https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-keyboard-config looks promising.

I think that's what I'm going to try.

I have not tried Orange Pi SBCs, but I can strongly recommend DietPi, it is a very well done distro with lots of helpful CLI tools and an active and responsive development team.

Yeah, I've decided I'm just gonna splurge the ~$30 and buy a 4 GB model and see how it goes.

I can't speak for Orange Pi specifically, but I have a few things from Pine64 and they've been great. I'm using Armbian on my HC4 and it's doing well, and DietPi on another SMB from them. I've heard that Orange Pi is decent as well, I might have to pick up one and see for myself.

Considering the same. Would love to hear from others who have tried it.

The lack of community support and OS knowledge is my main worry. So honestly if any knowledge exists here. Opening a new community to share may be the best option.

Kind of serious question: or are the price increases because they are a publicly traded company now?

You're completely right. I always give my colleagues financial documents printed in 3d. I don't see why we still need paper.

Despite their shady firmware and atrocious software, HP do make some good quality hardware.

The Razorblade model of proprietary ink coupled with restrictive firmware falls apart when you role-your-own firmware.

Stratagems!

This question comes up a lot. 2D printers are actually significantly more complex thans 3D printers. The rrason 3D printers game much later was a materials problem and the fact that there was already injection molding which gives much better results for production, which means it took a while for big players to see the value in it. Here is my further comment on another post:

"Tons of 2d printer challenges.

The ink jet head at a resolution of <50um (as opposed to 3d printing resolution of usually >200um)

Combined with printing on many different surfaces and such: cardstock, printing paper, glossy, weights, stickers, etc...

This project "cheated" (I mean that not in a negative way, tons of open source hardware projects use proprietary components, my own does too for now) by using a proprietary ready-mades printhead, which saves the most cost and effort of the whole machine, and is the component that causes the most issues, generally.

I definitely want to try this out too."

https://feddit.nl/comment/20418339

Interesting that they went with an HP print head.... But I guess people can add other heads down the road.

Battle maps!

character sheet

Is there a real need to have paper over plastic at this point? So many things now require a plastic piece. Not seeing where paper is still being used to retain records or utilized for gaskets… I suppose cardboard but even then not much has changed in that tech.

3D Printers that are turned into Pen Plotters is also a neat project.

At that point we might as well have an identifier on every person that produces content…

Tracking dots originally associated with laser colour printers used yellow. Some use shades of gray and other techniques associated with the laser. Inkjet can’t get to the resolution of a laser. So probably not a need to worry.

Canonical project page;

https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer

Is there a legal requiment for the printer to print the little identifier on each page?

A paper printer! Weird that open source 3d printers are more common than open source paper printers.

Finally! Kodi on board!

Raspberry Aye!

yeah, like I always liked the Pi as essentially an arduino and easier way to spit stuff out to a screen, and native wifi. As they evolved some of the micro-pc stuff was cool for hosting a few services, but why do they keep pushing into the mini-pc sphere.

I guess I get that this is an expansion of the Pi-5, and that does kind of make sense for those who want it, but it seems like they're going to lose the plot in one of these generations soon.

Would be pretty darn easy to cut the slot in the case. And print a plastic cover that clips in.

You have to do a bunch of SMT soldering to add the circuitry, doesn't seem worth the hassle, especially since I wouldn't use the 500's built-in keyboard anyway. I wish it had included a pointing device like every laptop has. Using a separate mouse means you also need a desk to put it on, which is constraining. So I think I'd get a pi 5 and external keyboard if I wanted to stay with Pi stuff. There isn't that much attraction though.

You can run Python just fine in 64MB (were you thinking 64KB?). I've written substantial multi-threaded Python applications on boards like that. It used to be a lot of memory! But increase it if you want. You can run Micropython pretty comfortably with 64KB by the way. CPython might need more like 1MB, idk.

With a full Linux with a somewhat modern stack? In the 2000s, sure. In 2025? I doubt that.

On https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-p4 it says 768K. 32MB might be possible with SPI ram.

Yeah, like I said: the SPI RAM (also called PSRAM) is in-package. It's not a separate package, but integrated inside the ESP32-P4 package. It's only called SPI RAM because internally the ESP32 transparently connects to it via SPI.

The OS actually does useful things (multiple processes with memory protection) which is the point of wanting to run it instead of an MCU.

The ESP32 family utilizes FreeRTOS which gives you multiple processes, but sadly no MPU.

Just depends if you really need memory protection on such a tiny devices. I guess, some use cases need it, but I wouldn't think too many.

Yikes, that is pretty expensive, considering that most cheap Android phones have way more compute power AND a phone with a display etc.

Raspberry Pis in all shapes (except maybe the Zero line) are pretty expensive for the hardware.

But you buy long term support. There's hardly any other SBCs with nearly that level of software and hardware long term support. They sell each of their devices for around 12 years and give software support for at least that time. For low-quantity production, that's amazing.

At a prior job we designed an optical network bypass tap with a CM3 in it to provide a REST api and a Web UI. It was so simple to build all that and the 12 years of support meant that we didn't have to redesign anything over that time.

Most other SBC manufacturers are quite spotty with their LTS and their long-term hardware availability.

Plus of course there is the whole Pi Zero series. Shouldn't these CM's cost less rather than more?

The cheapest Pi Zero 2W (which is technically identical to the CM0) costs €17.80, which is a bit more than the $18 minimum price from the announcement. The more expensive variant of the CM0 ($26) includes EMMC storage on board which replaces the SD card. €8 isn't exactly much for a large SD card.

The good thing about the raspberry pi is that it costed less than 30€. At 200 it's no longer a tinkerer toy.