Why I Quit the Raspberry Pi

An ongoing updated list of 12 volt Laptops would be nice along with a starter video.

Rockin my 4b for the last 3 plus years 24/7 with 73 Linux/BAP and my G90. I also have a slightly higher end windows laptop that runs on 12v. But the Pi running headless with VNC is so easy to use from my desktop or my tablet or my phone from anywhere in the house. I just updated everything this week on the PI, since I am going to be using my backup 4b to work as a server in an FPV lap timer that works off of video signal strength as the drone passes the start/finish gate. But it is nice to know, if one fails, all I have to do is pull the other one and change SD cards and I am back in business. Thanks for all you have done to make the Pi such a useful piece of kit Jason.

You can also get used/refurbished/renewed Thinkpads for about the same price and much higher performance. Great video. 73

Hey how come i never came across this great channel before? Subscribed :) In any case, same here: i even bought a Pi 400 at some point, and used it for a bit, but i since sold it at a low low price (it was to a friend, so i can justify to myself taking a loss). I slowly came to the conclusion of the following: for me at least, unless you are crazy into ARM or energy efficiency, or unless you need the GPIO ports for some project, the Pi is just a nice curiosity. You'll probably get a better deal on an old laptop for most of your needs. Case in point: i got an EEEPC 901 and that tends to fulfill my retro gaming needs much better than the Pi. Maybe I am a corner case, but once I got over the Pi hype, it's just an ARM board, that depending on your needs, might be underpowered. No intent in throwing shade to the Pi, it's a great project, and much respect to it nonetheless, but it might just not bring me the best cost / performance ratio for my use case. Ultimately, for me, it was fun to play with for a while, but i'll use my old EEEPC any time of the week if given the choice.

01:50 - Regarding prices, the top-end 8GB Pi 4 was $75 — I think the problem is the Pi 5 was introduced only at $60/80, which is a $5 bump over the 4/8GB Pi 4 that came before... but there was no low-end model. I'm still hopeful Raspberry Pi introduces a $40 Pi 5 2GB model, it would be perfect for my radio hacking needs, especially with Pi Connect out now—I have a couple of my Pi 4s sitting in a rack with RTL-SDRs and Gqrx I can access remotely for some SDR work. That $50+ price point is tough to stomach for a hobby board!

I actually mostly use old thin clients bought used on ebay and similar platform. Thay typically come from well known brands (HP, Dell, Fujitsu etc.), so driver support is not an issue with linux. These small devices are great. Very low power, quality hardware, often passive cooling, good IO-Ports (USB, Audio, Network/Wifi), stable and standard power supply, and the even have a Power On button hi. A Raspberry in my opinion is only the better solution, if you need the Hardware IO-Pins for some electronic project. But in most cases you can substitute these with an Arduino connected to PC via serial or even WiFi/Bluetooth (esp8266/esp32). In addition there is also the issue, that Raspberry Pi ltd. now is traded on the stock exchange in London. I personally don't support this.

I moved off the pi quite a while back to mini PCs due to a lot of the reasons you mention in the video along with the fact that the X86 PCs are faster and run 12V. Eliminating wall warts is a big thing for me personally and in the field eliminating buc converters. The only time I use a PI is when a GPIO pin is required for connecting sensors and the like but some of that is now moving to Meshtastic. I did a video a while back about the mini PC processors that run on 12V from Celeron 3000, 4000, 5000 to the N95, N97, N100 and N305. The N305 is a core I3 processor and is still 12V. Also, a lot of monitors are now 12V also. I own several as well for portable I have some USB-C powered screens that I use that I power from the 12V PC. Thanks Jason.

Jason, you have made some of the coolest, most helpful videos I’ve ever seen and used for my own projects. You have also given a lot of us projects to try because you really got into the projects, showing us everything we needed to know…and I always enjoyed building those Pi’s right along with the content you shared. Heck, we’re Guys that enjoy the hobby and how cool is it to have something to do every other week with Jason as our Teacher?! Thank you for your Dedication to what we do and for inspiring us to go beyond, to reach higher in our thoughts and experience. Lastly, Thank You for always making yourself available to answer emails when I couldn’t find the answer myself, you Truly are a Ham Brother to me and literally thousands of us. Now, you can explain to my Wife why I need to buy yet another small form factor computer project so I can continue to follow along, I feel like your content mirrors that of the Highlights magazine I used to get as a young kid, I’m almost 56years old now and still having fun following along with these “educational” teachings! 😂😂 73 Jason. Danny NF4J

As a wannabe maker, the CM4 is my goto RPI, nowadays. Just add any 3rd party carrier board that's appropriate for the project. Same OS, community support, and minimal hardware cost. Perfect solution in an imperfect SBC world.

Been using a 12V minipc for most of 2024 so far. Had been using an older windows laptop. Nice to be able to plug it directly into my 12V power system (battery/solar). Never really got into using the Pi for ham - have some for 3D printing and home assistant. The minipc was cheap ($100 on sale) and came with windows. If I want to take it outside I have a USB-C powered monitor that I got for around $75.

I was blessed with a nice Microsoft Surface Pro from a lifelong friend a couple months ago, so I'm setting it up as my field computer. I have a Raspberry Pi4 running Hampi on two 32 inch monitors in the shack, and I bought an Inovato Quadra about a year ago that is my ADSB server. The "human malware" ruined so many things for us. We have never recovered from it.

I keep telling people, you only should buy a PI if you're doing something that needs GPIO support. Otherwise get a mini nuc like system!

The RaspberryPi was originally intended to be able to put a computer which can be interfaced with the world on every school desk in the UK. Just connect a mouse, keyboard and monitor and you have a cheap desktop which can be used to teach programming and electronics. That it could be used as a field kit is an indication of how successful it was at that and going beyond. That other computers are filling the general purpose niche is fine, probably good. As you say there's still uses in the shack, and beyond for which it is more suited.

Following your instructions i put together a RPi to do digital modes while traveling. Foumd out the hotel didn't make it easy to connect to the TV. While the go kit was compact the keyboard was separate and made carrying everything klugey. In steps the $60 jenkopotamous. Far more convenient to carry and lets me go anywhere.

Talking about leaving Raspberry PI, I'm about ready to quit and sell my Elecraft KX3-PX3- KPA100’s both sets (one set is in a Faraday Bucket as a “back-up” but I am now trying to sort out the back up KX3 because that my regular use KX3 is at Elecraft’s repair shop. Double whammy! I also have two fairly new i5 laptops HP Envys running Windows 11. My back up lap top does not show any bouncing green vertical bar at the green rectangular CAT Box in the lower left of the JS8Call desktop. No error messages either. I never had this problem until I tried TXing @ 100W from my backup KX3 via the KPA100 and HP which indicates transmission of 80-95 watts output and a 1.2 SWR. But no green vertical indicator bar at the CAT box. Only a short yellow bar stuck on the bottom, and zero ACKs to my Heart Beat signal even though JS8Call indicates transmission on the right. So obviously I am not transmitting. I can Rx. I have always selected VOX with no radio on the JS8Call set up menu. Where is the problem? Microsoft, Elecraft or JS8Call? I suspect it is Microsoft and after they stopped supporting the Audio CODEC1 Soundcard, my two Elecrafts would no longer work with my SignaLinks and I had to switch to a Soundblaster3!Y sound cards which worked, for a while, but now I have this issue with CAT. If I stay in this hobby, I am seriously considering converting everything to Linux, not just converting a Windows laptop to Linux via Mint. A pure from scratch switch. Naturally, Elecraft KX3 groups and general users of Elecraft don’t know anything about how to correct this problem. They all want to create YT videos how to set up. Over and over again. Or else the radios, computers, and sound cards they use. But troubleshooting? No one responds. Any ideas how to specifically identify the problem, assuming it is the problem, and if so, how to fix this? What am I missing? Thanks for any advice/ response. 73’s Karl, AF5LQ

I ordered an Evolve III several years ago. I love the battery life. But the computer I received had the memory and SSD soldered to the motherboard. As a retired IT guy, 4GB of memory and a 64GB SSD were totally inefficient. I ended up attaching one of my 1TB USB attached SSD to it. That makes portable use very cumbersome. I use the device, but it is the computer of last resort now. The performance is very doggy because of the lack of memory and the slow processor. I was extremely disappointed that I could not upgrade the memory and SSD internally.

I recently got a used Surface tablet for around 100 bucks. I think it is a near-perfect field computer (for x86). The monitor and keyboard are built in. Touch screen so mouse not needed unless you want to add one. Made to be portable. Enough horsepower for the radio apps. I am still getting it all set up, but I think it is going to be great.

I'm glad the Evolve is working for you. I've already had 2 fail, 1 right out of the box and another with about 10 hours of use.

Agreed, and for the same reasons. When constructing my Ham Radio display PC (Xastir, HamClock, WPSD Digital Voice Dashboard) I considered running a Pi. I have a bunch of them from the 2 to the 4, but wanted a bit more horsepower, and was concerned at the price. I ended up going on ebay and picked up an HP SFF PC with a 7th gen Core i5 and 8gb of memory for around $60. I had to add a BT/Wifi m.2 board (15 bux) and an m.2 SSD. All in, I think I was around 115ish. I had been looking at the Pi 5, but the basic kit was going to cost 125 or so for the cheapest one. So I have a much more powerful and capable x86 system for less money. Unless you need the tiny form-factor and or the extremely low power consumption, it doesn't make sense to use the Pi. Having said so, I do run an APRS digipeater up 6400 feet on a mountain top that is solar only. The Digipeater (YAAC / Direwolf) runs on a Pi3 and doesn't dent the battery bank hardly at all. The Pi is perfect for this scenario.

It's funny you put this video up... We were just discussing those little laptops yesterday at the Youth On The Air camp. They showed up with probably 10 or 12 of those little guys. I hadn't seen a laptop that small in many years here in Canada. The price is nuts at $60 and they told me they might be $80 USD now, but even then it's a great value.