Jeff GeerlingApr 2

Yesterday's news about the Pi 5 16GB being $299.99 was *not* an April Fool's joke (sadly)—DRAM pricing is killing the hobby SBC market, and it's not just Raspberry Pi that's affected.

I wrote more on my blog, here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/dram-pricing-is-killing-the-hobbyist-sbc-market/

Show threadSpiritApr 2

@geerlingguy the most novel thing about the raspberry pi is the accessibility of the GPIO pins. If a project doesn't require this or the small form factor, then maybe it's time to grab a refurbished think centre etc.

Or maybe, do the math on what hardware is actually required for the project to run with a small margin for error.

Show threadSolomon Schuler
@Spirit
Even if you do use GPIO pins, it doesn't make much sense to buy a raspberry pi. If what you're doing is building a robot, you can just use a low-end FPGA and program that in embedded C or verilog (in some instances). You don't need to go out and buy a $300 raspberry pi, when a basys2 board costs < $75 on ebay. Again if you're just doing projects that don't require the general purpose computer power that comes with a raspberry pi, FPGA is a nice second spot.
Apr 4 at 3:31pmWeb