The hardware itself was never particularity novel. The strength was in the software, support, and community which made the barrier to entry low and learning new skills easy.

It used to be $30. That's why it goy popular. Broligarchs ruined that along with everything else too.

Because of its documentation, community and software ecosystem. That makes it especially a good entry point for beginners. At least it was when prices were still acceptable.

the Pi was never the important thing. the community around it was always the big draw. that community inspired a whole generation of DIYers and people interested in STEM. the impact of the Pi is understated, if anything, because that community branched out to other devices and tech.

I got a couple Pi Zeros for $5 each. For years they both have been significantly contributing to my quality of life by blocking ads on two networks with Pi Hole software.

The Pi was revolutionary when it first came out, there had never been a device with its combination of small size, compute capability and low price before. But over time other devices have caught up if not exceeded the Pi's capabilities and it no longer stands out in any particular way.

I thought we all agreed two years go to let this meme die because Steven Chowder (a well-known grifter) is the guy in the photo.

I digress; how old are you OP? Do you remember when the Pi first launched? As everyone else already pointed out, it was revolutionary for its time.

Edit: And yes I spelled his name incorrectly on purpose; fuck him

It used to have its use cases and still can if you can get one cheap. I bought a 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 last year for €35. It runs Home Assistant and Pi-hole. I prefer it over leaving my media server running all day since it uses vastly less power.

Overrated? No.
Overpriced? Yes.

I agree that it is overrated, but I do also think that it still has value and is legitimately pretty cool. It's nice that it's so tiny and cheap and easy to set up in like under an hour. Low power consumption for simple things that are nice to run all the time makes it feel pretty friendly on the environment versus running a whole desktop computer or server 24-7.

Yet, like many things that are really good, there ends up being a lot of people who want to sing its praises from the heavens as being not just really good, but the greatest thing ever. And so indeed the Pi is also overrated despite being really cool

Kinda. I'm self-hosting on a computer that, if it were a human child, would be in third grade. Didn't need to buy a Pi with worse specs to do the same job at twice the hassle.

I think the original affordability with the addition ready made projects and easy accessibility made it really stand out in peoples minds.

Yes, you do wonder. Glad I could answer that for you.

I just started with my new project, a table top retro arcade machine. Using a raspi 5 is the best I can get now, even overpriced. The prices are through the roof for thin clients or mini PC so my planning shiftet to raspi again.

If you have another suggestion I am open for it. I should be capable to run under Batocera and emulate up to Gen 6.

I'd be all about those things if you could buy 20 of them for 50 bucks.

Get a new meme format, or I'm going to continue to assume you like Steven Crowder and are, in fact, an ignorant bigoted crybaby nepo-turd.

PREACH OP!

When Raspis first came out they were genuinely a massive innovation in having small computers people could learn on or build hobby projects from very cheaply.

Over the years this has changed as they have gotten expensive to the point of being out of this price range these days. There are cheaper alternatives.

I still think they are pretty cool pieces of technology for what they are but probably more niche than they used to be now.

for the current price, yes

when you gould get a decent tiny computer that is capable of real tasks for $60 it was great. $200 not so much. especially when you can get a used enterprise thin client for the same price

Agree with the revolutionary access to simple computers for hobbyists.

I haven't used them much myself but now that I am thinking more about automation at home I'm realizing there are much cheaper and safer (lower current) options for things I want to achieve as compared to electronic or electromechanical control systems I am familiar with from industrial settings.

I think Raspberry Pi played a big part in creating the environment where there was a market for all this other innovation.

Esp8266/Esp32-gang-with-asneeded-add-ons riseup!

I managed to get one second-hand from a friend who had upgraded. It was my first entry into self-hosting and running 24/7 automations, like public media archival scripts. Due to the popularity and forum support, it was pretty low-friction which allowed me to dive in easily without a mentor or excessive barriers. I had no hardware experience beyond assembling a PC from parts, so the accessibility was what gave me confidence to start.

A mini-PC would have been far more than needed, to the point it's wasteful for this kind of work, and the better embedded options (I'm sure there are plenty, and cheaper) were just too intimidating or manual to have drawn me in.

Ancient cat at least walked into your home and killed pests

Yeah, I gave up on Raspberry Pi when they prioritized volume commercial customers over long tail users like me that needed just one.

The real question is "what's next?" The niche is "a single board computer for hobby or technical experimentation". So:

• low cost
• low power
• as much compute as you can get for that low power
• built-in standard peripherals, ditto above — with respect to radio you can get for that low power
• extensible (I/O pins are nice but what's really needed is a standard bus people can build on)
• wide support infrastructure (IDE, libraries, circuits, hats, etc.)
• hate to say it, but "AI ready" in the hushed tones of people running 28.9M parameter Large Language Models (LLM) on an $8 microcontroller (ESP32-S3) https://github.com/slvDev/esp32-ai/tree/main to push the inference to the edge

I'm thinking it will be RISC-V and not based on proprietary System on a Chip (SoC) technology.

I'm keen to learn what readers think it will be.

Change my mind.

It's cool because it draws next to no power at all.... Unless your specific use case needs to survive on a bare trickle of electricity there is no reason anyone should be buying a pi over an off-lease 1L mini-pc