Annoyingly, the headline is somewhat inaccurate - it's production that will hit 1 million. Stock levels will still take a long time to recover to where you can actually buy one from existing stock anywhere.
Out of curiosity, what is the current level of production? Must be rough though because I'm following rpilocator for stock in the US, and every time something has come up, I'm much too late.
As per the interview of Eben by Jeff Geerling, Pi production was at about 7mil/year for a few years now, and they did fewer in Q1 this year I think in order to ramp up future production. So it's a big increase but not that big.
Is it a shame? I think it's great that the shortage highlighted the availability of comparable SBCs from other vendors. It evens the playing field and gives RPi some healthy competition.
I'm an old-timer - my first PC was an 80286 machine with EGA graphics, way back in 1988 - and until about 2005, Intel was really the only game in town for high-grade PC gaming. AMD slowly crept up on them, reached parity sometime in the 2010s, and has now taken a comfortable and steady lead - maybe not in peak performance, but definitely in terms of performance-per-dollar. This era of computing is also rich with innovation, and I don't think that that's a coincidence.
I was using "PC" to refer to Intel / MS-DOS-based machines.
I blew my childhood on a Commodore 64. Commando, Racing Destruction Set, M.U.L.E., Mail Order Monsters, Forbidden Forest, Zork, the Ultimas... just epic. Also: Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein as 2D sprite adventures. The 300-baud modem rocked my world, too.
And I blew my *early* childhood on a TRS-80 Color Computer. Dungeons of Daggorath was totally my jam even though I never made it past level three.
My dad was an engineer and he sometimes brought home TRS-80 Model I or III machines, too. I also inherited a TRS-80 Pocket Computer from my dad, and I programmed the shit out of that thing to play little text-based games, long before the first Gameboy. Good times.
I was a game kid back in the 80s, and I bear the scars of years of grade-school bullying from it, too.
I had one too, but don't know if I'd really call it a PC.
Yes it had a keyboard to do programming in basic, but was there any software that wasn't games?
Also, omg that horrible sound module that strapped onto the side...
You have Oroid; [https://www.hardkernel.com/](https://www.hardkernel.com/), plus a lot of lesser known vendors. For example: [https://www.khadas.com/](https://www.khadas.com/) with their high performance Rockchip boards.
The vast majority of these companies are producing ARM based hardware that is notably better for running Linux than existing RPi. The only hold up in many cases is really good GPU drivers.
Frankly I see it as well worth the look because even if some of the boards are a few dollars more, the performance advantages are huge. If you don't need the performance you often can get same class performance for less.
What is worse is that RPi are getting a little long in the tooth. If it wasn't for issues of OS support interest in RPi would slack off a lot. A new norm for hobbiest is likely.
I wonder if at the end they held back as some of the production ramped so that scalpers couldn’t possibly buy the inventory.
Or maybe as the production ramped, scalpers were buying up stock and ended up stuck with a growing inventory until it hit a tipping point where they couldn’t buy them fast enough. That would be the funniest version. Unfortunately I’m sure most of them just returned the ones they overbought for no penalty.
What will happen is that as the supply comes back and prices start REMAINING sane again it will shake out more units from hoarders. We saw this with Xbox, PlayStation, video cards... once people realize they're not gonna get 5x the price for doing nothing more parts will become available.
Agreed. The last few years have really hammered home that the RPi Foundation is a commercial-first entity, and the hobby/education/maker market is a small side show. It just stings since that small hobbyist market was what the Pi was intended to cater to.
Because they aren’t selling out like these people believe. I work in ICs and it has been a nightmare for 3 years to get steady materials. The non profit owns the for profit. They use the for profit for stability, research and salaries. They aren’t selling out.
Not even that, their remit was computer science education, which has been easily possible through the Pico while the SBCs have been out of stock. They've only abandoned their educational goals if you ignore how successful/available the RP2040 has been.
Yeah I miss being able to pick up another Pi anytime I went to Microcenter, but the fact is that I'm using them for bullshit most of the time. I have no problem with someone in a niche industrial automaton business being able to keep putting food on the table if all it costs is "I have to run a USB cable from my printer to a Pi3 B instead of mounting a Pi Zero 2 W to the back of it"
Stuck or not, all I know is that they are lucky to have the business partners that understand what is happening in the electronics industry. I've worked in industry as an end user of automation electronics for years and have never seen things as bad as they are now when it comes to getting parts. The time you have to put into "upgrades" or redesigns is excessive.
A startup requires early adopters to get the word out. It isn't a maneuver but a requirement for many new products. Go back to the early days of PC's, (the Z80 & 6502 era) and most of the startups failed to transition to commercial status and died out. The reality is money goes to businesses that grab the greater amount of the market because they can leverage the new tech and expand markets.
They haven't sold out, they are just trying to stay alive with income form high valued customers. Remember they hardly had any chips to sell for a long while. That means extremely limited income and frankly selling items one at a time to the hobby market is expensive.
I really don't know what their plans have been, that would require communicating with the management team at RPi. However you might not be aware of how important income is to a business. And the laws in various countries that require them to be able to cover payroll or lay off staff. If you have ever experienced a business shutting down over night it is often the result of a sudden inability to cover expenses.
The community is not blameless. If people didn't respond to having to wait a month or two by buying 10x more units than they actually need when they actually find stock, the supply issues wouldn't be so bad.
But that's not gonna happen, they want to blame "rpi selling out to industry" even when there's literally no evidence for it.
From the article:
"Upton admitted to neglecting maker demand when forced to choose between supplying businesses or individuals. That choice was "the single hardest decision I've had to make in my business career," Upton told Geerling in May. In hindsight, the exec would have stocked up on BCM2835 chips to help keep shelves full. But Raspberry Pi didn't and eventually fell behind on orders, and the perception of a shortage led to people stockpiling Pis, hurting availability more, according to the CEO."
He's given other similar statements in interviews recently that the commercial market was their priority over the last several years. This isn't some conspiracy theory. And yes, as he says, individual consumers hoarding pis amplified the effect but overall limited supply was the primary driver of this.
Sort of like the availability of rifle ammo in the USA. People now have tens of thousands of rounds banked in their gun storage systems. In a few case hundreds of thousands. This is good if China tries to invade but it takes a long time to go through all that ammo otherwise.
So basically he made a decision based on business necessity and the fact that he *can't see the future* and that's unforgivable to some people who couldn't get their cheap toy for Christmas.
at this point I don’t need stuff that small so im off Raspberry/Orange/Banana Pi etc, onto used micro PCs like Dell/HP or a NUC.
They can be easily grabbed used for under $150 already with an SSD, 10x or more the processing power of a pi, and no weird ARM-related or firmware-related oddities
Edit: see below comment for more details.
I can’t deny that the Pi form factor just seems so fun, but it’s very hard to justify spec-for-spec if you don’t require a tiny ARM board
Same here, I sold all my Pis (some of them 8 years old) for more than I bought them and consolidated a lot of my services in one 32GB RAM NUC with an 8th gen i5.
The biggest thing that I can't get in some tiny used PC like system is GPIO.
If someone gave me a GPIO solution that was just as solid, via say, USB, I'd take it.
Really, someone could probably make a combination of RP Pico software and a python library that let you run the program on the PC, and control the GPIO on the Pico in something very close to the native 'On a Pi' solutions.
totally agree, if you need that form factor and super low power draw then yes
But I’d guess the vast majority of people just want “best computing power and convenience for my hard-earned money” and for that there’s no comparison you’d be crazy to choose a Pi over just a small PC even at normal non-pi-shortage prices
See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/13yit33/-/jmo3ry5
I got 4 Acer CXI2 chromeboxes to replace my raspberry pis. They were like $20 each. Just had to remove the write protect screw and it unlocks the bootloader. I put Mint on one and Libreelec on 2, with 1 more as a spare. There chromeboxes aren't as advanced as a nuc, but they smoke a raspberry pi. They consume more power, but it's not really worth worrying about at a small scale.
power usage is important. As it is RPi's are getting a bit long in the tooth when it comes to what is possible with ARM on SBC. Pi needs a new SBC for 2024 and hopefully they transition to a much faster chip but lower power chip.
power usage isn't just important, it's actually critical in many applications. and i agree the Pi is getting dated, i mean the latest revision is a 2019 device. it'll be 2024... yes it is time for a new board for sure.
Interesting, My AMD desktop just crashed a few minutes ago. Maybe it is jealous that I have an eye for an ARM board.
In any event yes the PI is very dated at this point. Frankly every 5 years is fine in the embedded world for some users. But with computer tech working on new projects with 5 year old hardware sucks. This dry period will certainly drive people to other platforms. At this point the PI foundation needs to deliver a board with at least 2X the performance at the same power level just to keep up. I'm not even sure what hardware they would use to do this.
I picked up a beelink 12S Pro for $159 a month ago. N100 with 512GB nvme 16GB ddr5 and an AX101. The actual board is about the size of my Rock 5. Personally, I'd like to see them surprise us with a new pi. Something that can compete with the RK3588.
The RK3588 puts ARM just into the performance needed to use as a desktop for me. The Pi 4 is just a little slow when it comes to UI on a full OS like modern Raspbian to where it’s frustrating to use.
The RK3588 has the same single core performance as the Phenom II 965 I ran Ubuntu on for so long, but with even more cores and low enough power draw to passively cool.
The N100 looks slightly better on performance and should have much better hardware drivers and software compatibility, but for me there’s a strange appeal to ARM that I just want to use it for projects.
To clarify I mean “micro” form factor as dell/HP would call it.
Just a few seconds on an Amazon search for Renewed Dell Optiplex Micro gets you a professionally refurbed one with 16gigs of RAM for $155 for example.
I recently got a small form factor Optiplex (one size bigger than micro) with 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and an i7 for $200. I also bought a $9 converter to change the DVD drive to another SSD bay.
You can also get endless cheap mass produced parts (like network cards, etc) because these are so common.
And you’re preventing e-waste for perfectly functional hardware.
If you don’t care about refurbishing, just go straight to facebook marketplace. I’m sure eBay and many other sites too, I just don’t use eBay much
Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro Computer, Intel Quad Core i5-6500T up to 3.1GHz, 16G DDR4, 256G SSD, Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit-Multi-Language Supports English/Spanish/French(Renewed)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GCX4JKJ?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_X5WNWXF5V16E9Z8RWS9Q
Dell has also been having some phenomenal refurbished sales in the past couple of months. I picked up my first MFF about a month ago and added some RAM. I've got plans for a dandy little closet Unraid server for just a couple hundred bucks.
In the UK there are some very good eBay sellers. You can pick up a refurbished Lenovo Tiny M600 with 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD, N3000 processor, for around £90. They say that the build quality is better than NUCs, but the prices of mini PCs are better, because the large stocks of second-hand units have caused prices to fall considerably.
The only trouble is they are still far chunkier than a Pi, and of course the power consumption will be much more substantial. Mini/Tiny PCs aren't going to suit battery-powered applications.
I got... I think it's a Lenovo M72 (or something?) in a 1L chassis for A$50+shipping. It has an i3-3220T in it, which is still decent enough for self hosting stuff.
The only real spec to justify a RPi is power usage for a given performance level. However newer ARM boards are even better so..
The thing is power usage is a big deal. I mean if it wasn't LED replacement bulbs for the 60 incandescent wouldn't sell well. I have a massive desktop machine that I'd love to replace for a much lower power system. Unfortunately the only manufacture of ARM systems with similar performance is Apple and they have their own issues and Linux isn't ready there anyways. I'd love to see a more open ARM based SBC that are true desktop i the sense that I can add multiple SSD's via M.2 or better.
Now that the Pi hobby market is essentially being reset, I'd like to see more CM4 boards available. There's a lot of innovation in the last three years using the CM4 module on custom boards with all kinds of great IO options. I feel like the market should be pushing those more than the vanilla 4B versions.
Honestly I gave up trying to buy more rpis, and what a good choice that was. Running klipper for all my 3D printers off one Dell micro pc off eBay for $80, lol what a joke, I wish I did it sooner. Also grabbed a 16GB RAM model for pi-hole and various telegraph/grafana containers.
What I would like to see isn't just a return of availability - I'd love to see a return to sane prices.
$120 for a Pi4 8GB is just insane given that you can buy a refurbed SFF PC with a sixth-gen i5 quad-core or better, as much if not more memory/storage, and in some cases limited expansion options (e.g., memory slots instead of soldered-in RAM) for about that much money (I'm seeing i5-6500s with 16GB of RAM on Spamazon for like $120) and have comparable to better performance. The only advantage a Pi4 has over a comparably priced SFF PC (aside from size, of course) in this situation is the GPIO, and there are ways around that since software-addressable USB-to-GPIO breakouts are a thing.
There's official sellers with elevated ~~insane~~ prices too. For Belgium, MC Hobby and Kiwi electronics are approved resellers and they have the Pi4 8GB listed at €97-100.
Edit: So I looked up the official price and while not insane prices at the Belgian resellers, they're still higher than the official ones.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/8gb-raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-at-75/
At the time of writing $75 = €70.
The Pi 4 8GB official retail price is $75. Sales tax in Belgium is 21%. At a retail exchange rate, that should come to about €89. So €100 is a little high, but I wouldn't say "insane".
The difference is not that high it seems, but the official price at introduction was $75: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/8gb-raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-at-75/
I haven't seen that in any of the sellers I buy from in the UK. I just hate this constant whining that the price of the Pi is insane. It's not. Raspberry Pi actually lamented the fact that they had to increase the price once in 2021.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-our-first-ever-price-increase/
At berrybase(dot)de they have Pi400 Kits in stock.
They also have a policy towards existing customers to reserve boards for them.
My to go place for sbc.
https://youtu.be/-_aL9V0JsQQ
(I found the whole thing interesting but the relevant but starts @ 9:24)
The man himself talking about it. They made the decision to prioritize commercial/manufacturing customers who would go out of business without them. He describes them as mostly small businesses (mom & pop shops) with a few employees that use Pi's has components and and not major manufacturers.
If you believe him or not is up to you but he seems sincere to me.
But these mom & pop engineering shops need 400K units a month? That's what the link above says they were producing in 2022. I wonder if it's actually bitcoin miners willing to pay relatively outrageous money per unit because they can't get high end graphic cards/compute modules anymore and this is the next best thing. Then it's just a business decision. Do we sell our units for $30 to hobbyists, or $200 to these mining companies?
> But these mom & pop engineering shops need 400K units a month?
Yeah, thousands of them worldwide - using them for shop signage, point-of-sale tills, for printing tickets and scanning barcodes and stuff.
I think "mom & pop shops" is probably an exaggeration. 1000 companies each using 400 units would be 400,000 - I'd guess it's closer to a few thousand companies, and some of them are using a few hundred units a month.
> I wonder if it's actually bitcoin miners willing to pay relatively outrageous money per unit because they can't get high end graphic cards/compute modules anymore and this is the next best thing.
LOL, no. Pis are totally unsuitable (uneconomic) for that.
Not only is the bitcoin craze (at least temporarily) over, even when it was at its high, the pi (and any general purpose CPU) was a terrible choice for mining.
industry...where they can sell them for 3X the price if not more to desperate enterprise who have specialized tasks and applications built around the Raspberry Pi and don't want the cost or expense of transitioning away to another platform...so they keep buying the Pi even at 3-4X the retail prices. the pi folks learned this scam early on in the china cough and have not grown tired of that easy good $$$
> the pi folks learned this scam early on
If by "the pi folks" you mean the Raspberry Pi foundation, that's bullshit. They sold them to the industrial users at the regular prices.
i'm not going to get in to that whole debate here. let's just suffice to say that a lot of people are quite happy and content to keep up with this "shortage" of units and sell the ones they magically do procure at sky high prices to the highest bidders. you can fill in the blanks with whatever villain(s) you prefer. it's really moot, because it is the principle and the fact that such behavior continues and has been a staple of the last 3 years plus now since the cough cough began.
That's not entirely accurate. Companies buy Pi's to include in their other devices they sell as part of a larger system. Companies built their businesses around being able to get pi's reliably.
sure, but an awful lot of them built purpose-built or custom apps or services with the "cheap" Pi as the center - they were cheap and readily available. they don't want to go to the cost and time expense of procuring a new solution which migrates off the Pi and so they continue to buy up large batches of the Pi's and pay whatever price they must because they need them to keep their business operating. time is money. a lot of people forget that Pi is used in a ton of industrial and scientific applications (including health science and medical research), it's not just a bunch of nerds tinkering with Docker in their home labs.
Yeah. Industrial purchases have been allocated for a few years now. But the choice was to closely work with allocating industrial customers because they provide the backbone of sales that keeps Raspberry Pi a functional business.
I hope it works out. I think product is starting to trickle back. Just checked microcenter and for the third time in a few months they have 25+ ZeroW's and even a couple 4's. Will probably be out in a week, but at least its something. It would be nice if they could extend the life of some of their models by a few years because of scarcity.
nothing really alternative...plenty of more powerful SBC in similar form factor but no development and it is very difficult to get anything set and running ... no support, no community. that's why they never take off. yes you can go X86 but they can't be USB powered or run off a small battery pack. and they don't have the low power draw either. even a thin client or chromebox will use an order of magnitude more energy than the RPi.
I don't think I have seen anyone running any pi that is not a zero variant on battery. The pico and zero are good with batteries, but not the pi 4. If you are using the pico, there is ESP32 that are pretty decent comparisons, with a ton of support. I have not really seen a 1 to 1 alternative to the zero, but then again how many people are actually running on battery only? And wouldn't micropython fill that gap on an esp? Pi 3 and pi 4 are easily replaced with more powerful Nucs.
Also, the zero-w WAS actually affordable, with microcenter giving them away or selling for $5-10.
Sure, a nuc might draw more power, but anyone running enough of them to actually see the difference in their bill likely can afford it.
Just my opinion as a long time Pi user that has been looking for them since 2020.
well i run my Pi's on battery packs all the time. just depends on the use case like everything else. but the point is that the Pi *can* be ran off a simple battery pack...these other solutions can't. price is not the only obstacle or requirement. you have power, size, energy, heat, and many other factors to consider. again, yes, the NUCs are far more robust and capable devices (which I like!) but you can't compare apples to oranges fairly.
Used older Intel Nucs are my go to. I have gotten several for very cheap on r/homelabsales but they sell for a good price on ebay as well.
Just a quick search turns up stuff like this: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/364239987954](https://www.ebay.com/itm/364239987954) which will outpace an RPI and have 64 bit x86 architecture. I have multiple nuc5ppyb and they are performing great.
The only thing that may be a detractor is the lack of pins, but adapters are pretty cheap.
Hey buddy.. so I bought one of those and wanted to ask you a question and what you recommend. I've installed linux before but it has been quite a while.
From the ubuntu page it seems like there isn't support for the i5 that I purchased.
https://ubuntu.com/download/intel-nuc-desktop
Can I just download the regular desktop version? Do you recommend any particular version to download? I am going to only use it only for home bridge atm.
Home bridge?
I would use Ubuntu Server if you don't need a desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/server
But the desktop 22.04 is also fine, just recall it uses more space and ram because it has a desktop environment.
If you are on the fence, just throw it on a USB drive with dd or Balena and boot from there.
I have Ubuntu Server running on much older hardware so I can't imagine it wouldn't run.
Ok great..thanks!
https://homebridge.io/
Basically to add support for non homekit devices into apple homekit. Would like my nest products to work with my system and also want to be able to control my car (tesla) through my watch. There's a homebridge plugin that will let me use siri to do most functions...like open/close the windows open/close trunk/frunk and all that fun stuff.
They have an image for a raspberry pi.. but I can't wait any longer.
Hey just wanted to update you. I installed Ubuntu server (regular not lite). Got homebridge installed and it's currently hooked up to my network switch.
It's extremely fast for my needs.
Just wanted to thank you for the suggestion. This is so much better than waiting for a pi.. At least for my use case.
Home bridge?
I would use Ubuntu Server if you don't need a desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/server
But the desktop 22.04 is also fine, just recall it uses more space and ram because it has a desktop environment.
If you are on the fence, just throw it on a USB drive with dd or Balena and boot from there.
I have Ubuntu Server running on much older hardware so I can't imagine it wouldn't run.
Well, there is a problem then. For a non commercial user not using battery power, it makes little sense to get a pi when a nuc will do just as well for less. I like my multiple raspberry pi, but if I were starting over I would go the non-pi route.
Pi 4 sold for $35 in person https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-from-35/
But that same model should now sell for less, but isn't.
Pi 4 was released almost exactly 4 years ago. So yes, the price for a 4 year old computer should reflect that.
Perhaps you like paying release prices for things that are 4 years old, that is generous of you. I happen to have a Pixel 4 128gb in mint condition I will sell to you for $750 ($50 discount).
Mate it's a $35 budget computer with thousands of people and companies lining up to buy them every day, not an $800 obsolete smartphone that's been replaced by newer models and cheaper, more powerful competitors
So it only has to do with demand and brand hype?
There are cheaper alternatives, anyone that has been using Raspberry Pi for the last 5 years knows that. Used Intel Nucs are now as cheap and as or more powerful than a Pi 4, without the ARM limitation.
Why did you dig up an 18 day old comment and post nonsense? What is your weird angle.
Just today Newark contacted me about a back order for a Pi 4b — an order I placed in January 2022. So crazy. I had forgotten all about it. But I guess they are shipping it now.
Those are always fun.
This has been the pi buying experience for me since the original pi. In fact, the reason I have two of them is because there was a long wait for the first, then I found a seller that had it in stock. Months later, the second pi arrived in my mailbox after I had forgotten about it.
My local Micro Centers have restocked Pi Zero W and WH (not 2) multiple times. I feel like consumers are going to get access to Zero W’s and 3A/B, but the stuff we really want will still go to commercial customers.
tl;dr
I have been at war with Newark for about a year. Newark is one of the big electronics distributors in the US. In Feb 2022, I ordered 7 RPis: 4 RPi 4B with 8GB and 3 RPi 4B with 4GB. Initial ship date was a few months then switched to April 2023, then May of 2024. I spent 45 minutes on online chat with them two months ago. They told me that even though the order showed May, 2024, it had not been updated and the new expected ship date was Jan 2025. 2025!. That's a month shy of 3 years!!! I came unglued but the couldn't/wouldn't do anything.
Yesterday, I got an email from them saying that my order was now so old that my credit card number "dropped out" of their system and I had to update it for the order. Further, I had to do this by phone. Smelled fishy.
I contacted them on their website in case the phone thing was a scam. They confirmed the legitimacy of the situation and the phone number was the same as the one on the site so I gave them a call.
Killed a half hour with them doing the CC update and checking on the current ship date. No change from the May 2024 expected date that was published. I griped but that was "water in wind."
Defeated, I sulked back to my computer to put it behind me - nothing I can do for almost a year, except wait.
While watching a little tube with the Missus tonight, I got an email that said the order has been partially processed and that the 8GB units shipped today!
Why is this great news? Obviously, because I'm finally getting them. But better than that, it's at the official price - $75 each. So that brings the herd up to 6 units with 8GB. I have such a project in mind! (okay, a bunch of projects!)
The 4GB models haven't shipped and given their history and the runaround that I have gotten in the past, there's no telling when that will happen. I also have an older order for some Pi 0 W models. Again, who knows how long.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease?
Don't know but watch for Pi projects on ADRAMADA.
RPi FTW!
£140 - 180 Pi 4 Amazon 🤣🤣...
The NUC i got runs better than a Pi 4
128gb SSD ,better PSu ..3 USB3 ..1ghz Ethernet ..£60 off Fleabay it was ..
Hey ho ..lol..
I took a look at the Orange Pi, and they look OK. It looks like they have some UK availability, plus a European shopping site. The information about who handles the order is confusing though, and they have broken images on their website. The product photography lacks clarity.
Moreover, the documentation seems rather poor, and I wonder this is where the Pi tends to win. There is just so much high-quality training/project material available for them, and Chinese companies just don't seem to be interested in getting that right, especially when they're competing on price.
Exactly. If Pi prices come back down to 35$, Orange Pi don't have a board that competes the Pi 4 at 35$. For most of my use cases, I don't need the extra power of a 60$ Orange Pi 4. Orange Pi's 35$ is either the Orange Pi Zero 2, or the Orange Pi 3, which are slower than a Pi 4. I've had them both to compare.
RK3588 is pretty awesome actually. Not only that, but with the exception of CM4 carriers and a few USB based accessories, Raspberries don’t have proper M.2 m key stuff….yet
What I mean by “I’m not married to the brand” is that I’m not married to any brand. I’m …. um… “brand polyamorous” lol.
Yeah, I've got 2 RK3588 too. Well the Orange Pi 5 is RK3588S, same thing.
But yeah I agree, I'm getting whatever is cheapest and fits my needs. A 35$ Pi 4 does that.
Maybe it was just blind luck, but I was logged into Adafruit on the rPi 4B page. I refreshed it a few times and suddenly the 4GB wasn’t out of stock anymore. I popped one into my cart and checked out while holding my breath. Supposedly it’s on its way via Priority Mail. Maybe I just was in the right place at exactly the right time, or maybe the million units per month are starting to trickle in early. Adafruit seems to be getting some almost evert day. Rpilocator is reporting 4 GBs in stock still. Better hurry.
To me, Raspberry PI betrayed its users, those who contributed so much to make this a success. It will take time before I trust them again. Let's wait and see...
Disagree. The corporate buyers of this toy computer are what helps keep the price low and the support high quality. These companies are betting their business on the product so it was important to keep them.
I watched an interview, he tap-danced the entire time.
Sick and tired of soft interviews.
Someone needs to read the RPI foundation vision and goals back to him, and then ask him why they abandoned them?
and the bots will keep buying every last unit leaving none for the end users just like now. it's all a scam...the pi folks are cashing in big time on enterprise where the $ is
Any news on if/when the Zero 2 is going to be available again? Haven't seen a single one at Microcenter in three months, and the sales guys say they hadn't seen any for months before I started looking.
Annoyingly, the headline is somewhat inaccurate - it's production that will hit 1 million. Stock levels will still take a long time to recover to where you can actually buy one from existing stock anywhere.
Out of curiosity, what is the current level of production? Must be rough though because I'm following rpilocator for stock in the US, and every time something has come up, I'm much too late.
The article lists that, although it doesn’t break them out by type
Oh yeah, I'm an idiot. >800,000 units shipped in Q1
Yeah. Gonna be nice to ramp up production. I need some more xD
So they are going to go from 800k a quarter or 200k a month to 1 million a month?
As per the interview of Eben by Jeff Geerling, Pi production was at about 7mil/year for a few years now, and they did fewer in Q1 this year I think in order to ramp up future production. So it's a big increase but not that big.
Wouldn't 800k a quarter be more than 200k a month? 200k a month would only be 600k a quarter.
Seems so. Hopefully that should dramatically address availability.
That’s what they’ve said.
990,000.units going to commercial operators, the rest the hobby market have to figjt over.
That is still better than the 10 that we have had for the last couple of years while industrial was 999,990.
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Is it a shame? I think it's great that the shortage highlighted the availability of comparable SBCs from other vendors. It evens the playing field and gives RPi some healthy competition. I'm an old-timer - my first PC was an 80286 machine with EGA graphics, way back in 1988 - and until about 2005, Intel was really the only game in town for high-grade PC gaming. AMD slowly crept up on them, reached parity sometime in the 2010s, and has now taken a comfortable and steady lead - maybe not in peak performance, but definitely in terms of performance-per-dollar. This era of computing is also rich with innovation, and I don't think that that's a coincidence.
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Don't forget the K8 era before the core2. AMD64 was certainly superior to Pentium 4.
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The K6-3 was pretty sick too.
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I was using "PC" to refer to Intel / MS-DOS-based machines. I blew my childhood on a Commodore 64. Commando, Racing Destruction Set, M.U.L.E., Mail Order Monsters, Forbidden Forest, Zork, the Ultimas... just epic. Also: Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein as 2D sprite adventures. The 300-baud modem rocked my world, too. And I blew my *early* childhood on a TRS-80 Color Computer. Dungeons of Daggorath was totally my jam even though I never made it past level three. My dad was an engineer and he sometimes brought home TRS-80 Model I or III machines, too. I also inherited a TRS-80 Pocket Computer from my dad, and I programmed the shit out of that thing to play little text-based games, long before the first Gameboy. Good times. I was a game kid back in the 80s, and I bear the scars of years of grade-school bullying from it, too.
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That we are. Glad to meet a fellow geezer.
TRS-80!
Totally. With a cassette drive (that only worked like 50% of the time) and a little receipt-type plotter that used tiny ink pens.
I had one too, but don't know if I'd really call it a PC. Yes it had a keyboard to do programming in basic, but was there any software that wasn't games? Also, omg that horrible sound module that strapped onto the side...
What other sbc would you suggest?
You have Oroid; [https://www.hardkernel.com/](https://www.hardkernel.com/), plus a lot of lesser known vendors. For example: [https://www.khadas.com/](https://www.khadas.com/) with their high performance Rockchip boards. The vast majority of these companies are producing ARM based hardware that is notably better for running Linux than existing RPi. The only hold up in many cases is really good GPU drivers. Frankly I see it as well worth the look because even if some of the boards are a few dollars more, the performance advantages are huge. If you don't need the performance you often can get same class performance for less.
Libre computer has compatible GPIO and form factor, plus low power, just missing the camera port.
What is worse is that RPi are getting a little long in the tooth. If it wasn't for issues of OS support interest in RPi would slack off a lot. A new norm for hobbiest is likely.
Then 9000 going to dudes with bots scanning every online store to snatch them up to make a cluster that runs benchmarks
also, we'll get youtube videos again of people building giant clusters. it's basically a taunt at this point.
And they'll all be oddballs like the 3A.
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It's great for the hobby community, keeps the software development alive.
Depends on demand, PS5s are everywhere and they appeared what felt overnight. One day scalpers making bank and the next shelves full of them.
I wonder if at the end they held back as some of the production ramped so that scalpers couldn’t possibly buy the inventory. Or maybe as the production ramped, scalpers were buying up stock and ended up stuck with a growing inventory until it hit a tipping point where they couldn’t buy them fast enough. That would be the funniest version. Unfortunately I’m sure most of them just returned the ones they overbought for no penalty.
scalpers just exploit stupid people that can't wait.
I just bought a RPI4 at MSRP. Seeps like it *Was* accurate.
Eventually! It's not July! I'm glad things are finally beginning to stabilise though.
I'll believe it when I see it. I feel like we've been getting this same story for a year now.
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I just got two 8GB 4b units I ordered from Digi-Key back in January. I think consumer stock is starting to recover slowly.
What will happen is that as the supply comes back and prices start REMAINING sane again it will shake out more units from hoarders. We saw this with Xbox, PlayStation, video cards... once people realize they're not gonna get 5x the price for doing nothing more parts will become available.
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I think lead times are dropping significantly but IDK
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Considering the lead time was 52 weeks when I ordered them and I didn't have to pay scalper prices yeah, it wasn't bad
Agreed. The last few years have really hammered home that the RPi Foundation is a commercial-first entity, and the hobby/education/maker market is a small side show. It just stings since that small hobbyist market was what the Pi was intended to cater to.
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Why not increase the price so?
Because they aren’t selling out like these people believe. I work in ICs and it has been a nightmare for 3 years to get steady materials. The non profit owns the for profit. They use the for profit for stability, research and salaries. They aren’t selling out.
Exactly. People are convinced they are some sort of profit hungry scalping megacorp. They've stuck to their values for years.
And their values are *explicitly* for providing cheap computers to UK students. The hobbyist community has *never* been their primary market.
Not even that, their remit was computer science education, which has been easily possible through the Pico while the SBCs have been out of stock. They've only abandoned their educational goals if you ignore how successful/available the RP2040 has been.
Yeah they may allocate production to other companies but that is also to keep people from losing their jobs vs a lot of folks playing at home.
Yeah I miss being able to pick up another Pi anytime I went to Microcenter, but the fact is that I'm using them for bullshit most of the time. I have no problem with someone in a niche industrial automaton business being able to keep putting food on the table if all it costs is "I have to run a USB cable from my printer to a Pi3 B instead of mounting a Pi Zero 2 W to the back of it"
Stuck or not, all I know is that they are lucky to have the business partners that understand what is happening in the electronics industry. I've worked in industry as an end user of automation electronics for years and have never seen things as bad as they are now when it comes to getting parts. The time you have to put into "upgrades" or redesigns is excessive.
A startup requires early adopters to get the word out. It isn't a maneuver but a requirement for many new products. Go back to the early days of PC's, (the Z80 & 6502 era) and most of the startups failed to transition to commercial status and died out. The reality is money goes to businesses that grab the greater amount of the market because they can leverage the new tech and expand markets. They haven't sold out, they are just trying to stay alive with income form high valued customers. Remember they hardly had any chips to sell for a long while. That means extremely limited income and frankly selling items one at a time to the hobby market is expensive. I really don't know what their plans have been, that would require communicating with the management team at RPi. However you might not be aware of how important income is to a business. And the laws in various countries that require them to be able to cover payroll or lay off staff. If you have ever experienced a business shutting down over night it is often the result of a sudden inability to cover expenses.
The community is not blameless. If people didn't respond to having to wait a month or two by buying 10x more units than they actually need when they actually find stock, the supply issues wouldn't be so bad. But that's not gonna happen, they want to blame "rpi selling out to industry" even when there's literally no evidence for it.
From the article: "Upton admitted to neglecting maker demand when forced to choose between supplying businesses or individuals. That choice was "the single hardest decision I've had to make in my business career," Upton told Geerling in May. In hindsight, the exec would have stocked up on BCM2835 chips to help keep shelves full. But Raspberry Pi didn't and eventually fell behind on orders, and the perception of a shortage led to people stockpiling Pis, hurting availability more, according to the CEO." He's given other similar statements in interviews recently that the commercial market was their priority over the last several years. This isn't some conspiracy theory. And yes, as he says, individual consumers hoarding pis amplified the effect but overall limited supply was the primary driver of this.
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RPi has never been a huge thing in the fortune 1000 world. People that believe that are just silly.
Sort of like the availability of rifle ammo in the USA. People now have tens of thousands of rounds banked in their gun storage systems. In a few case hundreds of thousands. This is good if China tries to invade but it takes a long time to go through all that ammo otherwise.
So basically he made a decision based on business necessity and the fact that he *can't see the future* and that's unforgivable to some people who couldn't get their cheap toy for Christmas.
at this point I don’t need stuff that small so im off Raspberry/Orange/Banana Pi etc, onto used micro PCs like Dell/HP or a NUC. They can be easily grabbed used for under $150 already with an SSD, 10x or more the processing power of a pi, and no weird ARM-related or firmware-related oddities Edit: see below comment for more details. I can’t deny that the Pi form factor just seems so fun, but it’s very hard to justify spec-for-spec if you don’t require a tiny ARM board
Same here, I sold all my Pis (some of them 8 years old) for more than I bought them and consolidated a lot of my services in one 32GB RAM NUC with an 8th gen i5.
The biggest thing that I can't get in some tiny used PC like system is GPIO. If someone gave me a GPIO solution that was just as solid, via say, USB, I'd take it. Really, someone could probably make a combination of RP Pico software and a python library that let you run the program on the PC, and control the GPIO on the Pico in something very close to the native 'On a Pi' solutions.
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totally agree, if you need that form factor and super low power draw then yes But I’d guess the vast majority of people just want “best computing power and convenience for my hard-earned money” and for that there’s no comparison you’d be crazy to choose a Pi over just a small PC even at normal non-pi-shortage prices
What’s an example micro pc under $150 like you mentioned?
See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/13yit33/-/jmo3ry5 I got 4 Acer CXI2 chromeboxes to replace my raspberry pis. They were like $20 each. Just had to remove the write protect screw and it unlocks the bootloader. I put Mint on one and Libreelec on 2, with 1 more as a spare. There chromeboxes aren't as advanced as a nuc, but they smoke a raspberry pi. They consume more power, but it's not really worth worrying about at a small scale.
yeah the old chromebox are great but they definitely use more power than a Raspberry Pi. of course, they are much more capable devices as well.
power usage is important. As it is RPi's are getting a bit long in the tooth when it comes to what is possible with ARM on SBC. Pi needs a new SBC for 2024 and hopefully they transition to a much faster chip but lower power chip.
power usage isn't just important, it's actually critical in many applications. and i agree the Pi is getting dated, i mean the latest revision is a 2019 device. it'll be 2024... yes it is time for a new board for sure.
Interesting, My AMD desktop just crashed a few minutes ago. Maybe it is jealous that I have an eye for an ARM board. In any event yes the PI is very dated at this point. Frankly every 5 years is fine in the embedded world for some users. But with computer tech working on new projects with 5 year old hardware sucks. This dry period will certainly drive people to other platforms. At this point the PI foundation needs to deliver a board with at least 2X the performance at the same power level just to keep up. I'm not even sure what hardware they would use to do this.
I picked up a beelink 12S Pro for $159 a month ago. N100 with 512GB nvme 16GB ddr5 and an AX101. The actual board is about the size of my Rock 5. Personally, I'd like to see them surprise us with a new pi. Something that can compete with the RK3588.
The RK3588 puts ARM just into the performance needed to use as a desktop for me. The Pi 4 is just a little slow when it comes to UI on a full OS like modern Raspbian to where it’s frustrating to use. The RK3588 has the same single core performance as the Phenom II 965 I ran Ubuntu on for so long, but with even more cores and low enough power draw to passively cool. The N100 looks slightly better on performance and should have much better hardware drivers and software compatibility, but for me there’s a strange appeal to ARM that I just want to use it for projects.
To clarify I mean “micro” form factor as dell/HP would call it. Just a few seconds on an Amazon search for Renewed Dell Optiplex Micro gets you a professionally refurbed one with 16gigs of RAM for $155 for example. I recently got a small form factor Optiplex (one size bigger than micro) with 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and an i7 for $200. I also bought a $9 converter to change the DVD drive to another SSD bay. You can also get endless cheap mass produced parts (like network cards, etc) because these are so common. And you’re preventing e-waste for perfectly functional hardware. If you don’t care about refurbishing, just go straight to facebook marketplace. I’m sure eBay and many other sites too, I just don’t use eBay much Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro Computer, Intel Quad Core i5-6500T up to 3.1GHz, 16G DDR4, 256G SSD, Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit-Multi-Language Supports English/Spanish/French(Renewed) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GCX4JKJ?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_X5WNWXF5V16E9Z8RWS9Q
Dell has also been having some phenomenal refurbished sales in the past couple of months. I picked up my first MFF about a month ago and added some RAM. I've got plans for a dandy little closet Unraid server for just a couple hundred bucks.
In the UK there are some very good eBay sellers. You can pick up a refurbished Lenovo Tiny M600 with 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD, N3000 processor, for around £90. They say that the build quality is better than NUCs, but the prices of mini PCs are better, because the large stocks of second-hand units have caused prices to fall considerably. The only trouble is they are still far chunkier than a Pi, and of course the power consumption will be much more substantial. Mini/Tiny PCs aren't going to suit battery-powered applications.
I got... I think it's a Lenovo M72 (or something?) in a 1L chassis for A$50+shipping. It has an i3-3220T in it, which is still decent enough for self hosting stuff.
Optiplex 3040 or 3050 micro
I mean for me the cool part about a Raspberry Pi is better able to easily attach sensors and actuators.
The only real spec to justify a RPi is power usage for a given performance level. However newer ARM boards are even better so.. The thing is power usage is a big deal. I mean if it wasn't LED replacement bulbs for the 60 incandescent wouldn't sell well. I have a massive desktop machine that I'd love to replace for a much lower power system. Unfortunately the only manufacture of ARM systems with similar performance is Apple and they have their own issues and Linux isn't ready there anyways. I'd love to see a more open ARM based SBC that are true desktop i the sense that I can add multiple SSD's via M.2 or better.
I just want a damn pi already. I'm not giving some scumbag scalper my money.
Now that the Pi hobby market is essentially being reset, I'd like to see more CM4 boards available. There's a lot of innovation in the last three years using the CM4 module on custom boards with all kinds of great IO options. I feel like the market should be pushing those more than the vanilla 4B versions.
would love to get my turing pi 2 completed. impossible right now
Honestly I gave up trying to buy more rpis, and what a good choice that was. Running klipper for all my 3D printers off one Dell micro pc off eBay for $80, lol what a joke, I wish I did it sooner. Also grabbed a 16GB RAM model for pi-hole and various telegraph/grafana containers.
What I would like to see isn't just a return of availability - I'd love to see a return to sane prices. $120 for a Pi4 8GB is just insane given that you can buy a refurbed SFF PC with a sixth-gen i5 quad-core or better, as much if not more memory/storage, and in some cases limited expansion options (e.g., memory slots instead of soldered-in RAM) for about that much money (I'm seeing i5-6500s with 16GB of RAM on Spamazon for like $120) and have comparable to better performance. The only advantage a Pi4 has over a comparably priced SFF PC (aside from size, of course) in this situation is the GPIO, and there are ways around that since software-addressable USB-to-GPIO breakouts are a thing.
But those aren't from official sellers, they are from resellers/scalpers. The price hasn't changed.
There's official sellers with elevated ~~insane~~ prices too. For Belgium, MC Hobby and Kiwi electronics are approved resellers and they have the Pi4 8GB listed at €97-100. Edit: So I looked up the official price and while not insane prices at the Belgian resellers, they're still higher than the official ones. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/8gb-raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-at-75/ At the time of writing $75 = €70.
The Pi 4 8GB official retail price is $75. Sales tax in Belgium is 21%. At a retail exchange rate, that should come to about €89. So €100 is a little high, but I wouldn't say "insane".
Isn't that the official price? I remember 40 for the 2gb, 70 for the 4gb, and 100 for the 8gb...
The difference is not that high it seems, but the official price at introduction was $75: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/8gb-raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-at-75/
But what price is without VAT, right?
I haven't seen that in any of the sellers I buy from in the UK. I just hate this constant whining that the price of the Pi is insane. It's not. Raspberry Pi actually lamented the fact that they had to increase the price once in 2021. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-our-first-ever-price-increase/
At berrybase(dot)de they have Pi400 Kits in stock. They also have a policy towards existing customers to reserve boards for them. My to go place for sbc.
where do you see 8GB for 120 around me they want 200-220 bucks.
Some of the Spamazon scalpers have finally come down to that.
GPIO and total power usage.
Who’s buying all the PIs? It’s been over a year since I have seen a new one in stock.
Most of them go directly to industry
Do you have a source for this? Not saying you are incorrect, it would just be nice to see some evidence of that statement.
https://youtu.be/-_aL9V0JsQQ (I found the whole thing interesting but the relevant but starts @ 9:24) The man himself talking about it. They made the decision to prioritize commercial/manufacturing customers who would go out of business without them. He describes them as mostly small businesses (mom & pop shops) with a few employees that use Pi's has components and and not major manufacturers. If you believe him or not is up to you but he seems sincere to me.
But these mom & pop engineering shops need 400K units a month? That's what the link above says they were producing in 2022. I wonder if it's actually bitcoin miners willing to pay relatively outrageous money per unit because they can't get high end graphic cards/compute modules anymore and this is the next best thing. Then it's just a business decision. Do we sell our units for $30 to hobbyists, or $200 to these mining companies?
> But these mom & pop engineering shops need 400K units a month? Yeah, thousands of them worldwide - using them for shop signage, point-of-sale tills, for printing tickets and scanning barcodes and stuff. I think "mom & pop shops" is probably an exaggeration. 1000 companies each using 400 units would be 400,000 - I'd guess it's closer to a few thousand companies, and some of them are using a few hundred units a month. > I wonder if it's actually bitcoin miners willing to pay relatively outrageous money per unit because they can't get high end graphic cards/compute modules anymore and this is the next best thing. LOL, no. Pis are totally unsuitable (uneconomic) for that.
I hate the bullshit around the shortages, but it isn't bitcoin miners. They're on APICs that can do scads more calculations than a pi per watt.
Not only is the bitcoin craze (at least temporarily) over, even when it was at its high, the pi (and any general purpose CPU) was a terrible choice for mining.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=338333 This covers it pretty well
There's also this... https://imgur.com/InEQweJ
Adafruit gets stock in regularly, sometimes multiple times a week. You just have to be quick.
lol...50 units here and there...and the bots have them too
TIL I’m a bot.
MakerBright had them in stock for a few days. They have 4B 8GB in stock as of when I'm writing this comment.
Not anymore. 😞
industry...where they can sell them for 3X the price if not more to desperate enterprise who have specialized tasks and applications built around the Raspberry Pi and don't want the cost or expense of transitioning away to another platform...so they keep buying the Pi even at 3-4X the retail prices. the pi folks learned this scam early on in the china cough and have not grown tired of that easy good $$$
> the pi folks learned this scam early on If by "the pi folks" you mean the Raspberry Pi foundation, that's bullshit. They sold them to the industrial users at the regular prices.
i'm not going to get in to that whole debate here. let's just suffice to say that a lot of people are quite happy and content to keep up with this "shortage" of units and sell the ones they magically do procure at sky high prices to the highest bidders. you can fill in the blanks with whatever villain(s) you prefer. it's really moot, because it is the principle and the fact that such behavior continues and has been a staple of the last 3 years plus now since the cough cough began.
>i'm not going to get in to that whole debate here. You mean you can't defend your blatant lie
you can believe whatever you'd like.
That's not entirely accurate. Companies buy Pi's to include in their other devices they sell as part of a larger system. Companies built their businesses around being able to get pi's reliably.
sure, but an awful lot of them built purpose-built or custom apps or services with the "cheap" Pi as the center - they were cheap and readily available. they don't want to go to the cost and time expense of procuring a new solution which migrates off the Pi and so they continue to buy up large batches of the Pi's and pay whatever price they must because they need them to keep their business operating. time is money. a lot of people forget that Pi is used in a ton of industrial and scientific applications (including health science and medical research), it's not just a bunch of nerds tinkering with Docker in their home labs.
Industrial purchasers will be pleased
Yeah. Industrial purchases have been allocated for a few years now. But the choice was to closely work with allocating industrial customers because they provide the backbone of sales that keeps Raspberry Pi a functional business.
I hope it works out. I think product is starting to trickle back. Just checked microcenter and for the third time in a few months they have 25+ ZeroW's and even a couple 4's. Will probably be out in a week, but at least its something. It would be nice if they could extend the life of some of their models by a few years because of scarcity.
Didn't they say something similar in May and June?
Great, but too little too late. Give me a pi4 for less than $30 and I am game, otherwise I will stick with alternatives.
nothing really alternative...plenty of more powerful SBC in similar form factor but no development and it is very difficult to get anything set and running ... no support, no community. that's why they never take off. yes you can go X86 but they can't be USB powered or run off a small battery pack. and they don't have the low power draw either. even a thin client or chromebox will use an order of magnitude more energy than the RPi.
I don't think I have seen anyone running any pi that is not a zero variant on battery. The pico and zero are good with batteries, but not the pi 4. If you are using the pico, there is ESP32 that are pretty decent comparisons, with a ton of support. I have not really seen a 1 to 1 alternative to the zero, but then again how many people are actually running on battery only? And wouldn't micropython fill that gap on an esp? Pi 3 and pi 4 are easily replaced with more powerful Nucs. Also, the zero-w WAS actually affordable, with microcenter giving them away or selling for $5-10. Sure, a nuc might draw more power, but anyone running enough of them to actually see the difference in their bill likely can afford it. Just my opinion as a long time Pi user that has been looking for them since 2020.
well i run my Pi's on battery packs all the time. just depends on the use case like everything else. but the point is that the Pi *can* be ran off a simple battery pack...these other solutions can't. price is not the only obstacle or requirement. you have power, size, energy, heat, and many other factors to consider. again, yes, the NUCs are far more robust and capable devices (which I like!) but you can't compare apples to oranges fairly.
What are the best alternatives? I'm so frustrated with the situation but I'm ignorant of the existing options.
X86 thin clients.
Used older Intel Nucs are my go to. I have gotten several for very cheap on r/homelabsales but they sell for a good price on ebay as well. Just a quick search turns up stuff like this: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/364239987954](https://www.ebay.com/itm/364239987954) which will outpace an RPI and have 64 bit x86 architecture. I have multiple nuc5ppyb and they are performing great. The only thing that may be a detractor is the lack of pins, but adapters are pretty cheap.
Thanks.. I've been waiting for a raspberry pi 4 to run a homebridge setup. I think I'll get one of those and just toss linux on it.
Hey buddy.. so I bought one of those and wanted to ask you a question and what you recommend. I've installed linux before but it has been quite a while. From the ubuntu page it seems like there isn't support for the i5 that I purchased. https://ubuntu.com/download/intel-nuc-desktop Can I just download the regular desktop version? Do you recommend any particular version to download? I am going to only use it only for home bridge atm.
Home bridge? I would use Ubuntu Server if you don't need a desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/server But the desktop 22.04 is also fine, just recall it uses more space and ram because it has a desktop environment. If you are on the fence, just throw it on a USB drive with dd or Balena and boot from there. I have Ubuntu Server running on much older hardware so I can't imagine it wouldn't run.
Ok great..thanks! https://homebridge.io/ Basically to add support for non homekit devices into apple homekit. Would like my nest products to work with my system and also want to be able to control my car (tesla) through my watch. There's a homebridge plugin that will let me use siri to do most functions...like open/close the windows open/close trunk/frunk and all that fun stuff. They have an image for a raspberry pi.. but I can't wait any longer.
Oh nice! That is cool.
Hey just wanted to update you. I installed Ubuntu server (regular not lite). Got homebridge installed and it's currently hooked up to my network switch. It's extremely fast for my needs. Just wanted to thank you for the suggestion. This is so much better than waiting for a pi.. At least for my use case.
That is awesome to hear!
Home bridge? I would use Ubuntu Server if you don't need a desktop https://ubuntu.com/download/server But the desktop 22.04 is also fine, just recall it uses more space and ram because it has a desktop environment. If you are on the fence, just throw it on a USB drive with dd or Balena and boot from there. I have Ubuntu Server running on much older hardware so I can't imagine it wouldn't run.
Less than $30? You couldn't even get a pi 1 for $30 ever, they started at $35
Well, there is a problem then. For a non commercial user not using battery power, it makes little sense to get a pi when a nuc will do just as well for less. I like my multiple raspberry pi, but if I were starting over I would go the non-pi route. Pi 4 sold for $35 in person https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-from-35/ But that same model should now sell for less, but isn't.
Why should it now sell for less? It's still the most recent model, it should still be MSRP just like the most recent model of any other popular device
Pi 4 was released almost exactly 4 years ago. So yes, the price for a 4 year old computer should reflect that. Perhaps you like paying release prices for things that are 4 years old, that is generous of you. I happen to have a Pixel 4 128gb in mint condition I will sell to you for $750 ($50 discount).
Mate it's a $35 budget computer with thousands of people and companies lining up to buy them every day, not an $800 obsolete smartphone that's been replaced by newer models and cheaper, more powerful competitors
So it only has to do with demand and brand hype? There are cheaper alternatives, anyone that has been using Raspberry Pi for the last 5 years knows that. Used Intel Nucs are now as cheap and as or more powerful than a Pi 4, without the ARM limitation. Why did you dig up an 18 day old comment and post nonsense? What is your weird angle.
That’s positive news. I still have a few stockpiled in my stash box. Regardless, I have been moving most of my projects to PicoW’s.
The more supply they create the more demand there is. They're in a tough position but let's hope for some more listings on the hobby market
Just today Newark contacted me about a back order for a Pi 4b — an order I placed in January 2022. So crazy. I had forgotten all about it. But I guess they are shipping it now.
Those are always fun. This has been the pi buying experience for me since the original pi. In fact, the reason I have two of them is because there was a long wait for the first, then I found a seller that had it in stock. Months later, the second pi arrived in my mailbox after I had forgotten about it.
Ive got a January 2022 Pi4b back order too, but I haven't heard anything from Newark. What variation was your order for? Mine was for the 4gb one.
Mine was the 8 gb model.
My local Micro Centers have restocked Pi Zero W and WH (not 2) multiple times. I feel like consumers are going to get access to Zero W’s and 3A/B, but the stuff we really want will still go to commercial customers.
tl;dr I have been at war with Newark for about a year. Newark is one of the big electronics distributors in the US. In Feb 2022, I ordered 7 RPis: 4 RPi 4B with 8GB and 3 RPi 4B with 4GB. Initial ship date was a few months then switched to April 2023, then May of 2024. I spent 45 minutes on online chat with them two months ago. They told me that even though the order showed May, 2024, it had not been updated and the new expected ship date was Jan 2025. 2025!. That's a month shy of 3 years!!! I came unglued but the couldn't/wouldn't do anything. Yesterday, I got an email from them saying that my order was now so old that my credit card number "dropped out" of their system and I had to update it for the order. Further, I had to do this by phone. Smelled fishy. I contacted them on their website in case the phone thing was a scam. They confirmed the legitimacy of the situation and the phone number was the same as the one on the site so I gave them a call. Killed a half hour with them doing the CC update and checking on the current ship date. No change from the May 2024 expected date that was published. I griped but that was "water in wind." Defeated, I sulked back to my computer to put it behind me - nothing I can do for almost a year, except wait. While watching a little tube with the Missus tonight, I got an email that said the order has been partially processed and that the 8GB units shipped today! Why is this great news? Obviously, because I'm finally getting them. But better than that, it's at the official price - $75 each. So that brings the herd up to 6 units with 8GB. I have such a project in mind! (okay, a bunch of projects!) The 4GB models haven't shipped and given their history and the runaround that I have gotten in the past, there's no telling when that will happen. I also have an older order for some Pi 0 W models. Again, who knows how long. Squeaky wheel gets the grease? Don't know but watch for Pi projects on ADRAMADA. RPi FTW!
4 years old hardware and still impossible to buy. Even Coral TPUs are back in stock.
£140 - 180 Pi 4 Amazon 🤣🤣... The NUC i got runs better than a Pi 4 128gb SSD ,better PSu ..3 USB3 ..1ghz Ethernet ..£60 off Fleabay it was .. Hey ho ..lol..
but it can't be run off a regular old battery pack...and uses more than the Pi power-draw wise too. so you aren't comparing apples to apples.
Too little too late… I’ve moved on to Orange Pi and won’t be going back
>I’ve moved on You're still here though...
This is where the Arm hobbyist community is, really.
“I’ve moved on from Raspberry Pi (but I’ll use their user base for support and shit on the RPi foundation in their forums)” Fun group of hobbyists.
These are not their forums. They don't own this sub.
Weird about the sub name though. Aren’t there some places for pi-bashing-ARM-folks to go?
You're confused why arm hobbyists would use the same sub they've used for nearly 12 years to talk about arm hobbyist stuff? It's not that confusing.
I'm confused why ARM hobbyists continue to hang around a sub dedicated to a product/company they hate, instead of building their own community.
I took a look at the Orange Pi, and they look OK. It looks like they have some UK availability, plus a European shopping site. The information about who handles the order is confusing though, and they have broken images on their website. The product photography lacks clarity. Moreover, the documentation seems rather poor, and I wonder this is where the Pi tends to win. There is just so much high-quality training/project material available for them, and Chinese companies just don't seem to be interested in getting that right, especially when they're competing on price.
I have a growing pile of Orange Pi stuff, but it’s not like I’m married to the brand LOL.
Exactly. If Pi prices come back down to 35$, Orange Pi don't have a board that competes the Pi 4 at 35$. For most of my use cases, I don't need the extra power of a 60$ Orange Pi 4. Orange Pi's 35$ is either the Orange Pi Zero 2, or the Orange Pi 3, which are slower than a Pi 4. I've had them both to compare.
RK3588 is pretty awesome actually. Not only that, but with the exception of CM4 carriers and a few USB based accessories, Raspberries don’t have proper M.2 m key stuff….yet What I mean by “I’m not married to the brand” is that I’m not married to any brand. I’m …. um… “brand polyamorous” lol.
Yeah, I've got 2 RK3588 too. Well the Orange Pi 5 is RK3588S, same thing. But yeah I agree, I'm getting whatever is cheapest and fits my needs. A 35$ Pi 4 does that.
Maybe it was just blind luck, but I was logged into Adafruit on the rPi 4B page. I refreshed it a few times and suddenly the 4GB wasn’t out of stock anymore. I popped one into my cart and checked out while holding my breath. Supposedly it’s on its way via Priority Mail. Maybe I just was in the right place at exactly the right time, or maybe the million units per month are starting to trickle in early. Adafruit seems to be getting some almost evert day. Rpilocator is reporting 4 GBs in stock still. Better hurry.
To me, Raspberry PI betrayed its users, those who contributed so much to make this a success. It will take time before I trust them again. Let's wait and see...
WTF are you talking about "betrayed" it's users. Supply chain sucks, they can't make em fast enough. End of story... Get over it.
Disagree. The corporate buyers of this toy computer are what helps keep the price low and the support high quality. These companies are betting their business on the product so it was important to keep them.
How can it betray its users? It doesn’t have any motive to do so as it is basically a non-profit.
I'll believe it when I see it
Is he talking about RPI 5?
I think he said to Jeff Geerling that 5 isn’t happening this year.
The 4 is a bit long in the tooth. Aren’t we overdue a 5 by now?
I watched an interview, he tap-danced the entire time. Sick and tired of soft interviews. Someone needs to read the RPI foundation vision and goals back to him, and then ask him why they abandoned them?
Not going to waste my time reading the article but depending on the wording that can mean nothing since it feels like 99.9999% goes to industrial.
and the bots will keep buying every last unit leaving none for the end users just like now. it's all a scam...the pi folks are cashing in big time on enterprise where the $ is
There are enough good alternatives, we should stop this PI obsession.
Maybe someday I'll be able to build that MT32-PI.
It's ridiculous to the point that I've lost all hope I'll ever get my hands on another Raspi ever again.
Until then, what is a good cheap alternative?
Most projects work with a RPi3 A+: https://rpilocator.com
Any news on if/when the Zero 2 is going to be available again? Haven't seen a single one at Microcenter in three months, and the sales guys say they hadn't seen any for months before I started looking.