A Raspberry Pi as a platform for our projects after what happened in recent years – our alternative is the Orange Pi 5

We are hearing only bad news from Raspberry Pi:

And during the Raspberry Pi shortage, it was even worse:

The Raspberry Pi is well developed. But there are issues:

  • during the Raspberry Pi shortage this product was very unattractive
  • the only options where used old devices on eBay, or very old models
  • it seemed as if someone wanted to force us to buy a Raspberry Pi for industry with a special contract.
  • It is a similar situation as with the ADS1299 EEG chip from Texas Instruments. Since InfluxD ADS1299 products are at the end of line. And we hardly found a ADS1299 which fitted our needs. And InfluxDB products are still too complicated for our needs so we have to live with what is there.
  • Similar with Raspbery Pi. This product has become unattractive for us personally.
  • Our alternative for our projects is the Orange Pi 5:
  • https://petergamma.org/why-we-choose-orange-pi-instead-of-raspberry-pi-for-our-projects/
  • But also here, the community seems not to be there yet for this product. The Orange Pi 5 cannot be bought in Switzerland. So there are issues with warranty if we have to buy it directly from Aliexpress.
  • On the contract, sellers like Digitec Switzerland sell tons of Raspberry Pi products.
  • The problem seems that is is hardly possible to make money out of these products anymore.
  • So we try to promote the Orange Pi 5 as our platform as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi, a company which seems to have problems and treated costumers badly since years. And it has not become much better.

So we try to promote the Orange Pi 5 as our platform as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi

  • Raspberry Pi is a company which seems to have problems and treated private costumers badly since years. And it has not become much better as former Raspberry Pi enthousiast Jeff Geerling let s us know.
  • But also the Orange Pi 5 is not perfect for our needs. And if we look for alternatives for our projects, we found the Arduinos. But these are also already old cows.
  • And there are alternatives to Arduinos. We reported about those on our site. And these are Esp 32 etc, combined with new software platforms such as InfluxDB.
  • The Orange Pi 5 is not sold in Switzerland by any sellers.
  • Techstudio picked it up temporarily eventually as a reaction on our blog.
  • But is already gone.
  • So we have no sellers who offer a warranty on the Orange Pi 5 in Switzerland.
  • We are not hard- and software developers.
  • So we just publish the issues on our blog.
  • And we suppose sooner or later we will find what we are looking for by BRAVE search engine in the web.
  • The Orange Pi 5 is not a real desktop PC.
  • But to start to do some tests it is interesting.
  • We keep an eye on this projects, too.
  • We had for long time problems with Googel and Android phones.
  • Now we found a solution which is interesting. And that is Android 17 for instance on a Google Pixel 8 Pro which is ready for laptop duty.
  • We will also promote this topic.
  • Since a Google Pixel 8 Pro with Android 17 could be an interesting laptop. It has a long battery life.
  • This is an interesting option to test it.
  • But as a mobile platform for physiology Android phones are not the solution.
  • So it will be something such as an ESP 32.
  • But these kind of chips need a lot of time to get to know those and study those.