QUESTION OF THE MONTH: What version of the Raspberry Pi did you use in your last Pi project?

e14 Question of the Month

The Raspberry Pi single board computer (SBC) is one of the most favorite SBCs in the market today. It's been around for about 13 years and lists ten versions to date (Feb. 2025). While the Raspberry 5 is the most recent version of the Pi and some versions are no longer manufactured (e.g., 1A+, 1B, 1B+), there are earlier versions of the Pi still in use today.

0 BigG over 1 year ago

This makes things more interesting... there's a new CM4 announced by Raspberry Pi with extended temperature range ( -40°C to +85°C).

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-extended-temperature-range-for-compute-module-4/
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0 md_steve over 1 year ago

The last little thing I built was a network monitor that tells me when my wife is almost home. I used an older Pi just because I don't need much processing power to monitor the network for her car's IP address. When she is a few hundred meters away the car connects to the network and the Pi alerts me to turn on the outside lights and unlock the door for her.

Maybe I'll automate the lights and front door some day, but for now it's perfectly simple. I have just about every version of Pi but there's no sense using a $60 unit when an unused $25 device will do. Of course I also could have used a Pi Zero but then I wouldn't have finished this 'project' in one afternoon.
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0 shabaz over 1 year ago

Pi 3B+... low price compared to the later higher-memory models, and legacy code libraries work on it, and no excessive power requirements either.

If its insufficient I consider Pi 4, since I'm unsure how mature Pi 5 software is, nor aware of the power and heatsinking requirements.

But currently, I use the Pi Pico way more frequently, even if it needs connecting to a PC or other device to do the heavy processing.
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0 robogary over 1 year ago

I have an RPI5 , didnt see much advantage of it over the RPi4. Most of my projects are RPi3B, because Im a simple kinda guy.
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0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to genebren

genebren said:
The closest that I came to using one was in the PiCasso Design Challenge.

Close enough to the criteria in my books.
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0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to kmikemoo

Agreed.
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0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to dougw

I used to blame Covid19 supply chain issues for the 'recent' Raspberry Pi stock shortages.... now I see there was another factor at play.
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0 Workshopshed over 1 year ago

Just reused a Pi 2 to make a TV testcard.
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0 scottiebabe over 1 year ago

pico
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0 rsc over 1 year ago

I have three projects using Pi3B+, one Pi4, and one Pi5 right now.
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