Unfortunately, we are often mistaken as a “Bitcoin node” project. We are not. StartOS is a general purpose OS for running server-side software. Many of these services run fine on a raspi, and we still support that platform for that purpose. It is a good idea to include a warning on our DIY page, and I will get that added - thanks for the suggestion.
Until about 6 months ago, Bitcoin also ran fine on a Pi, which is why you were hearing this mentioned a lot. Some folks still do not understand the shortcomings, which stem from the ballooning UTXO set. Combine this with the fact that if you already have an 8G pi synced, the odds of it running into issues are still not 100%, leading those users to believe there is no problem. We have spent hundreds of hours and talked to Core devs extensively about the issue, which we now understand fairly well. The pi was great for many years, but unfortunately you have come across it at the end of its life-cycle.
The quote from Matt was likely from Telegram, which is our most active channel at this time.
Measuring Bitcoin’s data usage is not deterministic, and has gotten much more difficult this year with all the additional data. This is a metric created by the network, and the only thing you can do is estimate the max possible: Totally full blocks (~2MB) x average blocks per month (~4350) = 8700MB or 8.7GB per month
Here is an experiment I did to determine power consumption on a pi running a bitcoin stack and some other services. I have not done this on any other devices, but it’s just a matter of making the time to do so. We could not do this for all possible hardware, so if you have a measurement for a device you use, we would love to hear from you. This is a community, not just a company.
I hope that you will continue on your journey. I know it can be frustrating, but keep in mind that you are on the bleeding edge of freedom-based technology, and it will only get better. Also, we (Start9 and the StartOS community) are here to help. You might like to check out this list of devices tested by other community members. A laptop is an option, but we like Mini PCs and Thin Clients, which can also be acquired cheaply and can be easily upgraded.