It’s fairly insignificant in the scheme of things, and there’s no hardware as yet for us to look at, but there it is. Tucked away in a device tree file, the first mention of a Raspberry Pi 500. We take this to mean that the chances of an upgrade to the Pi 400 all-in-one giving it the heart of a Pi 5 are now quite high.
We’ve remarked before that one of the problems facing the Raspberry Pi folks is that a new revision of the regular Pi no longer carries the novelty it might once have done, and certainly in hardware terms (if not necessarily software) it could be said that the competition have very much caught up. It’s in the Compute Module and the wildcard products such as the all-in-one computers that they still shine then, because even after several years of the 400 it’s not really seen an effective competitor.
So we welcome the chance of an all-in-one with a Pi 5 heart, and if we had a wish list for it then it should include that mini PCI-E slot on board for SSDs and other peripherals. Such a machine would we think become a must-have for any space-constrained bench.
A model with power, usb and video through a single USB-C would be THE product.
Based on their history with USB-C (and somewhat their video connector choices), I have my doubts that’d go well or, even worse, not be considered.
Or through any of multiple!
Plus networking!
What’s the use case for such a thing?
Genuinely wondering.
Either you have a breakout hub, with all its attendant wiring, which just adds additional connectors and shoves the problem down the line. Or It demands a special all-in-one device on the other end, and I don’t see a reasonable case for such a thing to exist.
“Or It demands a special all-in-one device on the other end, and I don’t see a reasonable case for such a thing to exist.”
Yet they do, in the form of monitors which can power a laptop and receive video, usb and networking. Dell, IIyama, amongst others.
If any of those are touchscreens, theoretically you wouldn’t need a mouse even though I much prefer to have one.
I have a Dell monitor with 65W of power delivery, display, 4 USB ports and Ethernet, all through one USB-C cable. With wireless keyboard and mouse all I need to do when connecting my laptop is to plug in one cable.
And these monitors are cheap when you are buying used one.
Use cases :
I travel with work . Before the pandemic I lived in hotels 4 nights a week. I used to carry 3 laptops, one corporate, one engineering and one personal. It destroyed my shoulder over time. Now I carry one corporate and my PI400. The 400 plugs into the hotel TV and gives me web, email, media, retro gaming , SIP phone home, Remote desktop to home and so much more.
I also have a camper van. my PI400 plugs into the TV and runs off of the cigar lighter socket. When unable to go camping, the van doubles as a mobile Ham radio shack. The TV, Pi400, and radio gear connected via USB gives me all the radio apps I could ever need. And running from 5 v DC means no mains inverter needed (like a laptop charger) to generate noise that wipes out the radio (a huge problem at home).
The Pi400 was revolutionary to me, and my ways of working ! will I be investing in a 500 should one become available ? OH **** YES !!
I’ve actually bought Steam Deck for this use case of a having a small portable computer dockable to any USB-C. I consider the RPi keyboard utterly unusable anyway and I carry Urchin BLE keyboard with the deck.
I’m all for it as an option but usbc as the only video connector would be a weird choice
The Raspberry Pi 5 hasn’t taken the world by storm because it hasn’t maintained the same level of affordability as previous models. The 4 had a cost-reduced, limited-RAM version that still hit the same $35 price point as the original version. The 5 starts at $60 for the reduced-RAM version. I’m sure it’s because of the added cost of the extra expansion slot capability that drives the price up, but one of the big selling points of the system was the commitment to that low price point.
It’s because of that price point that the devices such as the Zero series and the Pico series are still flying off the shelves.
Depends I guess on the person in the world. I have 6 RPI-5s in play now and one one on my bench for testing stuff. Price isn’t that big of deal. I am liking it! That said I am glad they came out with the 2GB as I don’t see my self ever needing a lot of memory. Even 1GB would work for me. You can still buy RPI-4s and Zeros for even lower price point that meets ‘your’ need. And for small projects the Pico and Pico 2 are nice to use at a good price. As with everything, you pay to play at the price points you can afford.
I have a RPI-400, but after testing it, it was put back on the self. I have good desktops already. My original plan was to use the internal base board for a project (as connectors are on one side) … but that hasn’t happened yet. I’d probably get an RPI 500 if they came out for the same reason :) .
The numbers they are shipping dont agree with you.
My ‘guess’ is the RPI4 meets most needs for people that already have them (and/or world economy) if ‘numbers’ shipped is down . I went for the RPI-5 big time because they solved the power problem with the USB ports that I got aggravated with. Also the USB ports are all independent. Ie. each port can be maxed out data in/out wise and not interfere with each other unlike the RPI4. I like to run some of my RPIs from a large external SSD drive instead of the SD card for reliability, speed, and more space. The RPI5 handles the drives with ease. On one of the systems I added a portable 4TB HDD (no external power) on the other USB 3.0 port (so two drives in operation). All works, no disk glitches, no reboots .. just works as you’d expect. Using rsync to tranfer terabytes of data was nice and smooth… What’s not to like? A little credit-card sized power house with gpio, camera connectors, and a pcie connector to work with. Flexible use device. Notice I didn’t mention speed (until now). RPI4 was fast enough for my purposes. But it nice there is more speed in the RPI5 if ever needed. I run most all headless. So don’t care about the graphic capability that some complain about. Anyway, I like ’em and will continue to use them.
Inflation alone brings $35 up to about $50, even if they had only kept pace with their original market positioning. I had the original shortly after release, and everything you did with it was geared around being low performance but fully working, and with low power draw. Once they had the zero’s, especially while older versions still sell, the new main-series ones had more pressure to take the options the zero’s lacked in order to differentiate themselves. Trouble is, used business mini-pc’s go pretty cheap compared to their specs, so if you don’t focus on the GPIO or range of power consumption, they eat your lunch on performance and real-computer type IO.
“Inflation alone brings $35 up to about $50”
I don’t think this applies to salaries.
Not sure what you’re expecting to be honest. $35 in 2012 is equivalent to almost $50 now. Features cost money.
I got a 400 during a sale and put UAE and all my old Amiga games on it. perfection.
I’m aware the UAE is a small country, but that you were able to put it on a Pi 400 is amazing!
:)
I want to know if you can run Doom in the UAE ( or if its government could have been implemented better with a 555 timer)… you know, the usual HAD concerns. :^D
I have used a P400 as my primary always-on desktop every day for several years. If I’m doing more intensive work I crank up an i5, maybe a couple times of week. The electricity I saved more than paid for the P400. A P500 would probably sell double the numbers of the P400. There’s money on the table, go for it guys !
power, normal power for emergency situation, powerbank, 18650 (separately charging and discarging)
rotor/potenciometer , chocolate layout and more mechanical keys for other language
I kinda want to print a case for a Pi to integrate with a Logitech K400 – combine the keyboard, touchpad, and Pi all into once thing. I know I could find a keyboard and touchpad separately but the K400 is about the right size to have on my shop bench, a little extra height wouldn’t be detrimental if angled right….
I’ve actually been thinking about the same thing for a bit now. It’s a 70% keyboard with a built in trackpad, so I think it’d be a great start to cobbling the beginnings of a cyberdeck or some other purpose built computer together
But then you need to supply power to the K400 and deal with the absurdities of bluetooth. All the disadvantages and annoyance of a not-great battery powered bluetooth pain in the a** keyboard, but none of the cordless, lightweight advantages. Why not select a wired keyboard of the right size?
Because only Perixx sells them and they’re overpriced for what they are. Also the wired version looks like it’s larger.
I use a K400 for my media computer. It’s convenient, despite the horrible keyfeel and godforsaken touchpad.
I use this one for constrained-space computers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B5TLNQ3B It’s a great competitor for the small Perixx ones, and much cheaper. 282 mm wide: essentially full size keys. Keyfeel is perfectly adequate: essentially the same as a modern Thinkpad.
For even tighter spaces I use this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DZZWD9W/ It’s frankly too small to comfortably type for an extended period, but it’s much better than the similar size chiclet or membrane ones, especially the thin bluetooth ones the same size. Don’t believe the “full size” ad copy: The keys span 200 mm, and it’s 218 mm wide overall.
Why doesn’t anyone make a laptop form-factor box to put a raspberry pi in that doesn’t cost as much as a mediocre laptop?
I’m thinking plastic case, a previous-generation screen, a keyboard and usb hub. Even the battery could be a separate option if that’s what it takes to get the cost down.
Yes, I know there are devices like that out there but I would think it would be possible to do this under $100 but I think the lowest I have seen is $300 and they go up quickly from there!
Now do this but integrate a small breadboard and a bus pirate… Perfect!
Your welcome to try and make money with a niche product like that at the price you’d want it to be sold… But to actually make money selling at that price you are going to need to order all the plastics, PCB, electronics and metal work in quantities at least in the same ballpark as those cheap laptops, and then sell most of the inventory you bought – otherwise the cost to create the mold, tool up the production the lines, etc isn’t shared out enough to actually make it cheap to produce.
Make 5 of something your paying $50, or even perhaps $500 a unit – as you are likely having to use CNC machines, maybe even employ a few real expert manual machinist as its too tricky a part to make on the affordable end CNC, and you are using more expensive materials while turning most of the stock into waste… Where make half a million of them in injection moulded plastic and that single unit even with all the product line setup costs is pennies – you spend $1000 to create the mold, then get to use cheap plastic in it with very little waste and churn out huge numbers…
Now go browse Ali Express, Bangood, Temu or whatever favorite Chinesium shop. Then come back and try to give that same answer.
If you want highly optimistic if not outright false advertising and stuff so shoddy as a rule it won’t work safely or last at all you are looking at a different market to making actual genuine products…
Plus that garbage is usually made in huge numbers anyway, as there are so many fools willing to grab a ‘bargain’. I’m sure some stuff in each of those markets is actually pretty good and may actually be priced well, just as not everything on Amazon is overpriced junk. But as a rule it is Chinesium junk that despite being cheap as it is still costs far far too much for the garbage you receive…
Would a Crowview Note fit the bill? (apart from the price which is >$100)
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/19/this-is-not-a-laptop-its-a-kvm-combo/
I’d think that a tinkerer’s machine would have one or more real RS-232 V24 interfaces on board. And buffered digital and analog I/O’s. PS/2 keyboard, and maybe mouse, port. Etc. Not just a big jumper block with I/O signals connected directly to the SOC, but something buffered, 5V-tolerant, protected from shorts and overvoltages, and ready to use for worryless tinkering.
That’s how they can increase their user base. Make it fool-proof so that new users don’t get discouraged when they accidentally blow up their PI three days after they received it. And new user who are not discouraged, will become new engineers.
I was a bit stumped about RS232 V.24, so I did a DDG.
Here’s the link I followed.
https://farsite.com/product-support/network-interface-connector-standards/v-24-v-28-rs232-and-eia-232-connector-signaling-standards/
I wouldn’t call this thing built out of laptop spare parts a keyboard.
It’s as much of an “keyboard” as an ZX81/Timex 1000 “keyboard” was.
A real keyboard is a mechanical one. The IBM Model M or the Apple Extended Keyboard II deserve the name.
Heck, even my sister’s Yeno Mister X2 vintage learning computer had a better keyboard than the Pi 400.
It has keys and it is on a board, hence it is a keyboard. You can take an elitist stance on what a “real” keyboard is all you want but you are just wrong, it is a keyboard.
Not elitist, just being still normal after 25+ years of experiencing PC tech. :D
The cheap, flat keyboards so common these days are unsuitable to programmers and writers.
They’re the embodiement of bad quality, they are the anomaly here in truth.
There’s a whole world of keyboard science and these flat “keyboards” sold nowadays
are below the cheapest made rubberdome keyboards someone could get in the 90s or early 2000s.
They’re bad laptop keyboards, simply. But on laptops, it could be excused, at least. They were meant as an compromise.
And laptops also had an external keyboard connector, for attaching a “real” keyboard.
And no one in his right mind had thought of attaching another, bad laptop keyboard to it.
Yeah, I was really disappointed when the last 2 PCs I bought came with chicklet keyboards (name brand computers). Fortunately I have “real” keyboards on hand.
You’re moving the goalposts. Your original post was about how this is not a “real” keyboard. Then you got rightly corrected, so now you’re talking about keyboard quality.
Don’t let your pedantry cloud your judgement.
No, I don’t think so. To me the keyboard quality was the whole point all along.
The ZX81/Timex 1000 had a poor foil “keyboard”, which even by 80s standard wasn’t accepted as a real keyboard.
It simply was foil with contacts underneath.
Likewise, Pi 400 has a poor chicklet like “keyboard”. Also barely a real keyboard.
The “keys” have no defined pressure point.
Computers like Sharp MZ-80K had chicklet keyboards originally, but were quickly updated with a serious typewriter keyboard (Sharp MZ-80A and subsequent models).
The Mister X2 toy computer’s keyboard by contrast is closer to a real keyboard than them both (ZX81, Pi 400).
It has real keys that can be pressed down, like on a conventional keyboard.
Despite being meant as a child’s toy that keyboard is comparable
in look and feel to what was the cheapest noname keyboard models sold for AT compatible PCs back in the 90s.
And that’s quite a bummer, I think. That a toy computer from the 1980s/early 90s had a more serious keyboard than what most of you had become used to in the 2020s.
Anyway, the slim Apple keyboards of today are no different, sadly.
They’re low quality despite being expensive.
But anyhow, money and quality aren’t always related to each other.
If a toy computer can do it better, then something is a little bit off.
While I’m not a fan of laptop keyboards as a rule there are ones that are actually quite useable and even perhaps ideal for the gamers with their crisp and short throw keys for the fastest possible reaction times… I have no idea how good the Pi keyboards are with no personal experience of them, but to rubbish the entire species of ‘laptop spare’ keyboards is stupid, and you might just get the thinkpad posse set on you, as there at least used to be a big following claiming they were the best keyboards ever made, not just best on a laptop…
Well, some people simply have standards, I suppose? 🤷
There are people who consider “fast food” to be real food, too, while others see it as junk food.
Each to his own. Exceptions prove the rules, too.
If you’d ever used a thinkpad of that era you’d know those people do have a point, they are darn fine keyboards. I’d still rather have my 122 key terminal keyboard or Model M personally, but it is absolutely possible to have a laptop keyboard that is actually good.
Hi, I do believe you. 🙂
That’s why I wrote that exceptions prove the rules.
The IBM Thinkpad series had a positive reputation.
I enthusiastically bought a pi400 and ended up being disappointed with the form factor. For me being tethered to the display by that HDMI cable made it a lot less practical than I had hoped for. It really could be an amazing product with a wireless keyboard/touchpad and a media player type box at the tv.
It’s a lovely keyboard. That works well but it’s over there by the tv, not here near the couch.
Well to me that just says you got the Pi400 for the wrong job, while almost perfectly describing a Pi SBC and wireless keyboard…
And if I really wanted to use a Pi400 untethered it would be given a terminal worthy screen (probably one of those very wide and not very tall ones) on its GPIO and a battery so you can use it as a stand alone command and control computer. With the HDMI being only for when you want it. Or if you like the Pi behind the TV could be VNC streaming the desktop of the Pi400 on your lap, and I believe the latest Pi’s wifi chips support Miracast (certainly have the USB bandwidth to use a USB adaptor that does, or now with the Pi5’s available PCIe lane PCIe) as do many modern TV to get that video signal over WiFi, but it really does sound like the backwards method of having a wireless keyboard…
sadly.. unless the new stepping of cpu, contains 3extra pcie lanes, the only thing we can hope to see under a trapdoor, will be single lane pcie, and not the wished for full 4lane m2-nvme connector.
rpi products always seems so half-baked.
broken usb/missing dsi lane/missing avp/bugged cpu/broken adc/missing pcie/broken gpio/outdated fw/..
I wonder if the new cpu stepping was just to avoid excessive thermal throttling on the rpi500..
+1
I for one was missing the analog 3,5mm audio output of the real Pi 4.
Sure, on Linux you can use an USB audio stick as a substitute.
But what about self-booting projects with their own drivers?
They can’t use USB audio devices, maybe.
The mt32pi project comes to mind, which supports both an external DAC on a hat and the built-in Pi audio.
But buying a compatible DAC might be difficult to some users,
so on-board Pi audio is good to have to get things going.
Anyway, it’s just an example. Emulators and games that run on bare metal are also affected.
It’s same as taking away on-board sound (SB compatible) on a PC’s motherboard:
Yes, you can add a random PCIe soundcard, but bare metal software can’t see it because it is not an compatible drop-in replacement.
The competition hasn’t “caught up” on the hardware side…
… It has already finished the race.
Then it want to the after-party, got drunk, found 3 new ‘friends’ for the evening, woke up in a tangle of bodies in an unfamiliar bed, made breakfast for 3 strangers, got a lift home, did the week’s laundry, cleaned the bathrooms, went out and grocery shopped, read a few chapters of a new book, went out to dinner with a college friend, and snuggled into some clean sheets before falling asleep.
That’s what happens when you pivot your whole product line from “make the best boards you can from cheap commodity stuff so hackers/makers/education can afford them” to “Build for business customers. Be owned by shareholders.”
RPi is dead.
They have been since they finished the RPi 3.
You can buy a dozen different flavors of faster, better, cheaper SBCs from the competition that run mainline Linux just fine.
The Raspberry Pi 3 and the Raspberry Pi 2 model with the updated ARM core were quite an improvement.
The Raspberry Pi 3 also supported hardware-assisted playback of classic video codecs, such as MPEGv1 and v2, still.
What I think the previous Raspberries were good for were pre-built disk images.
Many of the lesser mainstream projects have SD card images containing ready to use software, which is very beginner friendly.
Be it an OS with pre-configured applications or an self-booting application.
For example, CubeSatSim or rpix86. And various MIDI synths.
https://www.amsat.org/product/amsat-cubesatsim-raspberry-pi-sd-card/
https://hackaday.com/2013/03/26/raspberry-pi-the-perfect-machine-for-old-dos-games/
I’d like to see a RPi CM5-based laptop computer, with the CM replaceable/upgradeable. 12″-14″.
A budget Framework of sorts.
A thin, more day to day usage oriented version of CrowPi2.
RPi CM-based PineBook Pro.
I also see mention of the CM5 there, so those must be coming soon too!
The Pi500 dts has two GPIOs with names starting with M2_ so possibly trapdoor with M2 ssd ot the bottom?
Yes, M2 or other ssd in the case would be awesome.
A Rasberry Pi 64.
M2 ssd in the case would we appreciated, and would fit a “500”-form factor very well :D
Leepspvideo (YouTube channel) has a 3d printed case for his Pi 400 with an m.2 slot. I don’t remember if he printed it himself or it was sent to him. He uses it a lot.