Today, we’re delighted to announce the launch of Raspberry Pi 5, coming at the end of October. Priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling (plus your local taxes), virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded, delivering a no-compromises user experience. Raspberry Pi 5 comes with new features, it’s over twice as fast as its predecessor, and it’s the first Raspberry Pi computer to feature silicon designed in‑house here in Cambridge, UK.
While I personally think there are more interesting alternatives to the Pi, there’s no doubt the Pi is the most compatible and most popular of these small board computers, and a big upgrade like this is definitely welcome – assuming they can actually stock these at fair prices at the end of October, when the fifth iteration of the Pi actually launches.
I really hope their sellers are able to keep them in stock. Designing projects around SBCs you can’t easily purchase is no good! The shortages have forced me to give up on multiple RPI projects in the past.
@ Alfman,
I definitely understand where you’re coming from. I ordered my last batch January( for the 4B8GBs ). My expected wait is February of next year. I completely forgot about that order til you mentioned the wait times. I already ordered the passive heatsink cases. For items such as IOT, and SBCs, I tend to order and forget about them, then I’d be pleasently greeted with the delivery eventually. I have a lot of projects since I went on disability, that I could not have worked on while I was still employed, such as Alternative Desktop and Server OSs, , Chinese HW, etc.. My next order will be when HW Virtualization (VTI equivalent) is introduced to the Pi, and/or expandable RAM.
At one point the decided to prioritize the business customer over the hobbyists, and it was virtually impossible to find any in stock. I remember reading (on their website) specifically addressing this, talking about more allocation to consumers (in other words, they pretty much agreed to that allegation).
Anyway, for a small project that requires a small PC, it is possible to find sub-$100 Windows machines on Amazon (really small like the size of a large hamburger). And if you include the power supply, SD card, and the increased RAM capacity it makes more financial sense than a RPi.
That being said, I am still interested in the new version, and would like to build something with my kids to “re” spark their interest in the computing.
I’m afraid that RPi is just becoming too expensive for small quasi-disposable projects.
Yeah, and too power hungry. People are talking about 6-12 watts for power consumption. :\
For me, the biggest question is when they’re going to fix the need to give your Pi a UPS to prevent SD card corruption.
I’ve already got a retired CuBox-i and a hand-me-down Vorke V1 for the higher-end stuff.
I see that the later models support POE through a HAT, including the 5. I’d use that in conjunction with a POE enabled switch, which is in turn, powered by a standard UPS.
1. That still sounds like it’d be at least as costly as the usual tactic I’ve seen people engaging in where the plug a battery bank in between the Pi and its power supply.
2. We occasionally sometimes get power outages that last longer than our UPSes at our house and we don’t have a backup generator. It doesn’t fix the corruption problem. (There’s a reason that, after hearing decades ago that it could corrupt things on power outage without a UPS, a I’ve NEVER formatted ANY of my Linux drives with XFS.)
Fundamentally, in my eyes, the Pi series is defective and I’ll only use Pi-based stuff as a last resort of no alternative exists and I can’t make time to build one myself.
I remember hearing about this years back, I didn’t realize it was still a problem though.
Do you know the underlying cause? OS bugs? RPI hardware bugs? Or is it the fault of the SD card itself?
This used to be pretty common problem with SD cards, they would corrupt themselves *internally*, below the layers that the operating system was operating on. I’ve experienced this type of data loss and the failed SD cards couldn’t even be reformatted at the OS level. Technically these failures were the fault of the SD card manufacturers and could happen in any electronics: computer/camera/phone/etc. The difference is an SBC is more likely to get unplugged without a proper shutdown – most don’t even have a shutdown button so it’s not possible to do a proper shutdown if you aren’t on a console.
It sucks if the SD cards are still failing, but maybe it’s time to solve it with external hardware like a super capacitor that gives the SD card more time to finish it’s writes under the hood before loosing power.
I don’t use Pis for this reason, so I mainly know it from “Yup, dammit. Still a problem.” complaints from people who do use Pis and these same people also use things like IDE-SD card adapters and other SBCs, so it seems to be some cut corner either specific to the Pi line or much easier to encounter.
I agree the RPi lost the advantage of its (almost-)unbeatable original price point of £35. And that better hardware can be bought at the same price. And that the shortage during (and specially towards the end of) the confinement/pandemic period really hurt its credibility. But I still believe this news is very relevant. RPi defined the SBC market, and they are identified by a great deal of people as _the_ brand. They also have the best hardware support (in terms of own and third-party “hats” with all kinds of functionality). They also enjoy the mindshare of legions of people.
Of course, I’ll do my effort to get my greedy hands on one of those shiny beasts, and do my best to help support Debian for it. And, maybe call me naïve… I expect it to be a success.
That’s a good point. While the more expensive rpi are obviously vastly more powerful they are also like twice the price of the original. I think the rpi is trying to be too many things at once and solve every use case people have tried to use them for.
I agree. It’s probably time to split the products into an “education” line and a “commercial” line.
The “education” line can be low cost, low power, and spec limited.
The “commercial” line can expensive, high power, and high features with dozens of iterations.
The Compute Module and carrier boards kind of are already the “commercial” line, but they keep adding features to the RPi which maybe aren’t necessarily needed. The RPi can be improved. Hardware AES is an improvement; requiring active cooling is not an improvement.
Flatland_Spider,
I present to you with the LEGO “education” line:
https://education.lego.com/en-us/
Every generation is more expensive than the previous one, and they of course come with real good benefits, like a full educational curriculum, and very easy to follow projects path.
(Again, if it is sold to schools, or any other government entity, they would be free to jack up the prices).
sukru,
The level of inflation for legos blows my mind. Lego sets that used to cost tens of bucks are $130 dollars. My kids have these at their school and they have to be shared between students. I have nothing against lego, but I feel that for the same price you’d get a lot more mileage with commodity parts like servos, arduinos, and hardware store parts. It would also be a better learning experience in terms of real applications.
I guess part of the reason schools might favor lego kits is because the teachers probably aren’t qualified to teach real world prototyping. That’s just the way it is.
If I could have my way I’d like to bring back the vintage erector sets. They had the same “I can use these generic pieces to build whatever I want” feel as legos but unlike legos they were far more useful!
https://builtbykids.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/vintage-erector-set.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a4/ad/7a/a4ad7a8846b40cb0ed97c2c3398fa11c.jpg
https://clickamericana.com/wp-content/uploads/Vintage-Erector-set-construction-toys-750×500.jpg
They were before my time. but I had a friend who’s dad collected them and wow were they impressive! Unlike legos, you could fabricate real heavy duty parts and machinery! Sure, with legos you can build gearboxes, but those are cheap plastic bits that break apart with motors that can barely do anything. The vintage erector sets were made of steel and had heavy duty motors. What you could build with them was no joke.
Alas, when I was a kid they had already been replaced by cheap plastic toys so I never had one of the original erector sets myself.
Alfman,
Haha, tell me about it 🙂
(Want to get my kids to robotics, and being able to buy one of these would be great. Instead, as you said, the school will give them access on a shared basis).
I thought Debian was in pretty good shape as far as RPi support goes because of Raspberry Pi OS and Armbian. Some other distros have more of a struggle to support it due to licensing of some drivers, like Fedora.
Yeah. Like it or not, they’ve done a really good job of making it easy to get started with the RPi.
Nope. Raspberry Pi OS does not play well with Debian, they just derive from us. I adopted the Raspberry Pi builds from Michael in mid-2018, and together with some other Debian people managed to get support running for the whole RPi lineup (up until 4, I’m sure it will take a while before a “regular” Linux can boot on the 5.
gwolf,
Interesting, can you elaborate on what you think the primary barriers are? I’m curious whether it is hardware or software posing the larger challenges.
Hardware support under ARM platforms is not as easy as for x86, even for well-known SoC platforms. You have to get a full system description handed over to the kernel, in the shape of a device tree (DTB).
There are some, albeit few, ARM systems that do this (finally!) using ACPI; I recently heard ACPI support for RPi4 is possible if you boot via UEFI, although have been unable to get the needed time to test it. It would be *beautiful* if RPi5 can boot via UEFI and does not require waiting for months until the kernel hacker community “cooks” a DTB for the mainline Linux kernel.
(and no… The DTBs used for Raspberry Pi OS don’t work for mainline Linux ☹)
I believe they, also teh chipmakers, Tiawan Semi, Micron, etc. are artificially strangling the market, creating demand, to drive up pricing.
Here in the US, RPi 4Bs are currently available from stock at $35 (1GB) and $45 (2GB), as are RPi Zero Ws at $15. What I’d personally like to get hold of are RPi Zero 2 Ws ($15), but availability on those has always been rather spotty. For more disposable projects, I’ve found that the often available RPi Pico and Pico W running MicroPython can be remarkably powerful for a $5/$6 device, particularly if one takes full advantage of the PIO. Thom, I’m curious, what “more interesting alternatives” are you thinking of?
Presumably, the more interesting stuff is the Pine64 stuff. Especially the Rock64 and RockPro64.
Hardkernel has had interesting stuff, but their support for anything other then a specific kernel and distro version is sus.
FriendlyElec’c NanoPI line looks cool for some small servers or firewalls. Especially the R6S with the dual 2.5G NICs.
The RPi Pico/Pico W is probably the most interesting thing the RPi Foundation has going on currently. I haven’t really figured out what I would do with one, but it’s interesting. Especially since TinyGo supports them.
Let’s not for get RPi Foundation still employs a cop. https://petapixel.com/2022/12/09/raspberry-pi-under-fire-by-creators-who-are-upset-it-hired-a-former-cop/
It’s been mentioned the AI chip from Sony likes to phone home.
Ugh. So boot times aren’t the only reason for me to try to avoid Pi-based retrocomputing refits.
Total non sequitur.
The guy worked for the police. The police do surveillance of suspected criminals, for the purposes of law enforcement.
They’re not tracking your shopping and browsing habits.
christian,
Even so, a lot of people don’t like the idea of government spying/tracking even though they’re not the target. Obviously we can debate whether such a view is reasonable, but clearly some people do in fact find it offensive.
Consider the police departments that deploy cameras with real time tracking of license plates (many NYS troupers around here have these). For some people it’s the same old “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear”. But for other people this is creepy as hell.