Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you can do with open-source stuff. Something I was wondering about recently was, I wonder why Raspberry Pi boards (and similar, I suppose) aren't being adoped & used more for commercial products.

For anything requiring a computer, I feel like often, companies decide on a desktop or laptop computer running Windows (which requires buying a license) or perhaps a Mac system, and perhaps developing a software program to run on that computer if needed. I feel like many times, a Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on it, would be perfectly suitable and would be much cheaper than buying a standard laptop/desktop with a commercial OS. I know this wouldn't be true for all cases, but for many cases, I think it could save significant money. And if software is needed, there are good software development tools for creating software for Linux.

Nightfox
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Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: Nightfox to All on Sun Dec 10 2023 12:18 am

Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you can do w

For anything requiring a computer, I feel like often, companies decide on a
I feel like many times, a Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on ses, I think it could save significant money. And if software is needed, th

Nightfox

I have seen plenty companies building their own solutions in house using RPis or similar boards and then deploying them. You just don't see them because they run in a blackbox behind the scenes.

Realistically speaking, it is cheaper to buy used hardware in bulk which has an amd64 capable processor than it is to buy rpis in bulk on which you cannot run the software you need to run because no arm binaries are available.

--
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On 10 Dec 2023 at 12:18a, Nightfox pondered and said...

Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you can
do with open-source stuff. Something I was wondering about recently
was, I wonder why Raspberry Pi boards (and similar, I suppose) aren't being adoped & used more for commercial products.

Well, what would that look like? Would these be things that
end users would run on devices that they own, or would the
Raspberry Pis be used only as a development/testing/deployment
platform for hosted software?

For anything requiring a computer, I feel like often, companies decide
on a desktop or laptop computer running Windows (which requires buying a license) or perhaps a Mac system, and perhaps developing a software program to run on that computer if needed. I feel like many times, a Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on it, would be perfectly suitable and would be much cheaper than buying a standard laptop/desktop with a commercial OS. I know this wouldn't be true for all cases, but
for many cases, I think it could save significant money. And if
software is needed, there are good software development tools for
creating software for Linux.

If we're talking about a corporate computing environment, then
this is leaving out support considerations. A Raspberry Pi is
a neat device for a hobbyist, or even for light use in a home
environment, but they're fiddly: SD cards are not a durable
storage solution for general compute, they're slow, and there
are issues around application availability and vendor support.
For a lot of organizations, the expensive bit isn't the device
itself, but supporting that device over its service lifetime:
TCO may be cheaper with a laptop or desktop running Windows or
whatever, simply due to lower support costs.

There are also issues of volume. RPis were pretty unavailable
due to pandemic-related supply-chain issues over the last few
years.

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Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: Arelor to Nightfox on Sun Dec 10 2023 07:22 am

I have seen plenty companies building their own solutions in house using RPis or similar boards and then deploying them. You just don't see them because they run in a blackbox behind the scenes.

I work as a software developer, and the last company I worked for was a consulting company, so I helped on many different projects for our clients while I was there. Several of them were desktop software programs for Windows. That's partly where my question came from. We did have one project involving a new piece of hardware where the main developer on that decided to use a Raspberry Pi inside an enclosure with a built-in touch screen (the device looked similar to those tabletop devices that restaurants often have which let you pay at the table, etc.)

Nightfox
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Re: Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: tenser to Nightfox on Mon Dec 11 2023 05:17 am

Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you can
do with open-source stuff. Something I was wondering about recently was,
I wonder why Raspberry Pi boards (and similar, I suppose) aren't being
adoped & used more for commercial products.

Well, what would that look like? Would these be things that end users would run on devices that they own, or would the Raspberry Pis be used only as a development/testing/deployment platform for hosted software?

I was thinking something that end users would run - But I was thinking mainly of applications where the end user might be someone inside a company doing something for the company, rather than a home user. For instance, I've worked at a couple high-tech companies that make devices that take a silicon wafer and scan it with a laser & such to generate an image, so you can look closely at the surface for defects. They often use a PC with Windows, with their own custom software, to interface with the wafer scanner to collect data.

Another software project I worked on was working on a Windows program to interface with a medical cart (to manage drawers and user access). It interfaced with the cart via a serial port.

These are things I was thinking could probably done with a Raspberry Pi running Linux, rather than a PC running Windows.

There are also issues of volume. RPis were pretty unavailable due to pandemic-related supply-chain issues over the last few years.

Yeah, that's definiately a problem. But there are also similar things available that are comparable to the Raspberry Pi (which is why I said "and similar" in my original post).

Nightfox
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On 10 Dec 2023, Nightfox said the following...

Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on it, would be perfectly suitable and would be much cheaper than buying a standard laptop/desktop with a commercial OS. I know this wouldn't be true for all cases, but
for many cases, I think it could save significant money. And if
software is needed, there are good software development tools for
creating software for Linux.

Nightfox

I feel this is mostly true. I haven't used the the 5 yet but video playback online had been a bit of an issue. Youtube really bogs down and most streaming services do as well. Now if you put a dedicated system in like kody then it seems to work better.

I know the drivers for the video have been in beta for many years and they make minor improvements over time if you flash the eprom but most regular users will never do that.

Other than this I fully agree this could be a solution.

|23|04Dr|16|12Claw
|16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |20|15Radio|10@|14HTTP://Noverdu.com:88
|16|10 Standard ports for SSH/Telnet |04 WEB|14@|12HTTP://noverdu.com:808 |20|15Global Chat, Global Messaging and Games! |16|10Ditch the Unsocial Media

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On 10 Dec 2023 at 09:29a, Nightfox pondered and said...

Re: Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: tenser to Nightfox on Mon Dec 11 2023 05:17 am

Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you
do with open-source stuff. Something I was wondering about recently
I wonder why Raspberry Pi boards (and similar, I suppose) aren't bei
adoped & used more for commercial products.

Well, what would that look like? Would these be things that end user would run on devices that they own, or would the Raspberry Pis be use only as a development/testing/deployment platform for hosted software

I was thinking something that end users would run - But I was thinking mainly of applications where the end user might be someone inside a company doing something for the company, rather than a home user. For instance, I've worked at a couple high-tech companies that make devices that take a silicon wafer and scan it with a laser & such to generate an image, so you can look closely at the surface for defects. They often
use a PC with Windows, with their own custom software, to interface with the wafer scanner to collect data.

Another software project I worked on was working on a Windows program to interface with a medical cart (to manage drawers and user access). It interfaced with the cart via a serial port.

These are things I was thinking could probably done with a Raspberry Pi running Linux, rather than a PC running Windows.

Honestly, any "Pi-like" ARM SBC would likely be too unreliable
for something like that. I don't see why you couldn't run Linux
on an inexpensive x86 (or workstation-class ARM) machine and
reap many of the same benefits, though. Again, it's about the
TCO over the lifetime of the device, not just the initial capital
cost; for both of these applications, I imagine that the cost of
the computer is a fraction over the overall cost, anyway.

There are also issues of volume. RPis were pretty unavailable due to pandemic-related supply-chain issues over the last few years.

Yeah, that's definiately a problem. But there are also similar things available that are comparable to the Raspberry Pi (which is why I said "and similar" in my original post).

Again, it comes back to TCO, support, etc, over the life of the
device, and if the "computer" part of it is a small fraction of
the overall cost of the project, it's a lot less compelling.

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Re: Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: claw to Nightfox on Mon Dec 11 2023 07:47 am

Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on it, would be perfectly
suitable and would be much cheaper than buying a standard laptop/desktop
with a commercial OS. I know this wouldn't be true for all cases, but
for many cases, I think it could save significant money. And if software
is needed, there are good software development tools for creating
software for Linux.

I feel this is mostly true. I haven't used the the 5 yet but video playback online had been a bit of an issue. Youtube really bogs down and most streaming services do as well. Now if you put a dedicated system in like kody then it seems to work better.

Well yeah, it all depends on the application. If video playback isn't required, then that wouldn't be an issue.

Nightfox
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Re: Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: tenser to Nightfox on Tue Dec 12 2023 05:35 am

Another software project I worked on was working on a Windows program to
interface with a medical cart (to manage drawers and user access). It
interfaced with the cart via a serial port.

Honestly, any "Pi-like" ARM SBC would likely be too unreliable for something like that. I don't see why you couldn't run Linux on an inexpensive x86 (or workstation-class ARM) machine and reap many of the same benefits, though. Again, it's about the TCO over the lifetime of the device, not just the initial capital cost; for both of these applications, I imagine that the cost of the computer is a fraction over the overall cost, anyway.

That's true, there are inexpensive x86 systems that could provide the same benefit. And true about overall cost too.

Nightfox
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Hi Nightfox,

Over the years, I've become more and more of a believer in what you
can do with open-source stuff. Something I was wondering about
recently was, I wonder why Raspberry Pi boards (and similar, I
suppose) aren't being adoped & used more for commercial products.

[...]

program to run on that computer if needed. I feel like many times, a Raspberry Pi with a case/enclosure, with Linux on it, would be
perfectly suitable and would be much cheaper than buying a standard laptop/desktop with a commercial OS. I know this wouldn't be true for

I have four Pi's inistalled at a client site. 3 are Pi3's and one is a
Pi4. They are connected to aprox 40" LCD TV's and are used to display the
job board of outgoing cars (Car repair business). They have been in
operation now for approx 4 years for the 3's and two for the pi4.

I have them using the browser in full screen Kiosk mode. They do
have keyboards connected, but are not for general use. Only to allow
them to reboot the pi's if neded.

Writes to the SD card's are turned off, and all logging is as well, the
browser cache is set to a small ram disk (20mb) as there is no graphics displayed. They are all on small UPS's. There's only been a couple of
times when I've needed to go and re-doo the image.

They used to run old pc's to do this for one display initially. It fell
over one day and I said about the power usage, plus the installed windows
was out of date. I said I'd get the machine going for now, but a better soloution with the PI's was the way to go...

They had great results with the first unit, so added 1 another and then
the final unit's the past few years.



\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking Amiga 3000 powerd, Linux M68K.



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Re: Raspberry Pi in commercial products
By: vorlon to Nightfox on Wed Dec 13 2023 09:26 pm

I have four Pi's inistalled at a client site. 3 are Pi3's and one is a Pi4. They are connected to aprox 40" LCD TV's and are used to display the job board of outgoing cars (Car repair business). They have been in operation now for approx 4 years for the 3's and two for the pi4.

They had great results with the first unit, so added 1 another and then the final unit's the past few years.

That's pretty cool :)

Nightfox
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vorlon wrote to Nightfox <=-

Rocking Amiga 3000 powerd, Linux M68K.

Do tell!



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