When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sells for $385

Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by vablings on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:19PM (#50430308)

The RPI was really good because it was a powerful SOC that ran Linux with lots of GPIO and easy to operate. Now there are a dime a dozen ESP32 based projects that give you the same flexibility. You should almost never buy a RPI for projects these days, its completely overkill

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by aivisol on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:25PM (#50430423)

Do you have any references to ESP32 running Linux?

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by kotaKat on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:40PM (#50430728)

Sup. They just dropped some new hotness that does in fact run Linux. https://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/19197-the-esp...

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by IronBacon on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:29PM (#50432450)

I was confused the other day when I was browsing ESP32 on Aliexpress and found models with a price tag of 30~60 euros instead of a couple of bucks. So those models have enough silicon to run a general full fledged OS. Picture me impressed!

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by m4rtink on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:02PM (#50431103)

Well, in many use cases it acts as a single use device & does not run Linux or any OS at all.

It controls whatevwhatever hardware, reads some sensors, etc.

Then when needed gets oders from a normal computer over network or BLE via some simple protocol.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by Rohansi on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:47PM (#50431869)

As the sibling comment shows, the very latest ESP32 model (S31, not S3) can run Linux. But they can only access maybe 64MB of RAM, and most boards for sale will have significantly less.

In reality, though, the use cases where you need Linux and GPIO are very slim. It's overkill, an ESP32 is realistically more than powerful enough, and Linux isn't even good for GPIO.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by MomsAVoxell on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:53PM (#50431966)

On ESP32, its also quite fine to run FreeRTOS, and you can quite reasonably write cross-platform code which runs on both FreeRTOS and Linux, if that's important.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by joezydeco on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:08PM (#50431191)

Unless you designed a product around the RPI as your compute module, and now you're stuck. I was recently at the contract manufacturer that's building my company's product - they have a number of clients in this situation.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by to11mtm on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:10PM (#50432981)

Welp there's been about a decade of warning between the Acquisition of Broadcom by Avago, and almost a half decade since they settled an anti-competitive claim around, surprise surprise, restrictive contract terms.

IDK why anyone would build a full product around one, versus the more sensible option of maybe prototyping with one while planning a shift, whether it's the 'Version 2' or something. Anything other than dependence in a full platform when half the point of ARM was how easy it is to get your own semi-custom spin.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by vablings on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:24PM (#50433146)

Sounds like a gap in the market you could exploit. I am almost certain there are pin-compatible models out there

https://www.compulab.com/products/system-on-modules/?gad_sou...

I haven't cross refence but this looks like the Linux SBC that is inside the Eightsleep

https://www.compulab.com/products/computer-on-modules/cl-som...

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by left-struck on Monday November 09, 2026 @06:26PM (#50433845)

I remember a while ago seeing a lot of diy projects that were using raspberry pis when an Arduino or ESP32 was more than capable of being the controller in the project. Things that don’t require an os, just some control logic. At least that’s no longer an issue.

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