At one point, when RPi boards were hard to come by, and HF Signals had to pay premiums to secure the boards we convinced them to sell radios without RPi boards (or displays) included at a reduced price.
Yes, a comparable RPi 5 costs only $5 more than an RPi 4 with the same amount of memory, but Farhan has already indicated that the benefits of the RPi 5 are not needed to smoothly operate the radio, and those discussions (in part) led to the design of the zBitx with its RPi Zero 2 W board (the Zero 2 W is essentially a smaller form-factor RPi 3).
The discussion is in the archive, it shouldn't be hard to find.
Turning the radio into a nice ham radio PC may be something you are interested in, but I suspect HF Signals is content to sell radios to be used as radios.
The 'wasted' cost of the 2 meg RPi 4 in the sBitx is what, $35-40? If you replace an RPi 4 with an RPi 5, you may be introducing thermal issues inside the radio - I can't remember how the discussion on that topic wound up...
In my opinion, you'd have better luck getting HF Signals to omit the RPi 4 for a discount, rather then getting them to offer upgraded versions with either more memory, faster CPUs or both.
Good luck!?
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On May 13, 2025, at 16:52, AE9J via groups.io <merrow.jeff@...> wrote:
?
I hate wasting money on a Raspberry Pi that I immediately need to replace. ?With a little extra ram it makes a pretty good dedicated ham radio PC. ?
?
Also the raspberry Pi 5 is already on the market and literally just a few dollars more.
?
?
