Raspberry Pi Availability Is Visibly Improving After Years of Shortages (arstechnica.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton has been saying for months that 2023 would be a "recovery year" for Raspberry Pi supply -- the single-board computer, once known for its easy availability and affordability, has been hit with supply shortages for years. Hundreds of thousands of Pi boards were still being manufactured every month, but many were going to commercial buyers rather than retailers and end users. More recently, those manufacturing numbers have climbed from 400,000 monthly units to 600,000 to 800,000 to 1 million, a level that Upton says can be sustained "for as long as is necessary to clear our remaining customer backlogs and return to free availability."
We're now seeing very early signs that supply is returning to normal, at least for some Pi models. UK-based Pi reseller Pimoroni announced today that it was lifting some purchase limitations on 2GB and 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 boards and Pi Zero W boards (not, apparently, the more recent Pi Zero 2 W). The rpilocator stock tracker account has also noted that its number of automated stock alerts has decreased recently "because Pis are staying in stock longer," noting that Pimoroni and The Pi Hut had (and still have) multiple Pi 4 variants in stock.
Even as stock returns to normal, we'll still be dealing with the aftereffects of the shortage for some time to come; the "temporary" price increase for the 2GB Pi 4 board still hasn't been reverted, and Upton's past comments have implied that the company has put off the development of the Pi 5 to allow stock of current models to return to normal (the Pi 4 was introduced just over four years ago). Other retailers still have purchasing restrictions in place. And some models and retailers will clearly recover more quickly than others.
We're now seeing very early signs that supply is returning to normal, at least for some Pi models. UK-based Pi reseller Pimoroni announced today that it was lifting some purchase limitations on 2GB and 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 boards and Pi Zero W boards (not, apparently, the more recent Pi Zero 2 W). The rpilocator stock tracker account has also noted that its number of automated stock alerts has decreased recently "because Pis are staying in stock longer," noting that Pimoroni and The Pi Hut had (and still have) multiple Pi 4 variants in stock.
Even as stock returns to normal, we'll still be dealing with the aftereffects of the shortage for some time to come; the "temporary" price increase for the 2GB Pi 4 board still hasn't been reverted, and Upton's past comments have implied that the company has put off the development of the Pi 5 to allow stock of current models to return to normal (the Pi 4 was introduced just over four years ago). Other retailers still have purchasing restrictions in place. And some models and retailers will clearly recover more quickly than others.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
No. And Orange Pi will always be the budget option for those willing to tinker a lot with kernels. The relationship that the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Broadcom is rather unique and gives RPi a significant advantage when it comes to defining the product and implementing software support. Other companies end up spending a lot of time jumping from one chip to another, sometimes even changing vendors. This results in an uneven support matrix and a far amount of effort by the software teams to implement featur
Re: (Score:2)
I've been thinking of buying their Orange Pi Zero 3 model - $US25 for 4GB, which sounds reasonable for an 'obsolete' Cortex A 53 SoC and more or less comparable to a RPi 3.
Re: (Score:2)
No. And Orange Pi will always be the budget option for those willing to tinker a lot with kernels. The relationship that the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Broadcom is rather unique and gives RPi a significant advantage when it comes to defining the product and implementing software support.
I would actually argue the reverse. Raspberry Pi's dependence on Broadcom means that they're still using a 16nm CPU core released way back in 2016 to build the hardware that they're shipping in 2023. I'm not saying anybody else is doing a *lot* better — maybe two years more recent or so — but they're doing better. And Broadcom's apparent inability to produce the volume of chips that they need (unlike pretty much every other company in this space) is likely at least in part because of the anci
Re: (Score:2)
If you use Armbian [armbian.com], the Orange Pie line is in top-top shape.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, yeah, I typo'd Orange Pi.
Re: Nobody cares (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Marmalade Pie is pretty close ;)
Yep! (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked, there was a lot of green on rpilocator.com [rpilocator.com]. Good stuff!
Yes, there are SBCs out there with better hardware than Raspberry Pis. But Pis have the best-supported software stack and largest developer community by far.
Re:Yep! (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to come in waves. Slant3D sold a bunch of 4 GB Pi 4s a few days ago. I picked up one Pi in a reasonable time a few weeks ago, but they seem sold out now.
All the while, the Chinese SBCs and the RISC-V boards are going through generation after generation, and the Raspberry Pi community, which is something that is the #1 reason to say with the boards, perhaps next to consistency, is starting to throw in the towel and move on.
Then there is the fact that the competition is generations ahead of Raspberry Pi. There really needs to be a RPi 5 out now, and something balanced where it doesn't need tons of cooling, but supports USB-C for more than just power input.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that they're getting lapped by Chinese/RISC-V boards.
(I'm excited to see where the RISC-V boards go - haven't picked one up yet, but that's because not much runs on them yet.)
I've been quite happy with the Libre `le potato` boards. They're cheap, US made, and have superior firmware options to "just work" much easier than anything else I've used. Not sure how they compare on specifications, but I'm not looking for something particularly cutting edge - just cheap and usable.
Re: (Score:2)
The Le Potato is a great board. It's good where you want something generally faster than an RPi3 but slower than an RPi4, as long as you don't need camera or USB 3.0 ports. There are other Libre Computer options with USB 3 (like the Renegade), but they start to approach the price of an RPi4. I can get two Le Potatos for the price of one RPi4. And for a little project I think they are often just the right size. But I'm biased, I bought a 10 pack of RPi3 lego-like cases several years ago, so many because that
Re: (Score:2)
Those cases sound cool.
I use webcams with a couple of the le potato boards, eg. with octoprint. Works well.
The biggest thing these boards are typically missing, IMO, is a proper storage controller (eg. M2 SSD). It doesn't need to be fast, but I feel like they should be able to do that if they're putting archaic eMMC pin-outs on the boards.
Haven't had any situation that's CPU-bound that could've been solved with a faster ARM processor, yet. They're slow little energy efficient boards, I don't expect much. A
Re: (Score:3)
Webcams carry a larger CPU load and are more difficult to pipe into an image processing pipeline. They do the job and cheaply, but I would still rather have the bandwidth and pipeline of a native MIPI/CSI camera interface like on an RPi or Jetson.
For embedded and SBC, an eMMC is usually sufficient it's half the performance but the low-power and cheaper interfacing is desirable in a low-cost situation. eUFS seems promising but it hasn't trickled down to us SBC users yet.
Overall I've found RPi and other board
Re: (Score:1)
the Raspberry Pi community, which is something that is the #1 reason to say with the boards, perhaps next to consistency, is starting to throw in the towel and move on.
Absolutely. If we can't get hardware, how the f--- are we supposed to help support the RPi?
And support has indeed been suffering. 3D video keeps getting slower/buggier with each new Mesa release. Bluetooth barely works/works buggy, etc. It's really quite sad where RPi is heading in my opinion. But I guess Raspberry Pi Inc doesn't give a flyin' f -- they're selling millions to commercial customers who apparently don't need 3D video or stable bluetooth.
Re: (Score:2)
There really needs to be a RPi 5 out now, and something balanced where it doesn't need tons of cooling, but supports USB-C for more than just power input.
Disagree. There should have been a Raspberry Pi 6 by now. There should have been a Raspberry Pi 5 two years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
China has been doing some innovative stuff with RISC-V boards. Even with antediluvian process nodes, RISC-V doesn't have the patent encumbrance that ARM does. It also has been making inroads via cheap MCUs.
I'm hoping that mainstream Linux distribution makers start supporting RISC-V, as it has a lot of promise, but support on the software side is dicey at best. For example, making sure they run the latest Linux kernel, or ensuring that all the SoC subsystems work.
Believe it when I see it (Score:3, Informative)
This seems more like typical CEO reality-distortion-field PR bullshit than anything useful.
Re: (Score:3)
When I look at rpilocator.com for the US, I still can't find any Raspberry Pi 4 boards in stock anywhere.
What I find odd is that this project has been around for over 10 years now, and we still don't seem to have any cheaper Chinese generic knockoff versions of these boards yet. I know that the profit margins on these products aren't great, but they have to be better than making $40 Android tablets for Aliexpress and Temu.
Re: Believe it when I see it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Broadcom isn't the only manufacturer of cheap ARM processors, though. Surely somebody could build a similar low cost project board using a different ARM SOC from the likes of Rockchip or Allwinner, right?
Competition already exists from the likes of Orange Pi or Banana Pi, but it seems like nobody has been able to beat the Raspberry Pi on price yet. You would think that some underutilized board manufacturer in Shenzhen would be up to the challenge.
Re: (Score:2)
Place an order for a million clone boards and you’ll get a great price. I really can’t see the argument that one board is $10 more than the other. Before the Pi this stuff way more expensive. It’s still a wonder of engineering what’s available at the price point.
Re: (Score:2)
exactly. I spend $130 on a Gumstix many many years ago, and was impressed by how affordable it was. Everything else was like $500 back then and people were hacking chips out of toys trying to run Linux on them, or buying expensive ARM computers like the Netwinder [computinghistory.org.uk] because there were not very many great options.
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of competition at the same price - the problem is, most of those Chinese manufacturers build them then leave. That is, they get the board produced, make a million and that's it. No further software support or anything else. And after they're sold,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Was happy to get one at the normal price. Was certainly not going to pay triple to a scalper.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A quick check at PiShop shows that there is still nothing available.
Pis are sold at more than just one shop in one country. My local supplier has stock.
Re: (Score:2)
A quick check at PiShop shows that there is still nothing available. https://www.pishop.us/product-... [pishop.us] This seems more like typical CEO reality-distortion-field PR bullshit than anything useful.
Yep, got interested in RPi projects back at the start of the pandemic which was (checks notes) almost three and a half years ago, but could not find any actual RPis to buy unless I paid several times the list price for limited selections (often used) usually stacked with unwanted options. And this is still the case, though the price multiplier for buying an eBay and elsewhere is now down to about four times list, and still with limited selection.
I read earlier this year that supply had caught up with actual
Re: Believe it when I see it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:3)
RPi 4 [rpilocator.com] (any variant): no stock.
RPi 3 [rpilocator.com]: nothing
Pi Zero [rpilocator.com]: nada
Pi Zero 2 [rpilocator.com]: zip
Some vendors are getting occasional shipments - many within the last month. But I know from experience that they disappear within an hour at most. Vendors still impose limits per customer (Adafruit 1-per, PiShop 2-per, Sparkfun 5-per).
So, in short, I call bullshit. Don't tell me that things are "visibly improving" until I can see continuous and stable availability.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
They may be increasing production, but that still doesn't mean you can actually get your hands on one!
I managed to buy an RPi4-8GB off Adafruit.com a week or two ago. Just happened to be browsing their site when it happened to show up as "in stock."
Took me probably an hour to figure out how to get the stupid "Authy" login authenticator thing to work (it never did, had to use my one-time use backup password). Looked around for a discount coupon, had to subscribe to their advertisements mailing list to get it to work. But even after all that, it was still in stock and I got it.
Four days later, got an "in-stoc
Re: (Score:2)
I gave up when I realized I had to install an app to do their two-factor thing. They don't allow SMS because of resellers I guess. I wound up buying an 8 GB model on amazon for $100, which was only about $13 more than I would have paid from adafruit after their inflated shipping.
Re: (Score:3)
You still have to keep watch. A vendor will get some stock, then sell out quickly. The difference is that these days that happens more often and the shipments are larger. We're still a long way from just being able to buy one whenever, but it's not as hopeless as it was.
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't matter unless I can get my hands on one when I need it, projects don't often have time to wait until a Raspberry Pi becomes available. If I can't purchase one at a reasonable price, which is something that hasn't been available for years now, then I'm going for a cheep orange pi, or other SBC and modifying my software to work with that. Hell, I recently went with a couple of used Dell Wyse 3040's off eBay for a project. Sure, they were way overpowered for what I needed, but they were less than
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I randomly (manually) check rpilocator from time to time, and finally got lucky after nearly a year and half, and ordered one through Chicago Electronic Distributors (Pi 4 8Gb). Acknowledging the randomness of my queries, having stumbled upon one was nice, and subjectively feels like things are getting better. (I suppose someone who wins PowerBall might suddenly think the economy is getting better, though.)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't need the GPIOs then a low power thin client can be had on eBay for about the same price, and they are often a lot more capable. You get SATA/NVMe, RAM sockets, and an x86 CPU. Some even have PCIe sockets of one form of another.
Re: (Score:2)
and filtered for the US region
Who cares about the US? It's a UK based company, and availability in Europe is great.
Re: (Score:2)
They may be increasing production, but that still doesn't mean you can actually get your hands on one! I just took a look at rpilocator.com [rpilocator.com], and filtered for the US region. RPi 4 [rpilocator.com] (any variant): no stock. RPi 3 [rpilocator.com]: nothing Pi Zero [rpilocator.com]: nada Pi Zero 2 [rpilocator.com]: zip Some vendors are getting occasional shipments - many within the last month. But I know from experience that they disappear within an hour at most. Vendors still impose limits per customer (Adafruit 1-per, PiShop 2-per, Sparkfun 5-per). So, in short, I call bullshit. Don't tell me that things are "visibly improving" until I can see continuous and stable availability.
Nah there were actually a few US retailers that had the RPi4, both 4 and 8 GB variants within the past 7 days. They've since sold out, but it was the first time in over a year I've seen any stock in the US on rpilocator.
1 GB (Score:2)
Are they still making the 1GB version? They should stop making it. It's terrible for nearly everything nowadays.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they still making the 1GB version? They should stop making it. It's terrible for nearly everything nowadays.
I bought a couple of 512G 3As recently, the first ones which came back in stock that I found. They work perfectly well for the intended use. 512G is not good for a desktop replacement but there are about a million other things for which it's fine.
Re: (Score:3)
Buy one of the oDroid boards if you need more resources. https://www.hardkernel.com/ [hardkernel.com]
Re: (Score:2)
For headless uses, you don't need much RAM at all. I still run a somewhat neglected DikuMUD on a Raspberry Pi 1 B /w 256 MB RAM. It helps to run a normal distro like Debian or Raspbian than to dive into something like Gentoo or Arch where compiling a lot of stuff can become really painful.
Why don't I upgrade it? Well, let's see. $0 and 0 time versus $100 for new board, case, power supply, and time spent copying everything over. and either setting up multilib or rebuilding for aarch64. Some projects aren't i
Zeros in Houston (Score:2)
My local microcenter shows lots of ZeroW's . A bit expensive.
Superior alternatives (Score:2)
I'm not sure why the rpi are so popular, specifically. There are numerous superior, compatible, comparable options out there - sometimes at a lower price point. And they've been available without hassle.
Two boards I've bought in the past year which are of the same rpi 3/4 form factor and capabilities are the Radxa rock3a (quad A55, GPU, m.2 SSD/eMMC/microSD, 2-8GB RAM, etc.) and the libre `le potato`, which has the best firmware/bios capabilities I've seen (they've ported grub, and it's very PC-like - and c
Re: (Score:2)
Community inertia, coverage in popular maker blogs, and a very large number of turn-key accessories are where RPi shine. A neophyte can get up and running in a day with a Pi without having to search too hard online for advice. Is Rpi the best !/$ today? No way. Maybe a few years ago. But availability really hinders further growth of the RPi community and most people are eventually going to come to the same conclusion as you: that RPi isn't the only option nor even the best option.
I want Le Potato price and
Re: (Score:2)
I was able to go from "amazon package arrived" to "octoprint is installed with camera" in under an hour and a half on a `le potato` board - having not done any of it before on their boards. Most of that time was spent installing octoprint packages. There are many superior alternatives which do what the rpi does.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the Le Potato and others are easy to use, often ready to run out of the box.
I disagree that there is many resources for a new user for these non-RPi boards.
Re: (Score:2)
Other developers, other developers, other developers.
Got a problem with a Rpi?
Many people have had it before and someone might well have fixed it.
Got a problem with a orange/banana/brocolli pi?
<crickets>
So, at least another year... (Score:2)
Why pay 2019 prices for 2019 performance in 2023? (Score:2)
First, availability isn't quite what they claim.
Second, they still haven't address their complete lack of self awareness when the hired an ex-cop, then talked up his use of Pis for surveillance, then claimed that people in the community who were upset were really vegans who were upset about a picture of meat.
The second one is what gets me. It changed my opinion of the Raspberry Pi people from good humans who want to make tech available to the masses to gaslighting assholes who are more worried about how the
My Replacement: Ubiquiti Cloud Key Gen2 (Score:2)
It's not the same. There are no GPIO pins for those projects. There's no video output. They're heavier, and obviously they're more expensive.
BUT...
They're PoE powered Debian computers with a built-in 1TB hard drive. A Pi 4B+ with a 1TB SSD and a PoE Hat and a case to put it all together, and you're looking at a somewhat similar price point.
They're not locked down; you can get root access easily and install whatever you want on it, including Docker so you get all the containers available on Docker Hub.
So...y
When the 5 dollar computer became 50-150$ (Score:2)
I quickly lost interest in it and continued buying my arduinos.
Sure, I have Raspberry PI, but they were too expensive to experiment with, originally this was ment as a dirt cheap solution, but sold out almost immediately, then resold on ebay for excorbant prices. Even the local hardware store sold these at a premium.
I remember when the 5 Dollar Raspberry Zero came out some years ago, it was going to revolutionize the world of makers, but ... supply could not deliver demand, and I didn't really hear of anyon