The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026

walrus01

I know RAM prices aren't under control of the raspberry pi project, but something has gone dreadfully wrong in the economy when individual 8GB+ raspberry pi are now costing $200 to $300 for just the board before you add USB-C power supply, heatsinks, case, etc. If a person doesn't need GPIO pins or other direct access to hardware [1], I don't understand why people are trying to use them with 1080p and 4K displays, keyboards and mice as general desktop linux computers. You can get a far more capable small form factor or ultra small form factor used Intel Core i5/i7 something corporate desktop with 16GB of RAM and a real SSD for like 150 bucks on eBay (USD). It'll be significantly faster. Install barebones debian amd64, 'sudo apt install xfce4-desktop', it'll pull in all the xorg and other dependencies and also install a GUI login screen. 20 seconds of searching turned up something that doesn't suck: https://www.ebay.com/itm/820084016851?_skw=dell+optiplex+16G... The one raspberry pi model which is still close to the original's $35 price is the raspberry pi model 4 1GB which is $49 in Canada. Accounting for inflation and difference between USD:CAD, that's about the same as 35 bucks. I think there are still a ton of uses for raspberry pi 3B+ or model 4 1GB particularly because you can power them off an 802.3af power over ethernet switch and cable, to stick one in a weird place with power and ethernet in one cable, with a basic $15 PoE splitter to USB-C power on the load end. [2] [1]: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/rpi-gpio-pins [2]: https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Complian...

throwaway63467

Broke off my Pi 4Bs USB C port when using it to test link speed for new LAN outlets, when I wanted to reorder I realized the 4 GB version is now 120 EUR… Damn.

stonecharioteer

The Pi makes no sense anymore at these prices. But I love that I got to experience them when they were affordable. I owned multiple 4bs at one point, and even have a 2b and 3b lying around. I have a clusterhat that I tried to setup again, but realized that the Pi0Ws have only 512mb RAM each and that's useless now.

Joeboy

For the people who are sad about the high prices of the Pi range, I want to mention that I'm having a lot of fun with the Pi Pico 2. It's obviously not quite the same thing (ie. not a regular desktop computer), but it's ridiculously capable for its few-dollars price point. There's a lot you can do with it. If you just want a cheap computer the Pi's don't seem so great these days, but the Picos are where the fun is now.

ricardobeat

> 2025: For $120, the Pi 5 is now available with 16 GB good times

merpkz

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 is the sweet spot these days for price/performance, but it's nowhere to by found in stock, sadly despite the fact it has LPDDR2 type of RAM

lukeh

CM4s are very tricky to find right now. Should have stocked up… :( (I’m building an embedded product and it’s probably still the right choice, just more expensive and harder to find than when I started the project in 2024.)

XCSme

Cool, I started using a RBPi4 at I had purchased 3 years ago and never used. I use it to be able to start my "AI-agent" PC remotely, to send wake-up-on-LAN signal from anywhere. I am also thinking now to add a tasks queue on PI itself, so I can send requests directly to the PI, it stores them, and maybe once or twice a day, it turns on the PC, sends all the tasks, then turns it off.

kh_hk

A lot of the vibecoded interactive experiences remind me of these interactive books i had as a kid where you would open different hidden parts to explore. At some point it gets boring, i do not want to click one million times to find the information I am looking for. So, it is not interactive, this is a chore.

justin66

I will never understand why someone would pay $45 for a Raspberry Pi when they could assault a passing child and steal their Chromebook.

Retr0id

> 2024 [...] local AI becomes the new core topic. Did it?

graycrow

My PC runs Linux now because I bought the Raspberry Pi back in 2012, and I'm very grateful for that.

nekusar

Yeah, they lost the narrative. Hard. These days I can buy a old FB marketplace or Craigslist laptop and get EVERYTHING in 1. Maybe have to buy a new battery. Usually $100-150. If I need IO for controlling sensors and things, there's clone Arduino nanos for $5 from CN or $10 from US. And if anything burns out, it's a simple replace. I've been done with RPi for a while now.

hcfman

They are really good for edge devices. We have a Raspberrypi 5 running as a thermal imaging enabled wildlife camera with local AI. I don't think you can find another platform that can support this as well. https://youtu.be/k3ZRFHmEh-g?si=eNy3PUaHo_txMkBa

9999_points

When the raspberry pi became more expensive than a used thinkpad on ebay, they've lost what made them great.

kotaKat

Forgot that time that Raspberry Pi hired a cop and everyone got pissed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisstokelwalker/raspb...

VCFundedGenYer

Pis were good when 4Bs were less than $50. Now they are just ripoffs.