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The Almighty Buck Hardware

Raspberry Pi Suffers First Ever Price Increase 72

For the first time, the price of a Raspberry Pi single-board computer is increasing and we have the global supply chain shortages to thank for it. PCMag reports: Eben Upton, chief executive of Raspberry Pi Trading, made the announcement today, but also made it clear the price increase is only temporary and only impacts one model of the Raspberry Pi 4. In February last year, the price of the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB dropped from $45 to $35 "permanently" and the 1GB model was discontinued. The 2GB model is reverting back to $45 and the 1GB model is making a comeback for industrial customers at its previous $35 price. The reason for this is one of supply chain challenges, with Upton confirming they will only manage to match 2020's shipments of around seven million units this year. The main shortages have been for the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 4 2GB.

We don't know how long the price increase will last, but Upton was upbeat: "The good news is that we've been able to hold the line on pricing for all but one of our products; that we expect to have enough 28nm silicon over the next twelve months to support both our existing Raspberry Pi 4 and Compute Module 4 customers, and customers migrating from Raspberry Pi 3B+; and that we see early signs that the supply chain situation is starting to ease."
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Raspberry Pi Suffers First Ever Price Increase

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  • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:56PM (#61912077) Homepage
    Pretty sure it was /. where I first heard of the RaspPi. Got the 1st one in 2017. It's a media server running Raspian, SSH and Ampache. Video and music are handled via VLC and the Subsonic client. Got a Pi Zero a few months later to play music and video on the main screen. All up the best ~$100 (including the cases, AC and HDMI adaptors) I've ever spent on tech.
    • Yes, I have three doing various things for me. They're great value and well supported.
    • by hazem ( 472289 )

      I've gotten several Pis as well, one as a media player (Kodi), another as a media server/nas, and a couple as ssh target boxes.

      My only complaint with them is how the SD Cards tend to just wear out and the system fails, even with high-quality cards.

      Another option I've been using lately for cheap small computers are old Chromeboxes like the Asus CN60. Because they no longer get Chrome updates, you can get one for about $30 on eBay, then with the help of Mr. Chromebox (https://mrchromebox.tech/) you can put a

      • by Reeses ( 5069 )

        SD cards are the primary known failure point on Rasp Pi systems. These days you can also boot off a USB SSD or buy an expansion module that lets you use an NVMe SSD. Both options will significantly increase the longevity of your system and may even save money in the long run depending on how often you're burning through SD cards.

        • or buy an expansion module that lets you use an NVMe SSD.

          I absolutely second that! I use adapters for the partition that the fileserver running on the Pi uses.

          Except that mine are mSATA: that was the popular small format when I started using them. Of course by now the most popular standard is m2 NVMe.

          Though if you think of it the data path of these is weird on a Raspberry Pi 4.

          Broadcom SoC
          to PCIe 1x lane
          to USB3 PCIe controller
          to USB3 connector
          to adapter board
          to NVMe USB3 controller (which is a PCIe format)
          to PCIe 1x lane to m2 slot
          to NVMe card.

          You're needlessly c

          • I would love to see an M.2 connector on a future RPi Zero, even if it's limited to SATA and 30/42mm length.

            • by DrYak ( 748999 )

              I would love to see an M.2 connector on a future RPi Zero, even if it's limited to SATA

              Given that even Pi4's SoC has a PCIe lane, and given how other constructors deal with it,
              you're way more likely to find an NVMe m2 connector than a mSATA one, as you already have PCIe lanes instead of needing to add yet another mSATA controller somewhere.

              an M.2 connector {...} and 30/42mm length.

              Given the small form factor of the Pis an m.2 slot would have been possible...
              until you pay attention to how aggressively they are priced (the entry-level of each generation of B boards is always around 35 bucks. Meanwhile Rochip-based SBC that feature such

              • I would be fine with a ribbon connector on the RPi Zero and having to buy an additional M.2 adapter, bonus points if that M.2 PCB can be cleanly broken off at the different lengths of NVME drives to save space.

        • If the device is a media player then why does the OS even need write capability to the disk?

          • by hazem ( 472289 )

            I suspect it's writing configuration info (which doesn't change often) and also markers for what media has played or not, locations for partially played media (e.g. resume), thumbnails, etc.

            I don't see any evidence that Kodi writes this to the media server's file system, so it must be writing to the sdcard.

          • OS might be writing periodic entries to log files located in /var/log
        • by Reeses ( 5069 )

          I also just learned that this exists, a JetDrive, which is SD module that uses the same storage as an SSD:

          https://www.transcend-info.com... [transcend-info.com]

          Which might also be a good alternative, if you can find one.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Thursday October 21, 2021 @03:32AM (#61912829)

        My only complaint with them is how the SD Cards tend to just wear out and the system fails, even with high-quality cards.

        That's because the OS is constantly writing to the disk, and SD cards aren't optimized for the kind of writing that a general purpose OS does.

        There are two solutions - use an industrial rated SD card - these cards are generally aimed towards embedded uses and have special commands that can actually get at the lifespan.

        The cheaper solution is Raspbian actually has a configuration option to enable overlay filesystem, where the SD card can be mounted read-only and writes are captured by the Linux overlay filesystem into a RAM disk. The downside to this is well, all changes are temporary - if you need to make more permanent changes you need to disable the overlay, make your changes, and then re-enable the overlay (rebooting each time - enabling/disabling require a reboot).

        Or some enterprising people actually methodically cataloged each program and how it writes to the SD card so you can disable or move the files it writes to a RAM disk.

        SD card death is a super common problem because consumer cards are designed to handle relatively large media files and not small writes all the time.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Be careful with industrial SD cards though, not all of them are designed for handling large amounts of writes. In fact most aren't - "industrial" usually just means that they have had a 100% test at the factory, instead of the 1% test that consumer cards get.

        • There are two solutions - use an industrial rated SD card - these cards are generally aimed towards embedded uses and have special commands that can actually get at the lifespan.

          Alternatives are getting way oversized "endurance" variants.
          - "Endurance" variants: (e.g. to be used in dashcams, etc.) are also variants geared toward more intense writing (they're designed for continuous writing after all!), but usually a bit cheaper as they target prosumers. Though they aren't as much designed for small writes as the industrial ones (usually it's large multi-GB-sized continuous video files), this is less a problem if you go for a log or cow filesystem (see below).
          - Way over sized: the po

      • My only complaint with them is how the SD Cards tend to just wear out and the system fails, even with high-quality cards.

        Indeed. I once replaced a bunch of Atom boxes with Pis for running a point of sale solution; 32 total. I netbooted the pis so there we no SD cards. Disk images were stored on an NFS server backed by btrfs so when I cloned a disk image data wasn't actually duped. I'd mount the image and run a script mostly using m4 to replace system variables for each host, assign a serial number in ISC

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      Finally got my first one, doing similar things.
  • I understand anthropomorphism and I even use it myself - but a product 'suffering'? I rather think it's the purchasers and would-be purchasers who are suffering.

    • The "anthro" in "anthropomorphism" means human, and since literal suffering is not a state exclusive to humans, I think it would be more accurate to call it basic figurative language than anthropomorphism. Although all definitions of "suffer" are related to a negative feeling or condition, it's probably accurate to say that in it's most literal sense it means for an animal (such as a human) to feel pain, sorrow, or poor health. However, it's very common to use it figuratively, such as "that malware is causi

  • by bkmoore ( 1910118 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:38PM (#61912153)
    FTA: The price of the 2GB Pi4 was originally $45 when introduced and there was a base model 1GB version available for $35. At some point, the 1GB model was discontinued and the 2GB was dropped to $35. Now Raspberry PI is going back to the original prices (2GB at $45 and 1GB at $35) TEMPORARILY until the supply chain recovers. The prices of all the other models remain unchanged. The world hasn't ended. If you have no life and just have to find a way to politicize the Raspberry PI, please quit /. and go to Facebook.
    • All of that was in the summary, no need to read the article.

    • Weren't the earlier models cheaper (when they were introduced)? If so, the price of Rpi has been going up with new model releases. Yes, the new models are more powerful, but sometimes it just means that the load is 0.1 instead of 0.3.

    • No please, people should go political. It's important that we identify idiots who think politics are behind everything so we can completely ignore them going forward.

    • Isn't the Pi foundation based in the UK anyhow?

  • -- Sent from Dear Leader.

  • by evil_aaronm ( 671521 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @11:48PM (#61912535)
    Good for them on holding the line as well as they did. For giggles, I searched for a simple M0+ LPC812 to drive a couple of LEDs for a holiday craft show desktop eye-catcher, and the vendors are completely out - DigiPart, AVNet, element14, etc. I have a few, and other chips I can use, but the fact that LPC812s are "0 in stock - 55 week lead time" across the board was a mite shocking.
  • Sounds good to me, I need another one!

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