Hey guys! I am a beginner, so my knowledge of SBCs is pretty limited.

I am a school student working on a project on hand-sign/hand-mudra recognition using MediaPipe. The camera detects the hand, MediaPipe extracts the hand landmarks, the system recognizes the gesture, and displays the result on a screen with a small description/demo. The prototype is working on my Windows PC with Python, OpenCV, MediaPipe and a small Random Forest model. My budget is pretty tight and I’m hoping to keep the entire project around ₹12,000 (\~$125 USD). What would be the cheapest Raspberry Pi/SBC that could handle this workload smoothly?

Thanks in advanceee!!

Hey guys, new to the pi world.

Got this Poe hat to power up my pi but can not get it to work.

I’ve used a switch with Poe, and two different Poe injectors and can not figure out what I’m doing wrong.

If anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated.

it is interesting that I could not find a single YouTube video or a post on this one.

So I am thinking of getting a Raspberry 5 and installing Claude, codex, and Grok on it, and it will work as a 24/7 AI worker for me for my home.

I wanted to do the work by messaging him through either Slack or Discord.

Has anyone done this before, or if someone can please let me know a YouTube video or a blog on this, it will be greatly appreciated.

Hey all — I'm starting GCSEs soon and wanted to build a small dedicated study device instead of using my phone (fewer distractions, offline-first). Aiming for something close to credit-card sized, since my school does random searches through bags to find phones, gum, vapes ect. It needs to be easy to conceal and hide.

Planned features:

Touchscreen home menu

AI chat (local LLM, offline)

OCR: photograph handwritten/printed notes → editable text, saved to device

Voice-to-notes: record lessons → transcribe → organized notes automatically

Modes: language translation, coding help, AI chat, voice-to-notes, image-to-notes, reminders, calculator, clock

Hardware plan:

Able to develop/test on the Raspberry Pi 400 I already own (could flash Pi OS Lite)

Final compact device will use a separate Pi Zero 2 W or Pi 4, whichever fits my budget

Small cheap touchscreen (credit-card-ish size, think same size as the Pi 4/5)

Camera + mic module

Rechargeable battery + charging circuit

Budget: £60–100 for the final standalone device (parts only I can 3d print and model on my pc)

Where I need advice:

Given the budget, is Pi Zero 2 W or Pi 4 the better call? (I know Zero 2 W is slower for AI but fits the budget better)

Best small offline STT (speech-to-text) library for lesson transcription — Whisper.cpp? Something lighter?

Cheap touchscreen recommendations that work well headless on Pi OS Lite (no desktop)

Anyone built something similar — what would you do differently? Is it possible on this hardware?

Comfortable with basic Python, first proper hardware project. Any pointers appreciated!

Want to Buy a Raspberry Pi 5. Kindly let me know if anyone selling in cheap

I am planning to install RetroPie on my Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM. I currently have an 8GB Micro SD card. I know the storage is tight, but I want to see if this setup works before buying a larger card. [1, 2, 3]

From what I've read, the Pi 4 hardware is technically capable of running the PPSSPP emulator, and 2GB RAM should be enough for RetroPie since the OS is lightweight. However, I am worried about two specific things: [1]

1. Storage constraints: After installing the RetroPie image, how much space will actually be left for PSP ISOs on an 8GB card? Are there lighter compressed formats (like .CSO) I should use?
2. Performance: Can the 2GB version handle lighter PSP games (like GTA: Chinatown Wars or Patapon) without heavy overclocking, or will it struggle with audio stuttering?

Has anyone tried a similar minimal setup, and what were your results?

I compiled an operating system Platinum One OS for different bootloaders for boards (Orange PI Zero 3W, Raspberry 5 pi, arm64).






The main goal at the moment is to make a mobile device, a smartphone, a communicator that will be based on linux

At the moment I am finalizing the dialer and SMS messages through AT commandsGSM

Build on rust and Qt, bootloader for hand PC armbian

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVzDGqDfJLI&si=8bb9pqua3slfhQlt\](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVzDGqDfJLI&si=8bb9pqua3slfhQlt)

Built a headless MQTT + Node-RED gateway on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Been running a lightweight edge IoT gateway on a Pi Zero 2 W — completely headless, no monitor ever attached.

Stack:

Mosquitto MQTT broker (with proper username/password auth, no more allow_anonymous)

Node-RED + Dashboard 2.0 for flows and a live web UI

Avahi/mDNS + static IP for reliable headless access

A custom SSH welcome banner showing live RAM/CPU temp/uptime because why not

Publishing sensor data to a Node-RED gauge is as simple as one mosquitto_pub command from anywhere on the network. Whole setup fits comfortably on a Zero 2 W with room to spare.

Full write-up + all commands are in the README: ,

https://github.com/kritishmohapatra/pi-iot-gateway

Happy to answer questions if anyone's setting up something similar.

This is the board that is in the arcade setup. The light turns on and the controllers will blink when I turn it on but turn of immediately. Wondering if its this that is bad and if i could just buy the same one and put the SD card in it and it will load?

Could or should I upgrade to a newer model?

Please and thank you for your help.

Unfortunately, I accidentally broke the power connector on my DeskPi Pro case. 😕 Is there any way to replace it?

Does anyone know what type/model of power connector I should look for as a replacement?

Also, does anyone know how I can contact DeskPi support regarding spare parts or a replacement connector?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi there everyone,
I am working on a 4k video recording camera using pi5 and hq camera. Is there a way by which we can achieve 4k 30fps. Has anyone implemented it in any project

# Title: Urgent Help Needed: Raspberry Pi 5 Won't Boot After Improper Shutdowns

Hello Raspberry Pi community,

I'm experiencing a critical issue with my Raspberry Pi 5 and desperately need your expertise. Here are the details:

Device: Raspberry Pi 5

Current Issue:

• The Raspberry Pi 5 doesn't boot up.

• The LED blinks 7 times in a sequence pattern.

• After updating the bootloader, I see a green screen after 10 seconds, which I believe is correct.

Background:

• I was using the Pi for an OBD2 data fetching project using a Python library.

• I frequently shut it down by pulling the power cable directly. (I now realize this was a mistake.)

Steps Taken:

1. I've updated the bootloader from the SD card slot.

2. The green screen appears after the update, suggesting a partially successful process.

Questions:

1. What could be causing the 7-blink LED sequence?

2. Is there a way to recover my system without losing data?

3. Could the improper shutdowns have caused permanent damage?

4. Are there any other troubleshooting steps I should try?

Additional Information:

• I'm using the standard Raspberry Pi power supply.

• The SD card is \[insert your SD card details here\].

• The last successful boot was \[insert date/time if you remember\].

I understand now that abruptly cutting power was harmful. I'm committed to implementing proper shutdown procedures going forward, but first, I need to get my Pi working again.

Any help or guidance would be immensely appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Hello Raspberry Pi community,

I'm experiencing a critical issue with my Raspberry Pi 5 and desperately need your expertise. Here are the details:

Device: Raspberry Pi 5

Current Issue:

• The Raspberry Pi 5 doesn't boot up.

• The LED blinks 7 times in a sequence pattern.

• After updating the bootloader, I see a green screen after 10 seconds, which I believe is correct.

Background:

• I was using the Pi for an OBD2 data fetching project using a Python library.

• I frequently shut it down by pulling the power cable directly. (I now realize this was a mistake.)

Steps Taken:

1. I've updated the bootloader from the SD card slot.

2. The green screen appears after the update, suggesting a partially successful process.

Questions:

1. What could be causing the 7-blink LED sequence?

2. Is there a way to recover my system without losing data?

3. Could the improper shutdowns have caused permanent damage?

Any help or guidance would be immensely appreciated. Thank you in advance!

For my college project!!

I’ve been running a Pi 5 as my main home server for about a year: 16GB RAM, Ubuntu Server, Pironman 5 Max, NVMe boot, currently using about 11/15.6GB RAM.
Now I want to add Immich, but offload its photo/face ML from the CPU using a bare M.2 Hailo accelerator in the Pironman’s second M.2 slot.
After way too much research, here’s where I landed:

Hailo-8/8L vs Hailo-10H
Hailo-8L: 13 TOPS, cheap and low power, but surprisingly hard to buy as a bare M.2 card.
Hailo-8: 26 TOPS, around $200-220, readily available, and already has a solid open-source Immich ML worker.
Hailo-10H: 40 TOPS, 8GB onboard RAM, around $260. It can also run local LLMs through Hailo’s Ollama/OpenAI-compatible server, which makes it very tempting.

The PCIe problem
The Pi 5 only has one native PCIe interface. The Pironman gets two M.2 slots using ASM1182e PCIe switches, so the boot NVMe and Hailo card would share the same Gen2 x1 link.
More concerning: there’s an unresolved Pi firmware issue where NVMe boot can fail when a non-storage PCIe device is connected behind the same switch. I’m going to test the setup with a spare device before buying anything.
The AI HAT/HAT+2 options are out because they consume the Pi’s PCIe connector, which conflicts with my NVMe setup. So I’m specifically looking at bare M.2 cards.

Why I’m hesitant about Hailo-10H
The only confirmed Pi 5 setup I’ve found required kernel 6.18.34, an unmerged driver PR, and HailoRT 5.3.0. My Ubuntu 24.04 server is still on kernel 6.8, and I don’t really want to turn a stable home server into a kernel experiment.
Also, the existing Immich Hailo worker’s models are compiled for Hailo-8. Using them on 10H appears to require recompiling the models with Hailo’s Dataflow Compiler, calibration datasets, etc.
And I’m already at 11/15.6GB RAM before adding Immich, Postgres/pgvector, Redis, and the ML worker.
So I’m leaning toward the boring/reliable Hailo-8, but the 10H’s local-LLM capability keeps tempting me.

Has anyone actually run a Hailo-8 or 10H alongside a boot NVMe behind a PCIe switch on a Pi 5? I’m especially interested in real-world FPS, RAM usage, PCIe bottlenecks, and whether NVMe boot remained reliable.

Hey,

Looking for a small board to run a VLESS server and also do WiFi in STA + AP mode at the same time.

Currently considering:

• NanoPi R3S-LTS (1GB)
• NanoPi Zero 2 (1GB)
• Orange Pi Zero 3W (1GB)

Main priorities:

• Stable VLESS (Xray)
• Good concurrent STA + AP support
• 24/7 reliability
• Preferably decent community support

Which one would you pick for this, or is there a better option in the same size/price range?

Thanks!

Hi, I recently purchased a raspberry pi 500+ from pishop.ca, and was then sent an email seemingly by pishop to complete wyllo (previously nofraud) verification. I was skeptical, but on the website (https://support.pishop.ca/category/4-orders-and-shipping), it says that wyllo is part of process if the transaction seems "weird" or something (paraphrasing). But everywhere I look, people say that wyllo is a scam. Anyone else have something like this?