I've got like 4 unused RPis, why are people still buying them?
Mine are sitting on my desk unused too, but I want to get around to using them, dang it!
It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
61–70 of 114 posts
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#62I've got like 4 unused RPis, why are people still buying them?
Resume driven hobby work.
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
An HP Thin Client might be nicer in some ways (x86 instead of ARM, say) but the lack of GPIO wouldn't make them a replacement for some RPi projects (and I haven't ever tried to install Debian or Ubuntu on one, not sure how unusual the hardware is).
> but the lack of GPIO It's easy to hack a GPIO together using the USB interface or I2C interface that's inside every HDMI connector.
That sounds cool! Any resources for the same?
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#64If the creator is reading this thread, please make the columns sortable. Thanks
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#65Really makes the 12.5k units in stock number (For the Pi 4 Model B 8gb) at RS Online look suspicious... I'm assuming it's just horribly out of date, or some terrible caching failure. Or just lies. https://au.rs-online.com/web/p/raspberry-pi/1822098 Or it's just a weird pile of unsold Pi 4's because that storefront only serves half the world trading under that name. (NA's storefront is different, and has them OOS)
They seem to be dispatching from the UK, since the UK store has the exact same number available for next-day delivery
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a trick/scam often practiced by retailers of any product where demand is higher than supply. For example if you want to buy the new XBox right now, it's relatively easily available when bundled with a lot of pricey accessories, but essentially impossible to buy on its own. Do not reward the greed of retailers who do this.
How is this greed? The alternative is that they will be out of stock and only sold by scalpers. I've needed raspberry pis for work and if some people were not selling them at 2x their MSRP then I wouldn't have been able to find one quickly.
Right. I got a console as a bundle. Luckily only the one game included wasn’t really that interesting to me, but will be OK to check out.
I actually don’t mind bundles. They do seem to ensure, at least for RPis, that if you honestly only want one you can get one. That person would otherwise be left with nothing while others hoard or sit.
Edit-it’s the scalpers that are doing harm here.
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#67The Raspberry Pi isn't the only board around. If you need something very specific then fine, but most software that runs on it, either has been already ported, or can be easily compiled to run on many other boards.
Just spent less than 5 minutes and found loads of boards that run Linux out of the box. Most of the NanoPi at friendlyarm.com are in stock, so are most of the Pine64 boards at pine64.org; many H3 based OrangePi boards are available from multiple vendors on Ebay, also many Olimex, Sinovoip, Beagleboard, etc. are in stock right now at tme.eu.
In the meantime, I just swapped my Rpi4 4GB with a 1st gen used Chromebox unlocked and reflashed with LibreElec; the performance gain compared to the Rpi4 is very noticeable.
I just had to purchase separately a Pulse Eight USB-HDMI-CEC interface (the Chromebox HDMI port doesn't support CEC) so that I can use the TV remote with Kodi as well.
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#68I'm impressed with how fast people buy them out after stock availability is announced. A few months ago, I got a notification that the Pi 0 2 was back in stock, and I have my eye on a couple units for 3D printer projects. An hour after the email was sent, all 700 had been sold. (Adafruit's emails helpfully say how many they had when the email was sent, which is how I know how quickly they burned through the stock.)
The market must be trying to tell us that they're under-priced. People want cheap computers badly, and "cheap" might be as much as $200. I had a lot of trouble finding an x86_64 box for under $400 a couple years ago, and ended up settling for a no-name with a shitty firmware that wouldn't boot GRUB for half the distros I tried to install.
Honestly if your budget is raspberry pi levels you are better off probably buying some used dell desktop for as cheap as possible. Would be more powerful than the pi probably and a better platform for things like a home fileserver. People have built clusters out of those ultra low form factor dells.
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#69I'm impressed with how fast people buy them out after stock availability is announced. A few months ago, I got a notification that the Pi 0 2 was back in stock, and I have my eye on a couple units for 3D printer projects. An hour after the email was sent, all 700 had been sold. (Adafruit's emails helpfully say how many they had when the email was sent, which is how I know how quickly they burned through the stock.)
The market must be trying to tell us that they're under-priced. People want cheap computers badly, and "cheap" might be as much as $200. I had a lot of trouble finding an x86_64 box for under $400 a couple years ago, and ended up settling for a no-name with a shitty firmware that wouldn't boot GRUB for half the distros I tried to install.
If you need an ARM Linux machine on a budget, I wonder how Odroid and Olinuxino offers look to you. They are in the same ballpark.
Re: It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
#70I do appreciate the effort here; however, I suspect this is going to make it even harder to find affordable units due to how fast the scalpers scoop up any readily discoverable inventory. I’ve been struggling to come up with 35 for a class I teach in the March. I would typically have my students buy their own devices, but pivoted when I saw the writing on the wall. Until this tracker was published yesterday, the Pi H…
No one is scalping Pis. They simply aren't valuable enough to scalp. There is a massive electronics shortage, in case you haven't heard.