry Pi anyway (specs wise), so it's not like they
are a little more expensive for no reason.

Community support, Odroid is good enough there, while I would not recommend
things like the BananaPi.

[https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-
xu4/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4/)

~~~
TuringTest
For absolute beginners, a common platform is essential to be able to follow
instructions, in special if they don't have external support and must learn on
their own; think kids in a rural town in a developing country.

Trying to follow tutorials for the Raspberry Pi on a different platform will
more often than not be a nightmare and demotivate anyone first approaching the
device. There's a network effect at play, making the most popular platform
also the most desirable for diving in.

As for price, 60USD is almost double the price than a Raspberry Pi 3 (and 10
times a Pi Zero), so it would be double the effort for someone with limited
economical resources in those countries.

------
aphextron
What I dislike about Raspberry Pi is that it gives people the wrong idea of
embedded programming. It led to a profusion of these tutorials and articles
where someone is booting up an entire operating system and coding in Python
just to make an LED light up. It would be much better if there were some kind
of equally popular open source platform that focused on actual
microcontrollers, with the associated focus on efficiency and performance.

~~~
sigstoat
> It would be much better if there were some kind of equally popular open
> source platform that focused on actual microcontrollers, with the associated
> focus on efficiency and performance.

arduino is certainly a popular open source platform that uses a
microcontroller, but it is increasingly distant from the practice of actual
embedded work.

in the unlikely event anyone is interested, i see embedded projects developed
every day. STM32 parts with STM32CubeMX-generated projects using the HAL is
quick, largely painless, and ships real projects on a regular basis. get a
nucleo board. they're subsidized by ST so they're both more powerful than any
arduino, and also cheaper.

~~~
dTal
Would you mind elaborating a little on what makes Arduino "distant from the
practice of actual embedded work"?

