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I have a question for which I haven't found any source to explain it to me. For personal projects raspberry pi is usually used as computer. How it is substituted in commercial products? Do they make their own computer board? Can somebody briefly explain me how it is done?

Thanks.

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    \$\begingroup\$ In general, it's not substituted in commercial products. They are usually designed from the ground up, taking into account myriad compromises designed to provide value where customers are willing to pay for it and to avoid value that customers won't pay for. I've never experienced a project where a one-off, hobbyist Raspberry Pi was used to first completely develop the product concept and only then to start scrabbling around for how to make the whole thing smaller, lighter, longer battery life, less dissipation, etc., later. Maybe it happens. Just haven't seen it, personally. \$\endgroup\$
    – periblepsis
    Commented May 7, 2023 at 22:54
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    \$\begingroup\$ You start by developing a product plan, listening to customers' input about features and values. Estimate costs for each feature/value, eliminating those where the cost cannot be justified based on what customers will pay. Trimmed down specs then feed into a process that pulls forward any serious unknowns, making them separate projects to lock down as knowns/can-dos. If any of them can't be achieved, the project is shelved. Once the unknowns are researched, vetted, and turned into knowns and their costs are acceptable, the specific product(s) design processes can start. \$\endgroup\$
    – periblepsis
    Commented May 7, 2023 at 23:02
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    \$\begingroup\$ @periblepsis thank you very much for your answer, really solved some of my doubts. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mukund
    Commented May 7, 2023 at 23:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ If you're interested in DIY'ing a SBC, Jay Carlson built several and goes through the steps in a very informative manner: jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux \$\endgroup\$
    – Bryan
    Commented May 8, 2023 at 1:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Mukund a TV has a computer circuit board that is custom-designed like a computer motherboard. A microwave oven uses a microcontroller which is a small computer in one chip \$\endgroup\$
    – Criticizing Israel not allowed
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 11:32

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It depends what kind of product you're talking about.

If it's a TV then there is a circuit board made from scratch. A TV has rather special video processing capabilities that are probably implemented with a special TV chip (or several). At minimum it needs to upsample the video signal to the resolution of the TV screen, and then add a menu on top of that. The computer may be a full computer or a relatively big microcontroller (see below). If it's a smart TV, then it's definitely a full computer (a.k.a. application processor), and the computer may also be doing the video processing with its GPU.

If it's a microwave oven they use a microcontroller which is a little computer in one chip. Microcontrollers are all over the place - they're extremely useful whenever you just need a little bit of computing - like processing the buttons on the microwave and counting down until it stops. Nowadays, pretty much anything that has buttons has a microcontroller - including your computer keyboard and mouse.

As a hobbyist for some reason it seems to be rather difficult to make a computer board like the Raspberry Pi (though it is possible (though not using the same chips on the Raspberry Pi because they are specially made for the Raspberry Pi)). Your recommendation is to use something like a Raspberry Pi because it is easy - you don't have to mess around with DRAM timing and custom bootloaders and stuff like that. Very many microcontrollers are also hobbyist-friendly.

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