Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

pcworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 153 posts

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#101

Post by nubinetwork »

WheatMillington wrote: post #98
nubinetwork wrote: post #96

I haven't had many problems buying one if I need one, but Buy a PI's Canadian store is selling them for $185, which is a little much. At least they throw in a case, some heatsinks, a power supply and some cables. For those who have been having problems getting one, is it because they've been hoarding them? I'd really like to know what people are doing that needs more than two or three Pis.

I haven't been able to buy one in New Zealand for years now, at any price.

To be fair, isn't that pretty normal for electronics in AU/NZ? I've been watching Hardware Unboxed for years and they're always lamenting how hard it is to get parts to review.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#102

Post by joezydeco »

chimpoftheages wrote: post #93
joezydeco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other SBCs with SoCs from other manufacturers out there. They've been out there for a decade. Think BeagleBoard or Wandboard.

Sure, I own a few pine64 devices and an RPI4 too. I would like the raspberry PI community to synchronize on a manufacturer like rockchip for a while. I simply never see a useful broadcom chip in the wild that isn't in a RPI and the RPIs omit features I want.

Broadcom doesn't put chips "in the wild", which leads you to the paradox that is RPI. It was a scrap chip that Upton made into a cheap educational computer, the rest of you ran off with it as a supercheap COTS computing module and now nobody can figure out how to ship their products without it. Or, most distinctly, nobody wants to believe that the RPI isn't subsidized and all SoCs are this cheap.

Broadcom doesn't deal with small fish, much less hobbyists. I've dealt with their products working for a large product maker and it wasn't any better on that side of the fence.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#103

Post by ThatPlayer »

kytazo wrote: post #4

Not sure if rpis are that relevant as of now when there are so many other, usually more performant and overall compelling offers in the same form factor and upstream support to a certain degree.

Which compelling offers did you have in mind? The similar boards I can get at 35$ are Orange Pi 3, Orange Pi Zero 2, MangoPi MQ-Pro, Le Potato. None of which are better than a Pi 4 (at least in my use cases).

Could I spend more for a better board like the RK3588 boards? Sure, I have a Rock5B and Orange Pi 5. But I don't want to spend more for performance I don't need.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#104

Post by johnklos »

Sorry, but the company's decision to hire a former cop (nothing wrong with that), then glorify his surveillance work (not great, but not the worst thing in the world), then pretend that the people upset with that were actually vegans who were upset with a picture of bacon or some bull like that convinced me that the company is completely, utterly out of touch with normal people and with the zeitgeist of the hobbyist movement.

They can go act like they're above reproach with their new "business" community all they want. Good riddance.

I'll use what Raspberry Pis I already have, but I'm happy to buy Orange Pis and Nano Pis for other uses.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#105

Post by ThatPlayer »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #97
butz wrote: post #87

I wonder how many people have several older models of Raspberry Pi sitting in their drawers and collecting dust, as selling them seems to be too much of the hassle?

I have a few of the model B version that was released in 2012, somewhere in my basement. I’m not even sure how usable these would be today.

The original one with 256MB of RAM? The later models upped that to 512MB. I ended up breaking the full-sized SD card slot on mine.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#106

Post by mindcrime »

gedy wrote: post #26

I keep reading how "it'll get better soon" but still can't buy them like I used to. Looking forward to "here is the link you can buy today for low price". Feels a little marketing PR otherwise.

I keep reading how "it'll get better soon" but still can't buy them like I used to.

Their messaging has been consistent going back to at least sometime last year, from what I can tell: things will be tight at least through the end of Q2 2023 (albeit improving towards the end of that range) and will get much better through Q3 and Q4, with normal (pre-pandemic) availability by sometime in Q4.

So far things seem to be tracking exactly along that path. Prices on the scalper-resold Pi 4's on Amazon started dropping precipitously about a month or so ago, and have dropped from north of $200 USD to around $120 USD (for the 8GB model). And rpilocator consistently shows far more availability of different models than it did a couple of months ago.

Clearly we aren't "out of the woods" yet, but one can absolutely start to see the lights of civilization in the distance if you look.

https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Computer-Suitable-Workst...

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#107

Post by johnklos »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #97
butz wrote: post #87

I wonder how many people have several older models of Raspberry Pi sitting in their drawers and collecting dust, as selling them seems to be too much of the hassle?

I have a few of the model B version that was released in 2012, somewhere in my basement. I’m not even sure how usable these would be today.

I'm using several original BCM2835 Raspberry Pis and Pi Zeros (original) to compile pkgsrc packages for NetBSD on earmv4 and earmv5 because the newer ARM CPUs won't run anything below earmv6. There are some instructions the newer CPUs don't support that'd need to be emulated.

With a USB attached SSD, they're quite reliable and run for many months at a time, compiling non-stop with no issues.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#108

Post by zh3 »

theWreckluse wrote: post #5
marcomourao wrote: post #3

Excellent news. I just bought a Fujitsu thin client for €18.00 to scratch the Raspberry itch but will definitely try to get my hands on a Pi 4.

Can you run Linux on a thin client? Also where did you buy them for so cheap?

No problem running lightweight distros on them, though the really thin clients tend to be underpowered for web browsing. Available very cheaply on ebay, and pretty much all support remote boot so easy to run diskless (assuming some minimal local server).

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#109

Post by blitzar »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #97
butz wrote: post #87

I wonder how many people have several older models of Raspberry Pi sitting in their drawers and collecting dust, as selling them seems to be too much of the hassle?

I have a few of the model B version that was released in 2012, somewhere in my basement. I’m not even sure how usable these would be today.

The Pi 4 is really only a moderate step up in performance from that model.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#110

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

derefr wrote: post #62
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - people saying that there are "more performant" devices. Sure, there are. How do they perform in terms of kernel support and documentation? One of the main options pointed at is low-power x86 boxes, which are better than Pis ever were. The rest of the ARM ecosystem is, I agree, poor . > - people (often Americans) saying that the Pi has been "supply-constrained for five years". It really hasn't; it wasn't particula…

> One of the main options pointed at is low-power x86 boxes, which are better than Pis ever were. In terms of what? Battery usage at idle? BOM to operationalize the design? Surely not. > > It's almost as if most of the people whining are just upset there isn't a cheap device they can drop into a Kodi box without any effort. > Okay. Yes? That's a valid usecase. Funny enough, all throughout the pandemic the one thing t…

>>> - people saying that there are "more performant" devices. Sure, there are. How do they perform in terms of kernel support and documentation?

>> One of the main options pointed at is low-power x86 boxes, which are better than Pis ever were. The rest of the ARM ecosystem is, I agree, poor.

> In terms of what? Battery usage at idle? BOM to operationalize the design? Surely not.

I was responding to kernel support; x86 boxes can usually just run straight mainline Linux with no problem, which is far better than most of the ARM ecosystem (even Pis aren't running mainline, they're just a well-supported downstream).

> Android streaming boxes. I'm pretty sure it's dead simple to wipe those and put Kodi on them

There are alternatives, but then we're back to spotty support, fragmented ecosystems, and using a Pi for video streaming is still a valid usecase.

Post reply on HN