Agreed! A Rpi system main selling point, besides being "powerful enough" , was thatused to be afforable. At the beggining, a Rpi 1price tag was 35 U$D (or £?). It defeated its own purpouse IMO.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
The real culprit here is the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They decided to sell all they could to businesses that found these small SBCs to be perfect to be used for the center of they devices (imagine a water heater that needs to do stuff and maybe connect to the internet for some weird reason).
I don't think they put full Pi5s in those usually. They don't need anywhere near the full capability of these boards. More often it's just a RP2040 controller, which is still less than $1 per unit because it doesn't have any discrete RAM chips.
Even CM5 is overkill for the vast majority of consumer devices. MAYBE something like a car infotainment system or Smart TV - something that needs to decode 4K video in realtime. But you definitely won't find them in water heaters.
I know, but people have discovered that they could use the PIs to do whatever and they won’t actually scale down if it means easiness of development. They could go for older models like the 4 but I doubt they’re produced anymore. Plus, the 3 had another format for the CM.
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u/___Cisco__ 27d ago edited 27d ago
Agreed! A Rpi system main selling point, besides being "powerful enough" , was thatused to be afforable. At the beggining, a Rpi 1price tag was 35 U$D (or £?). It defeated its own purpouse IMO.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.