[HN Gopher] It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
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It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-01-31 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The Target near me has them in stock from time to time.
|
| For projects, try HP thin clients on eBay.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 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).
| amelius wrote:
| > 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.
| maerek wrote:
| Or Dell thin clients. Despite some oddities with the Cherry
| Trail (?) boards used on the Wyse 3040 series, they are x86 and
| have similar processing power to the Rpi4. They come with a
| quad core processor, 2GB of RAM and (usually) 8GB of storage,
| which I assume is EMMC. Multiple USB ports, gigabit Ethernet,
| dual DisplayPort out.
|
| You can usually find them for around $35-40.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's a shame that so many are simply wasted. Lots of people
| bought multiple units in the past to run toy clusters for no
| reason. I myself have a Pico I got free with the magazine that
| I've yet to use. There must be thousands gathering dust that
| people could make use of.
|
| Edit: In fact, if anyone does want to play with setting up a
| cluster (like for kubernetes or something) you can do it easily
| with VMs. Two great options for spinning up a virtual cluster are
| Vagrant and Docker Machine. The latter is specifically tailored
| for bringing up docker hosts. I'm not aware of any reason why you
| would need to use real hardware for learning.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Ironically the Pico is the one where they seem to have an
| abundance of silicon (they sell the actual RP2040 chip by the
| thousands in reels, and there's plenty of stock.
|
| Most of that's down to how tiny the actual silicon is for the
| RP2040--you can print hundreds (thousands?) on a single silicon
| wafer.
| bullen wrote:
| Here you can discuss this with the guys that are making the
| product:
|
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=1967965
| taf2 wrote:
| This is really nice - is there one like this for graphics cards
| too?
| topspin wrote:
| When I was in the market for a GPU (last September, bought a
| 3070ti) I found youtube channels with live tickers of GPU stock
| notifications.
| kahrl wrote:
| https://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/
| 34679 wrote:
| If you live near a Micro Center, they always seem to have them in
| stock. They sell them in-store only.
| luke2m wrote:
| Mayfield Hts has been out of stock for a long time, but they
| have the pico.
| acheron wrote:
| I was looking in the past week coincidentally. The website
| supposedly shows stock in-store, but says they're out at the
| local one. Suppose I could call them and ask directly if
| there's a possibility the website doesn't actually track stock
| closely.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The one near me (St. Louis, MO) has been out of Pi 4 model B
| and CM4 since September. A couple CM3+ popped in stock for a
| few days but were gone shortly after.
|
| Checking right now, they only have some Pi 400s and Pi 3 A+ in
| stock. Plus a boatload of accessories, power supplies, and
| cases.
|
| At some point it might be worth figuring out a way to mash a Pi
| 400 into a Pi 4-size footprint.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| A lot of times they get them and don't update the inventory
| on the website. I had the most success by just popping in
| once a week during a week day for a few weeks, eventually got
| almost what I was looking for (had to get 8gb instead of 4gb,
| oh well).
| dradtke wrote:
| Really? Every time I check (in the Chicago area), it's still
| out of stock.
| https://www.microcenter.com/product/609038/raspberry-pi-4-mo...
| SloopJon wrote:
| I looked online the other day for an 8 GB Pi 4, and could not
| find any, including at Microcenter (which claims to show store
| availability). I also looked to see whether the Jetson Xavier AGX
| is available. This used to go for $700, but I didn't really need
| it then. Now that I could use it, it's selling for at least twice
| as much.
| greggsy wrote:
| The 8gb pi4 has been OOS across the market for a few months,
| which leads me to believe that memory modules are the main
| bottleneck. The price increase of the Xavier (which come with
| 32 or 64gb memory onboard), seems to support this.
| amanzi wrote:
| This site doesn't seem to take bundles into account. I just had a
| look at The PiHut and they have some Pi 4 devices available if
| you're happy getting them as part of a bundle (e.g. case, power
| supply, etc). The rpilocator website is currently showing The
| Pihut as being out of stock of all Pi 4 devices.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'm sitting on 4xpi4 8 Gb and 4xpi4 4Gb, from a small cluster I
| built last year. In Sweden. If anyone needs a few I could
| probably be persuaded to part with them as they're just gathering
| dust right now.
| bullen wrote:
| Interesting, why didn't you put them in production?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well, they were in a sense my first production environment,
| but I outgrew them.
|
| The big problem is they're not chonky enough. Most of the
| stuff I'm working on doesn't distribute all that well. I have
| some smaller services, but they're so small they don't really
| eat much resources from my server either.
|
| If I had machines closer to 32 Gb it might be worth adding
| additional nodes, but 8 Gb is too small to do anything useful
| with that isn't mostly just a hassle of constant maintenance
| and jank.
| bullen wrote:
| I think you made that search engine right? That's why you
| need 32GB RAM?
| vimy wrote:
| Is the raspberry pi fab still in the UK? So the issue isn't the
| arm chip but some other components?
| Laforet wrote:
| I'm pretty sure only the final assembly gets done in the UK.
| Every other component has to come from somewhere else.
| jrockway wrote:
| I'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.)
| fosshogg wrote:
| Why all the obsession over the pi now all of a sudden? The
| pi4/400 has been out for a couple of years at this point. Yet
| they're still out of stock?
| pojzon wrote:
| Mostly lack of new PIs being produced.
|
| Semiconductors shortage becomes a pain in the ....
| topspin wrote:
| And it's getting worse, not better. The secondary and
| tertiary component suppliers are running dry.
| amelius wrote:
| Is it time to start looking for a job outside of IT
| already?
| myself248 wrote:
| My understanding is not that demand has gone up, but that
| availability has gone down.
| Syonyk wrote:
| The Pis, and especially the compute module forms, are used for
| more than just clasroom toys and low power geek desktops. The
| CMs are a long term support item that, in recent forms, are FCC
| certified with wireless. Because it's a "module," with onboard
| wireless/antenna/etc, you don't have to perform the (quite
| expensive) certification tests for a wide range of products
| that can then have a perfectly good little computer and
| wireless in them.
|
| Unfortunately, when those aren't available, it's a problem for
| not just those who want Raspberry Pis, but for everyone who
| wants to buy or sell any of those products based around a Pi.
| You can't just trivially redesign to anything else, not that
| there's anything else available...
|
| I'm trying to build some YARH handhelds for various projects,
| and outside the stock of Pis I have a few of, that's just going
| to end up on hold, because I can't get any of the boards I
| figured would regularly be in supply places.
|
| It's another breakdown of JIT.
| cjcampbell wrote:
| I 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 Hut had
| consistently kept the 2GB unit in stock, allowing me to pick up a
| couple per month. I was a little disheartened to see how quickly
| that changed once this was online.
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(page generated 2022-01-31 23:00 UTC)