Last Updated on February 2, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
We previously decided not to buy the Raspberry Pi 5, but the Raspberry Pi 4. And the reason for this because of the risk that at the next crisis the price for the Raspberry Pi 5 could shoot up to 200 – 300 USD as it was for the Pi 4 during Corona. But is the next crisis not already there? And the risk is that Raspberry Pi could be controlled by the stock markets completely sooner or later. And what are the consequences? We made very negative experiences with other SBCs which are eventually completely controlled by the stock market:
Something else which we expect that the same will happen as what happened with the Dreem 2 headband. It was expensive, it costed 500 USD for a 4 channel EEG device. Then a paper came out about it which compared it to the accuracy of a professional polysomnography device. This made the device interesting also for us as scientists. But it seemed that we where not the only scientists who where interested in this device. The other scientists who where interested in it seemed to be business scientist who wanted to maximize profit out of it.
Soon after the release of the paper, the Dreem 2 was not available anymore for ordinary people. But for scientists like us, it was still available for a special price which was not published in the web. Dreem gave us the price that it is now 1 400 USD for scientist like us, which made us retreat from this device.
Now we are in a similar situation with Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is a single board computer which has been developed at the world renowned University of Cambidge. This makes it interesting for scientists like us as well. But what happens if Raspberry Pi would be completely controlled by the stock market tomorrow? The Raspberry Pi for private users could be pulled from the market for private users and only offered to scientists like us for a special price for around 1 000 USD. This is what we expect if Raspberry Pi Inc. follows the example of Dreem 2.