[mrlambchop]

A very small point, but pulling from a feather form factor BOM to compare.

$0.12 for microUSB female connector (rated 1A) $0.26 for a USB-C female (rated 3A). Needs 2 x resistors (< $0.01), 20% larger board area

I think the power capabilities are the biggest item. If you want to pull higher current from a laptop for development or supply from a wall, you have to switch to USB-C.

I don't think either of these prices are that aggressive - pretty sure the cost comes down at volume.

[bee_rider]

I wonder if it would be worthwhile for them to produce both. Well, it will be hard to compare because the design cost doesn’t show up in the BOM, haha.

But it seems like it would be useful nowadays, since some laptop have mostly USB-C connectors, and USB-C to USB-C is pretty common. I’ve never seen a C to Micro. Do they even exist?

[peteforde]

I have an unfair bias because I design PCBs as a significant part of my job, and switching out to USB on this board appears to be a non-issue.

I have a Pico in front of me, and there's plenty of room there for a USB-C footprint and the two 5.1k resistors. Given that, I cannot reasonably agree that the "design" stage is significant.

In other words, it's a change that I would make to my own board in 2-5 minutes because the stakes are low. My ballpark guess is that such a change at RPi would have to go through a proposal stage, a PCB change review, and then there would be dozens of places to update documentation.

Since backwards compatibility is non-optional, this would result in a separate SKU, which means that the whole distribution chain needs to be updated with a new product.

So, I acknowledge that when you're working at their scale any change like this is the definition of non-trivial. What I don't agree with is the conclusion that it's not still clearly the right thing to do.

[asddubs]

One caveat is that the pico isn't so old that micro usb wasn't a weird choice even when it came out

[peteforde]

RP2350 and Pico 2 came out less than two years ago.

[javawizard]

> I’ve never seen a C to Micro. Do they even exist?

They do, in spades: https://www.amazon.com/3FT-Micro-Data-Charge-Cable/dp/B0DDWH...

I look forward to the day when they're no longer necessary.

[sagarm]

I've always used USB-C to USB-A dongle + USB-A to micro B.

[imtringued]

https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Same-Sky/UJ20-C-H-G-MSMT...

I'm on a phone that makes it a pain in the ass to switch languages. Do it yourself.

[ozim]

But then you loose market share to ESP32 where people just get USB C on their own.

[peteforde]

Comparing an RP2350 to the ESP32 family (which is broad) is very much apples to oranges; they each have feature sets which make them ideal for completely different use cases.

[ozim]

I just got ESP32 C6 on a custom board, with micro python it pretty much made all RPi's obsolete for a quarter of price for I2C, GPIO, UART, SPI communication while having WiFi 6 and BLE.

There is no more use case for RPi if I can have ESP32 C6 for $10 - maybe I have to do some soldering on my own.

Then if I need a minicomputer I'd rather go with MinisForum PC that is in price range of RPi and if I need I2C or GPIO I can pair it with ESP32 like as many as I want ESP32 instead of single one like RPi. Then communicate over wireless as much as I want with BLE or WiFi.

[peteforde]

Oh yeah?

Remind me how many PIO channels does the C6 have?

Also, could you confirm that the RP2350 consumes 2-3x less power when idling?

If you have the contact details for any certification labs that don't charge extra for radio modules even if you're not using them in your product, that'd be super helpful as well.

[ozim]

Unnecessary confrontation.

I am just hyped about ESP I have. I also have bunch of old RPi’s.

I guess power consumption can be lower on C6 if I turn off BLE and WiFi.

[peteforde]

It's not a question of "unnecessary". You just don't like it when someone points out that you're making shallow statements and you don't even realize it.

When you frame two MCUs intended for different purposes as competition, you're completely missing why there are so many different useful MCU families in the first place.

If you need a programmable IO state machine (or twelve) then you need the RP2350, period. It's a feature that enables entire domains of functionality that wouldn't otherwise be possible. For example, I'm using it to perform a real-time 12 output MIDI THRU that doesn't tax the CPU cores. Nothing like that exists on the ESP32 family.

[Scene_Cast2]

I get my USB-C connectors at around $0.08 at low volumes (LCSC).