Is there a future for Carbide Motion on the Raspberry Pi? I really like my set up with my RP4 and it works well but is it smarter to switch to a mini-PC since the version for Pi hasn’t been upgraded if forever?
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There are only two minor features added to the stable Mac/Windows builds of CM since the rPi build was last updated, and a notable “3D Test” tab and one fix (rare crash when probing) — I’m sure that once we have a stable build where there is a feature/fix which warrants making an rPi build it will happen — folks can help on that by testing the beta:
https://carbide3d.com/carbidemotion/beta/
and letting us know if it works well or no.
Maybe I’m missing later builds. I’ve got RPi build 635 since that’s all I can find…
Right, there’s only the 635 Pi (stable) build.
For Mac and Windows there are the stable build (640) and a beta (644) — it’s folks testing the Mac OS/Windows beta which will help to (eventually) make an rPi build available.
I just spent most of today attempting to set up my new Shapeoko Pro with a Raspberry Pi 5 attached as a dedicated computer to the machine with a 10.1” Raspberry Pi touch screen. It’s not working 100% and there are several bugs to work out. So here’s one user that’s hoping for a stable and current rPi build that wouldn’t require using CNCjs.
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I am curious how many Pi users there actually are. The folks that use the Pi seem to love it but the number of PC and Mac users likely outnumber them many times over. When writing code for the C3D applications they likely get the biggest bank on PC and Mac.
When they came out with the CC 644 beta I was a little confused. Afterall they are on v815 for CC. However the beta was to help people that have machines lose connection and it would help them recover close to where they lost connectivity. I have not seen too much lately about how that experiment is going but if it works I would think they would incorporate it into v8 of CC and CM. C3D is a strong company but I would bet they are very lean and mean on personnel. There are only so many hours in a day for software developers and as I said earlier they work on what gives the most bang for their buck. Pi is an interesting concept but in the wild it relatively rare except for people that like to play around with alternate OS and writing software. That is a small subset of computer users.
In my workshop environment the pi makes way more sense than a PC or Mac from a risk and cost mgmt pov. I’ve got spare pi machines in my electronics lab and can throw an $80 machine at the problem vs risking an expensive computer to the environmental exposures in the woodworking area. Also, the tinkerer in me can rapidly build and deploy tools to the PI vs the full blown dev needed for the other platforms.
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I have been using the Pi with a 10” touch screen for over 2 years now and really love it.
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I’ve been running my Shapeoko Pro with a RPi 5 with 8GB of RAM. It has been running well without any problems after some fine tuning.
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I had one issue a couple years ago, no fault of CM. But I agree, a dedicated pi with touchscreen works great for my workflow adn I wouldn’t want to adjust at this point.
I’d have to agree with @gdon_2003 regarding the overall customer base of carbide machines. Even surveying everyone who has ever participated on the forums feels like it would present a pretty skewed sample compared to the overall base.
(I’d hope the C3D folks have some anonymous metrics on which platforms people are running CC and CM on but I’ve got no idea 
)
The only way I could see long term, first class support for Pi happening would be if C3D offered it pre-flashed as a bundle/kit so folks purchasing a new machine can hit the ground running.
Something like that would bring every wood worker I know into the Pi ecosystem.
The folks I tend to interact with just do not care about any of this. Offer them a Pi and say “Plug it in, it’s cheap and it works.” and they’d gladly pony up the extra cash to not think about it (hell, so would I most days 
)
This could drastically change the value proposition for spending time on the Pi version.
But my fear is that the long term support burden would be pretty heavy. As soon as someone wants to do anything out of the absolute ordinary or use ~any other program…that’s going to be a support call. Upgrading the OS, that’s a support call. Pi won’t turn on, support call. Can’t find the mouse cursor, you guessed it…support call.
That’s my best guess as to why more companies do not offer some sort of computing device as an option. The perception being that the company sold it so the company must support every aspect of it is just too much
All just speculation though, and coming from a long tenure of IT/customer support my view is probably pretty skewed 
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The bundled version is a good idea but the problem is C3D does not own Pi and they change things on a regular basis. I remember about a year ago when Pi changed their windowing software it threw a major monkey wrench to all Pi users and not just the C3D Pi users.
I have worked on just about every form of OS, Windows, Linus, Mac, Next, Solaris, etc… I run Windows 11 on my laptop and let MS update it whenever they want. I just want to plug and play. I have customized things in the past and it always lead to disaster when things change and things always change. I just like my life simple but having been where many of the Pi users are I liked to tinker. However my tinkering days are over and I just want to use my computer to do what I want without a lot of work around. As long as you are willing to do the work arounds then alternative OS is fun but it is not fun to me anymore so I just want simple.
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I have a Rasp Pi but I run CM on a 13 year old MacBook Air that would sell used for $50 at most. I don’t know why I would use the Rasp Pi when an old and inexpensive laptop works perfect???
The Pi builds are not going anywhere. We’ve got to make some big changes to the build, which is why it’s fallen behind. Then, we’ve got to take a look at which version of the OS we need to build for, since it’s changed a lot since the first PI build we’ve done.
We did a test order of touch screen industrial Windows PCs, and we decided not to go forward with those for exactly the reason you outlined- there’s no practical way to limit our support burden.
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I’ve been using a Raspad v3 which has worked well, and considered swapping out the Pi 4 in it for a Pi 5, but instead am waiting on the Pilet from Soulcircuit to ship, and am hopeful that it will be something I want to use more often.
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