!dev - sorta
I swear Raspberry Pi's whole thing used to be that it's this cool cheap small computer you can play with and use for small projects because it practically cost nothing.
Nowadays it's literally cheaper to buy an actual small/old computer than the Pi with all the dongles and the cables and addons.
What is even the use of it anymore?
And it's not like the Orange Pi is *much* cheaper either.

i run a banana pi m2 berry as a nas for like 5 years now. they are still very cheap. the highlight of that board is btw, that it has a sata port on there

depending on what you want to do you can also just go to even smaller systems like arduino boards or stuff like esp32

For me, the selling points that remain is that they are extremely small factor and they are ARM based, which also draws less power. So technically servers running on Pis or similar SBCs are still more power efficient... I use my Pis to host a NAS, Gitea and Syncthing. But I also have an x86 small HP PC that runs some of my heavier services now, like Jellyfin and Pydio

@thebiochemic I thought you were meme-ing at first but wow, banana pi is a thing.

Thanks

Dude... are you unaware of Arduino's?

Oh and to answer your question (didnt check if answered but it's pretty obv imo)...

It is what it was always meant to be:
Something that piggybacks on the market arduino built that, it wasnt proprietary, allowed tons of real code and could make basically anything if you actually know elec engineering/code enough... components were always uninhibited for mass production and even encouraged by arduio selling kits for making the actual arduino... if u didnt mind soldering.

RaspberryPi came around much later with the DIY infection... they made littke things that were shinier than arduino with only a little increase in hw, but good marketing and simplicity for new users... then kept using new shiny stuff to up the prices/options.

Basically im telling u to learn to be an engineer

@awesomeest First, I'm not a dude(Tch..)

But I am aware of Arduino (wanted to say ofc, but perhaps it's not as common nowadays).

But those two are completely different platforms, and they excel at solving completely different problems/projects.

RPi is a whole computer, with an OS and is useful for when you want/need a cheap PC to do some task, for example some sort of server, "NAS", file IO, something that requires daemons or existing utilities/programs/services in an OS, etc'.

Arduino is a board, just a processor with some memory and the option to connect peripherals and sensors and the such. It's more suited for much lower level projects like working directly with signals, robotics, pure computation(Without the need of an OS or file I/O or libraries)

They are similar in appearance but either is great at what the other is less suited for.

@EqualityCoder
1st... your name is equality... just like i equally refer to immature people(regardless of age) as "kids", i sometimes use the term dude... idgaf what you gender is. If you need further proof of this find anyone whos chatted with me in russian or german for awhile... im totally genetically female(and dont understand the other stuff) yet even referring to myself i tend towards the, often shorter, male versions... sometimes it's very ironic... like when someone asks me how/why/length i know german, i typically say "...ein Übersetzer" instead of Übersetzerin (female translator)

2. Im well aware of both device types and many more. If youre using prototyping controllers for serious work, youd know it's simple and easy to take an arduino and add whatever components you want to it. If youre s hobbyist the ones like rasp pi are better because its a catch-all... whicg is also why the price is higher.

Just like with code, excess is bloat (money or components).