It has been almost impossible to buy R-PI for so long now.
The foundation say they are still manufacturing 400,000 a month - but where are they going?
Certainly not to many retailers.
Is it time to find alternatives, and walk away from R-PI?
It has been almost impossible to buy R-PI for so long now.
The foundation say they are still manufacturing 400,000 a month - but where are they going?
Certainly not to many retailers.
Is it time to find alternatives, and walk away from R-PI?
There are already a number of alternatives out there: Libre Computer, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, BeagleBone Black, and more.
Some are more powerful. Some offer additional features (and form factors). All run some form of Linux. And most of them are available today.
If your focus is the GPIO then boards like the BeagleBone are already a better option. And if your focus is a low-cost computing platform, then you can add in the NUC and a ton of other items.
Will the mass market move to one of these? Probably not. With so many options there will just be fragmentation moving forward.
The apparent shift of focus for Raspberry Pi Trading, LTD to industrial/commercial customers does imply it is time for the non-commercial market to consider alternatives.
However, I doubt any will become as ubiquitous as the Pi had been.
What surprises me is that Beaglebone was available way before Raspberry Pi's launch. Yet R-pi has replaced almost every SBC in the market. Not sure why..
IMHO, Marketing and availability of open source collaboration. RPi has a pleasant website aimed at kids and beginners, great support organization, free online fun project books, all kinds of option cards with libraries, all being continuously improved.
rsjawale24 I will say dito to robogary's comment. And BTW I really don't care for it, It has almost no I/O but It handles things well, like a complete VOIP phone system but you have to add a IDE drive and a second Network port for the phones via my Cisco VOIP switch. but the dam thing will not support OpenBSD!!
rsjawale24 I will say dito to robogary's comment. And BTW I really don't care for it, It has almost no I/O but It handles things well, like a complete VOIP phone system but you have to add a IDE drive and a second Network port for the phones via my Cisco VOIP switch. but the dam thing will not support OpenBSD!!