this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Yeah its really too bad. I used to love the company but now I just don't see them making things for hobbies. Anyone know of some good alternatives? Ive heard good things about lepotato?
They were never about hobbies. We were a niche that they were happy to have, but they never cared. Origionally it was about education (which has a large overlap with hobbies so they served well).
Libreboard
OrangePI
I had one and returned it. The hardware was good but the software was total ass
That's the biggest issue. Support.
Most of the success of the RPi is due to rasparian and community support.
The official ones are a mess, but depending on your needs, you can use armbian. It supports orange pi boards, and is a nice and up to date distro.
My guess is that I tried 6 or more OSes on it. Like 2 would run at all, and in every case there kept being a lot of issues. It felt like it was hardware no one cares about supporting except one dude who made a version of Ubuntu for it. The whole damned experience was janky AF.
Got a RPi 5 and was able to get Arch running on it and it feels faster despite being objectively slower than the OPi
Never take software from a hardware company.
https://www.armbian.com/download/
I sank a ton of time trying to get several OSes running on it, including that one, with almost no luck. Out of the few that even did run, there were always piles of issues. You assumed I only meant the official OSes but I didn't.
Out of ignorance I literally thought this was a joke. “Orange you glad I didn’t say raspberry?”
Arduinos all the way down I guess
Lattepanda mu is apparently a very powerful alternative.
Yeah but most rpi projects don't need a powerful alternative. I don't need a full computer to run octoprint... But it's still too hard and pricy to get a RPi
Bigtreetech's btt pi is quite good for printer use - and general use tbh, but it is geared towards printers
Radxa for RISC-V SBCs with GPIO.
Have a couple boards and the software support leaves a lot to be desired. Armenian is a godsend, but sadly cannot fill every gap.
I have been using Odroid boards for many years. I currently have 3 C4 boards and 1 older C1 board. My kids use them as their computer in their rooms. Hardkernel is the company behind the boards, they also provided the official Home assistant blue devices that came pre installed with HASS.
Oh! Great idea - kid's computer. I'll be stealing that for my next project. Thank you!
looks at your name
Uh-oh. Guys. I think he's going to steal someones baby instead of making one himself....
The only downside I see with LePotato is that it has no SteamLink client (for now). Otherwise, there are plenty of OSes made for it. I have one SD card for CoreELEC to watch things on the TV, and one with Batocera for game emulators.
Orange or banana pi
I had so many ideas for things we could use these for that completely revolutionize what is now a terrible user experience. No idea how to implement on these ideas, but it's a start I guess.
Any N300 based PC is under $200, tiny, low watts, faster than a Pi5, and can run any distro because it's a regular PC.
I'm using a lepotato for Home Assistant. Works very well for months now, but I'm a bit worried about long term distro support
The pandemic shortage marked the end of the RPi as a hobbyist board. All the stock when to companies, and every hobbyist shop jacked the prices, and scalpers even more.
Do arduino stuff or look up chips with those cortexm0 arm processors. Like these: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3403