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milanovetoday at 6:59 AM1 replyview on HN

The Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms weren't meant to power commercial-grade products, nor be cost effective at scale compared to raw/custom ARM and AVR devices. However, they've become ubiquitous in education, which I imagine has impacted industry. Similar to how software companies give out free student licenses so that upcoming engineers become familiar with their software for when they start working, an entire generation of embedded systems engineers were taught on official (or compatible) Arduino and Raspberry Pi devices. While these platforms aren't meant for commercial products, I imagine engineers in industry might use these platforms to prototype or work with subcomponents, before they integrate it with a raw/custom AVR or ARM platform. After all, when prototyping, it's easier and faster to get up and running when you have a massive collection of libraries and tutorials online to use, which RPi and Arduino offer, versus doing it all yourself with raw AVR and ARM.


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voakbasdatoday at 8:36 AM

As an example, I believe the tear-down of one of the now-defunct electric scooter rental company’s units revealed it contained a RPi. IIRC, the commentary lambasted them for using it, because it’s not really rated for that kind of job. But a significant portion of the peanut gallery understood and rationalized the decision. I expect fewer folks would question this choice these days.