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by mschuster91 555 days ago
> I do find HN threads about R-Pi products weigh heavily negative.

The HN audience at large is still pissed that RPi chose to prioritize large industrial accounts over hobbyists during the Covid chip shortage era, and what few stock arrived at hobbyist distribution channels quickly got mopped up and re-sold by scalpers.

A few FOSS hardliners are pissed about binary blobs and a lack of in-depth documentation - which is something I do understand, after all RPi-as-an-ecosystem should be one of the larger accounts at Broadcom, so I'd expect the negotiators to finally make some progress on that front in a decade.

And others are pissed because Broadcom messed up Pi 4's PCIe implementation [1], or the RPi-side fuck-up with USB-C resistors.

And the final general group of pissed-off people I'm aware of - which again I support - are annoyed about the situation regarding the CSI and DSI (camera and display, respectively) interfaces. Cameras still are limited to official cameras only, and there's (almost?) no DSI compatible displays which means everyone has to pay HDMI licensing fees despite not needing to.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27150697

1 comments

You're not wrong I think. ;-)

I too was alienated by RPi's supply and scalping situation – combined with their seeming contempt for the hobbyists, teachers, and students who had actively supported the platform.

Another unfortunate aspect is that Pi 5 has a list price of $50 vs. $35 for the 4 and earlier models (and also requires a more expensive power supply.) The price seems to be heading in the wrong direction.