> Fun peripherals aren't really the reason for the RPi's large community
What many might not realize is that the RP2040 got a massive boost due to supply chain issues affecting the STM32 line. We had to choice but to redesign a board to adopt the RP2040 when STM32's were being quoted at 50+ week lead times. It was a black swan event like no other.
We would have never touched the RP2040 without such an overwhelming forcing function in place. The chip has serious shortcomings (example: no security) and the company could not give one shit about the needs of professional product developers. Just asking for proper support under Windows was a nightmare.
Not sure if things have changed, at the time they seem to have no understanding of how real products are developed, tested, qualified, certified, evolved and supported over time.
It's one thing to make little boards for educational markets. It's quite another to build embedded systems that are part of complex multidisciplinary products non-trivial service lifetime and support.
We dropped the RP2040 like a hot potato as soon as STM32's became available.
Making the decision to redesign the boards was a no-brainer. On the one side you are dealing with a company that makes educational boards that have the luxury of appealing to an audience that shrugs off such things as reliability, tools and manufacturing process integration. On the other side (STM), you have the support of an organization and an ecosystem that has been dedicated to meeting the needs of professional product developers for decades. The difference, from my side of the fence, is impossible to miss. Black swan events sometimes make you do things you will live to regret. For me, this was one of them.
BTW, I do like aspects of this chip. Someone should take it and run with it in a professional manner. Raspberry Pi Ltd. isn't that company. It wasn't until an engineer from India did the hard work to attempt to create a better experience under Windows that the company "released" a solution. This "solution" resorts to such things as reinstalling VSCode. Brilliant.
What many might not realize is that the RP2040 got a massive boost due to supply chain issues affecting the STM32 line. We had to choice but to redesign a board to adopt the RP2040 when STM32's were being quoted at 50+ week lead times. It was a black swan event like no other.
We would have never touched the RP2040 without such an overwhelming forcing function in place. The chip has serious shortcomings (example: no security) and the company could not give one shit about the needs of professional product developers. Just asking for proper support under Windows was a nightmare.
Not sure if things have changed, at the time they seem to have no understanding of how real products are developed, tested, qualified, certified, evolved and supported over time.
It's one thing to make little boards for educational markets. It's quite another to build embedded systems that are part of complex multidisciplinary products non-trivial service lifetime and support.
We dropped the RP2040 like a hot potato as soon as STM32's became available.
Making the decision to redesign the boards was a no-brainer. On the one side you are dealing with a company that makes educational boards that have the luxury of appealing to an audience that shrugs off such things as reliability, tools and manufacturing process integration. On the other side (STM), you have the support of an organization and an ecosystem that has been dedicated to meeting the needs of professional product developers for decades. The difference, from my side of the fence, is impossible to miss. Black swan events sometimes make you do things you will live to regret. For me, this was one of them.
BTW, I do like aspects of this chip. Someone should take it and run with it in a professional manner. Raspberry Pi Ltd. isn't that company. It wasn't until an engineer from India did the hard work to attempt to create a better experience under Windows that the company "released" a solution. This "solution" resorts to such things as reinstalling VSCode. Brilliant.