My new Pi's from Sparkfun are running my whole house automation shockingly well. Home Assistant (HA) is an open-source solution built to run as a docker image, making it easy to get running and keep it up-to-date with the latest features.

The HA solution eliminates the need for ANY external vendor cloud services (Philips Hue, smartthings, xiaomi ...) allowing me to run entirely air-gapped if desired. Sorry to sound like an advertisement/fan-boy but has really been a game-changer for me.

The first Pi is running HassOS, a customized Pi distro of BuildRoot, which is designed and hardened for embedded systems. The packaged installer image called HassIO (HassOS + HA) makes this simple to get running. I started out with just one Pi for the whole system... but started breaking things apart to improve performance and scalability.

A second pi is set up as a docker host to run node-red and mqtt for message routing and triggers. And a third is running grafana and sqlite - offloading the automation servers from the logging and reporting duties. Sure... I could run the whole thing in a NUC, but why bother when Pi's are so cheap?

Custom sensor using 8266 (Thing boards,...) pushing mqtt message makes any custom sensors and actuators easy.

This is getting fun people. Too fun actually...budget your time wisely - once you get started it's hard to stop.

I bought the 4G version so I could have a better general-purpose computer. It is my only computer and it is working out much better than the rPi 3 I was using because it has more RAM. I have mine in an Adafruit heat sink case (no fans), and it has not frozen up on me yet. I can run 10+ tabs in Chromium now, in addition to other tasks.

I got the Pimoroni Aluminum Heatsink Case (PRT-15894) and a set of extension headers that were recommended, just in case. I wanted to connect a 40pin ICD connector to the GPIO header but found two problems: 1) the IDC connector does not fit in the GPIO slot in the case and 2) the extension headers are so long that the connector does not seat on the headers. No big deal (really!) but I feel that: 1) the hole in the heatsink case could have been made to accept an IDC connector and 2) the recommended extension header could have had pins just like the GPIO header, no? Also, I forgot about the new power and monitor connectors, so best to get the kit with all that included. Great computer!

I bought this device to connect to an SDR Play software defined radio. Ultimately my goal is to receive images from the GOES-R series of geostationary weather satellites. There are still a couple of pieces to the puzzle that need to fall into place before I try it but so far it shows a great deal of promise. I am pairing this Pi with an image from W3DJS, found here: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/w3djs-raspberry-pi-ham-radio-image-v2-0-released.680336/ that has every HAM related piece of software that runs on Linux known to exist. I also bought a heatsink case with cooling fans to keep it thermally happy. One of the first things I tried with this was to tune CubicSDR to a local FM station and had it running overnight. In the morning the music still sounded great and the Pi was barely warmer than ambiant. Both software and hardware worked well.

This is a great upgrade from the 3B. Really nice bump in processing power and the number of UARTs (6) is great for connecting peripherals

I'm glad to finally be able to find and purchase the 4GB version of the new Pi4. The Pi4 4GB is definitely faster and more stable than the Pi3B+. I was unsure if it would be noticeable, but it is. It is also more stable. But, it's also way HOTTER! You simply cannot run it without a heat sink or fan. And, the little aluminum cubes with fins are not going to cut it. You either need a much larger heat sink, a fan, integrated fan, or a sink integrated into a metal case. For me, fans are simply not an option because of the environment in which I use the Pi; so I am using lots of bolt-on heat sink solutions. Many are available from SparkFun.

Using with a HifiBerry DAC+ Pro for my music running Volumio. Noticeable improvement over Bluetooth input. Great out of the box and able to tweak through Volumio plug-ins. It was pretty much plug and play. Using a USB SSD for the music library and streaming Qobuz when I want to explore outside the familiar.

Does need heat management. I tried a heat sink case and on board sinks on the Pi. Without a fan it still gets warm, so I'm running a fan too.

Still messing around with the possibilities but very happy from day one.

I'm using this one to run my 7" touch screen and it's great.

Runs 64 bit version of Ubuntu Mate. Runs the latest 32bit version of Raspberry PI os from usb drive.

Definitely worth it!

Don't get me wrong, the Pi 4 is seriously powerful for the price. I've had no issues doing normal computer things on it. Just so people in my shoes know: you'll need an external accelerator in order to do super high speed machine learning tasks >8fps.

I picked the model 4 for is gigabit ethernet and USB 3.0 upgrades to make a low power NAS. I am impressed so far. I was able to install Open Media Vault without a hitch.

Solid little project device, 4gb is the sweet spot. This is the 5th device in our house of the Raspberry Pi flavor. Just added a cam to it so now I can video chat while I retropi. Fun little device.

I love buying at Sparkfun!

I bought it to view Great Courses Plus in full screen. It works great! I had to buy heat sinks, then got an Argon Fan Hat. The fan pcb includes a button and software to shut down the Pi safely. Its all plugged into a widescreen TV, so viewing Hubble images, etc., is much more interesting than on my computer monitor. I got a keyboard with bluetooth, so navigating a web page from across the room is simple. Just need to figure out how to safely discharge static when I walk over to push the button.

I am using this Raspberry Pi as a PiHole Adblocker for my home network and it’s amazing! No more ads, even in apps, for all the devices in my home. Internet runs faster and is more secure than ever before.

The combo of I/O, WiFi, USB, and extensive online support makes it super easy to start small projects and know that you can scale them up to almost anything. So fun.

I started in computing in 1972 at my High School, using a PDP-8/L. That ran 8K of memory with shared hosting of 4 teletypes. Cost back then was $20000. Now we have personal computers with 4GB memory, 16GB on a card, and running at a few GHz. Video out from youtube rather than typewriter output at 10 CPS. This is really the golden age of computing. The power students have is incredible.

Yes, it works well. Linux is a little rough after having gotten used to Mac OSX, but for $55? What we learned on sith the PDP-8 vs a Linux machine? Saying it is like night and day underrepresents the difference. It is more like going from the vacume of space to a step away from the source of all enlightenment in the universe.

Now, with projects like this, every student should have access to a computer.

Amazing.

I bought 5 of these for a remote-monitoring project and they arrived well-packed and working great out of the box. Of course, with these boards you’ll need to bring your own microSD card, power supply, keyboard and/or mouse but these worked great for my needs!