Been looking for RPI4 CMs for ages now and they’ve been sold out for as long as I can remember. Same with full size RPI4s and some Odroids. Is this just the new normal or are SBCs and CMs going to show up on the market again at some point?
You must log in or register to comment.
RPi’s and RPi compatibles got co-opted by a huge number of commercial and industrial control systems companies being used for cheap full-fat embedded systems that needed more than a simple microcontroller, but where industrial PLC’s were overkill or not sourcable. Everything they produce, which is not a lot given covid supply chain whiplash, has now been going towards those customer’s contracts and fuck the little guy consumer they were meant for.
If you want to get into the SBC ecosystem leave rpi in the dust, they’re dead to the enthusiasts and won’t be coming back. There are much better options. See Linus tech tips video on them.
See Linus tech tips video on them.
See Jeff Geerling’s fab tour video on them instead.
They aren’t even great platforms anymore in comparison.
Other SBCs are cheaper, more smartly designed, and have more features (emmc, pcie, etc)
The big thing RPI have going for them is that they are the standard and all the OS/software/etc end up being super turnkey
In their defence, the pi was never intended to be a powerhouse. Their focus was on getting good software support for a low cost system. This provided a stable foundation that built that turnkey reliability.
A lot of the other board providers have a habit of just creating a powerful little board, and throwing it out there to fend for itself. This is great for competent geeks, but less good for those still learning.
Meh, I don’t know if they need defense. It’s just kind of how it is.
They got big and popular and that means momentum. Momentum is good for adoption and momentum is good for support, but it’s not great for huge jumps in technological sophistication.
I still LOVE the 2040, pico, etc, but there are just better options when you go bigger than that.
The Potato, Rock Pis.
This creator is great for when you want to SBC shop
The raspberry pi was never meant to be a power house. It’s whole goal was to make support and learning easy. A few, very well maintained models, with the same core chips. The last bit is the cause of the shortage. They can’t easily redesign without fragmenting the support base. That is completely against their ethos.
I’ve also found, once you hit a Pi’s limit, that it’s best to go to something more specialist. My go-to options are NUCs for general computing, or the Nvidia Jetson series, for portable brute power. Anything that saturates a pi will quickly saturate the smaller SBCs soon after, as well. They suffer from many of the same bottlenecks.
Any recommendations in the RPi price range?
Look at the Libre Computer boards. I got a Le Potato for 35usd last year and it’s been rock solid. Seems to be about the same performance as a RBP 3B.
Finally someone mentions a product name. I am so sick of these “uh duuuh, there are better alternatives out there, hurhur” commenters who name not a single one.
I’d recommend one if I had tried any of them. The only one I’ve bought is the orange pi 5 which runs significantly higher than the basic RPi $35 and figured was outside the power envelope OP really needed.
Go check out ExplainingComputers on youtube.
https://www.explainingcomputers.com/sbc.html
He basically goes over every SBC possible. The good ones now are the Rock Pis and the Potato series
I had no idea about Le Potato. I’m an electronics experimenter and this looks solid. Thanks!
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
Not to steal your post but I have had the same issue and my concern is always on OS support since some of the alternative boards I have tried in the past were stuck on custom kernels or old OS versions, has anyone had better luck these days? It has been a few years since I have tried any though.
Also, if you aren’t familiar with it this website has a bunch of real time inventory listings for the various Pi models.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer
[Thread #5 for this sub, first seen 19th Jul 2023, 07:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Raspberry Pi is based on smart phone chips, very specific chips from one manufacturer. Raspberry Pi Foundation is not the main customer for this manufacturer and chips used for Raspberry Pi are not their only product – and now, during the big ‘chip shortages’ and supply chain problems other customers and other chips are given priority. There are no (or not enough) new chips for Raspberry Pis so there are no new Raspberries, so availability is dropping and prices are soaring.
I guess the same is true for most other SBCs.
For my hobby projects I switched to Raspberry Pi Pico. It is not a SBC, you won’t run Linux on that, but it is a very capable microcontroller board which is enough for my needs. It is way cheaper much more available. And I won’t look back – it occurred to me that things are much simpler when there is no whole OS on my devices and everything the device does is in my own code.
There are no problems with Pico availability, as it is based on a simpler, custom chip, designed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and manufactured for Raspberry Pi Foundation – they are no longer dependent on a single supplier.
I don’t get why people want these for self-hosting. They’re meant for GPIO and automation control. They’re massively underpowered.
Just use an actual SBC and leave these for electronics.
Underpowered is probably the reason, they’re small and really low powered. A pi could be a 1/10th the power consumption of an x86 computer, and thus less noise and heat.
They’re great for low strength, dedicated platforms instead of using something with more muscle like a NUC, also where a VM or container can’t be used.
Out of curiosity, what are some use cases that would fit this criteria? VMs and containers are very capable and it’s much easier to debug a failed VM than a failed piece of hardware.
My pending or existing projects.
A software defined radio server. Lives up top of an antenna mast running off PoE with an RTL tuner connected.
ADSB receiver, similar to above, but on a fixed frequency.
The above 2 could be virtualised in theory, but there is an advantage in having the cable to the antenna short and thus the sbcs live up antenna masts in an enclosure.
MMDVM hotspot for ham radio (this might not count as it HAS TO use the gpio pins on the pi, this can’t be visualised even with a USB port passed through.
As an audio server that would bitstream 24bit/96kHz to an amp.
Le Potato aka Libre Computer is still on Amazon in the US for $35.
These days you can find some kinda NUCS which are way more powerful and customisable for not a lot more than a fully fledged RPI4 with SD card and PSU
At least until the NUCs run out, now that Intel’s discontinuing them
That’s why I added the “kinda”. There are a lot of small AMD boxes that can do a lot with those Ryzen.
There’s a lot of used mini PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo that go for cheap on ebay. Those are a good alternative.
For a while there Adafruit was stocking pi4bs every business day at around 11am est, was able to get one by camping it at that time. Make an account first and add your address and payment
But that was a few months back I don’t know the situation now
Take a look at LibreComputing’s RPi clones on Amazon.
Supply and demand, pandemic, chip shortage, scalpers. That pretty much covers it.
