[HN Gopher] You can't buy a Raspberry Pi right now
___________________________________________________________________
You can't buy a Raspberry Pi right now
Author : unnouinceput
Score : 190 points
Date : 2022-10-03 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| Havoc wrote:
| Bought a 8gb one two weeks ago. Had to accept a HAT combo but
| overall not a terrible deal on pricing.
|
| Out of stock now, but I see they have refurb 4gb in stock.
|
| https://www.okdo.com/p/refurbished-raspberry-pi-4-model-b-4g...
| Isamu wrote:
| If you are looking to buy, here's tips and tricks from
| rpilocator:
|
| https://rpilocator.com/tips-and-tricks.cfm
| sylware wrote:
| Don't think I'll get anymore raspberry PIs, until they move to
| 64bits risc-v.
| armatav wrote:
| They've been supply constrained for years; regardless of current
| events.
| tpmx wrote:
| They were annoyingly supply constrained the first 2 years iirc.
| And the last 1.5 years or so. But for a long stretch in the
| middle there (like 2014-2021), not so much.
| djhworld wrote:
| From what I remember with the launch of the Pi, I think the
| demand far exceeded their expectations. Remember that the
| thing was launched as an educational computer for schools,
| with a model A and B variant. At least from this article [1]
| it sounds like they contracted the work to build the boards
| out to Premier Farnell/Element 14. They originally had to do
| a lot of the manufacturing in China to keep the board cost
| low.
|
| Eventually Sony stepped in and offered production capacity at
| a place in Wales UK which I think improved availability a
| lot.
|
| [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/made-in-the-uk/
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Yeah, until mid-2021, I could reliably find the majority of
| Pi models in stock (usually with 10+ units) at my local Micro
| Center--and that was including CM4s, which quickly
| disappeared off the shelves and by September 2021 were
| unobtanium.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Yep, just look at ccc: https://i.imgur.com/2jzmhhA.png
|
| I got mine last July before the spike:
| https://i.imgur.com/2jzmhhA.png
| xer0x wrote:
| I've been waiting 6 months!!
| djhworld wrote:
| In the UK, I've seen a lot of vendors (when they do get stock in)
| only sell them as part of a bundle, with power adapter, case, SD
| card, usb and hdmi cables etc, which adds PS20-PS30 onto the
| price of the Pi.
|
| Probably partly as it's extra profit, but also to discourage
| multi-buys I guess. I dunno if it discourages the scalpers.
|
| These bundles never appear on rpilocater.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| At that kind of price you can just buy an all-in-one Intel box
| off Ali Express
| tvb12 wrote:
| I was looking at those recently. They're all small, sub $200,
| and usually have a Celeron N5105. Do you have to worry about
| Linux support when you're looking at something like that, or
| will it work pretty much out of the box?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I have one running Alpine Linux on it presently. Seems to
| just work for the most part. Nothing weird about it I have
| found yet.
| gambiting wrote:
| I was about to comment - there's absolutely no issue buying an
| RPi4 in the UK currently, if you don't mind buying a bundle.
| Pimoroni has few different ones in stock currently.
|
| And yes it discourages the scalpers - while the stuff you get
| in the bundle is usually worth the price being asked for it, to
| a scalper it's worth 0 and it makes it difficult to make profit
| flipping the boards themselves. Same principle is successfully
| used to fight PS5 scalpers.
| enlyth wrote:
| I wouldn't say there's 'absolutely no issue' buying one in
| the UK, I just checked on Pimoroni and they're all out of
| stock, every single one:
|
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/raspberry-
| pi?product_t...
|
| I wasn't able to actually find any website other than eBay at
| 100+ quid that have them in stock, even as kits.
| gambiting wrote:
| You're looking at bare boards. I specifically said bundles
| are in stock, and no, they are not "100+ quid"
|
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-
| pi-4-essentials...
| taf2 wrote:
| I find this very frustrating as well... I got a nice
| fridge/freezer alarm project working with the pi pico w - and
| while it also works with esp32 boards the pi pico is supposed to
| be like $5... but last I checked on amazon... it was $100...
| gonna stick with esp32 until it is actually $5...
| bmicraft wrote:
| The pico (w) had pretty good availability from most official
| resellers everytime I checked. Sellers on amazon often jack up
| the price which is why you shouldn't buy a pi on there.
|
| See "Buy now" on
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/ for
| your country
| skybrian wrote:
| Haven't tried to buy it yet, but it looks like the Pico W is
| available now on Digikey and PiShop.us without a markup.
| gambiting wrote:
| They have been consistently in stock at RRP here in UK for a
| long time, I bought half a dozen of them for various IoT
| projects around the house in the last 6 months, never had any
| trouble finding them
|
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-w?varia...
| brk wrote:
| I mentioned this in another RPi thread, I've had good luck with
| the LePotato as an alternative to the Pi
| (https://libre.computer/products/s905x/). The hardware footprint
| is 99% similar to the Pi, it works with the standard cases. Has
| the same 40 pin header, etc. The default RPi images usually won't
| run on it, you are better off with an ARMbian build, or tweaking
| your own. So, it's good for linux hobbyists, or anyone that can
| handle the minor differences between it and an actual RPi. They
| are ~$55, and usually in stock on Amazon.
| nfriedly wrote:
| > _They are currently producing 400,000 Raspberry Pis per month._
|
| Wow, I had no idea. I wonder what all those OEMs are doing with
| all those Pis?
| nottorp wrote:
| I was subscribed to stock alerts for a Pi 4 on a local store. I
| was online when I received the mail that they now have stock.
|
| By the time I logged in to order it was all gone :)
|
| I did find another at a slightly inflated price and ordered that
| one. It was a kit with a decent power brick and a useless case.
| Guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
|
| 4 Gb model was $60 ish, kit was $110. Romania prices so 19% VAT,
| possible import taxes yadda yadda.
| donatj wrote:
| I started a little hardware project about a month ago. Was going
| to use one of my pre-existing Raspberry Pi's but the shield
| didn't get along with my existing cases and I didn't want to
| bother disassembling them.
|
| Rather than remove one from their case, I decided to run to
| Microcenter to just grab a new one.
|
| Nope. Not a single Raspberry Pi in stock. I was honestly shocked.
| I was completely unaware of the shortage.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The convenience of having RPis in brick-and-mortar locations
| near me has been one of my favorite things about the Pi. It was
| like being able to stop at a local Radio Shack or Frys and pick
| up ICs back in the day.
| paxys wrote:
| You can buy a Raspberry Pi - if you are an OEM and are using the
| board in a commercial product. It is simply not for hobbyists
| anymore.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Coincidentally I was browsing for Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
| yesterday. They are ranging anywhere from $100 to $350 in my
| country. That's a big nope.
| ewzimm wrote:
| Supporting OEMs is definitely the right choice. I even shifted a
| project away from the pi for now because of the shortage, and
| there are alternatives, but if I had already invested in product
| that depended on them and couldn't order them, it would be a much
| bigger loss. Even from a hobbyist point of view, I'd feel more
| confident using them knowing that OEMs get priority shipments.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > They are still prioritizing OEM customers (who have built
| their products around the Pi)
|
| I think of the magazine, MagPi. An OEM customer? Indirectly.
| How can you sustain a hobbyist magazine on the Raspberry Pi
| when the hobbyist cannot get a Pi for less than $100?
| ozim wrote:
| Second that opinion I think OEMs provide so much value to the
| Foundation that goes to the hobbyists in the end that I cannot
| be angry that I cannot buy a Pi just because I want.
| thewataccount wrote:
| I'd rather have a hard time finding a pi then have them go
| out of business.
|
| Basically if this is survival mode during the chip shortage,
| I hope they can do everything possible to make it through
| this in good shape.
|
| Also I have enough pi's for my needs already, I'd love to
| build a cluster but IMO cluster projects should be of the
| lowest priority customers.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| What are some of the alternatives you've been using, near the
| same price point and capability?
| ewzimm wrote:
| For my project, I could get most of the functionality I
| needed from an Arduino board by attaching some additional
| modules, but for more powerful SBCs, I've been impressed by
| Olimex products, although they may have limited quantities
| available.
| metadat wrote:
| https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/
| fragmede wrote:
| Banana Pi, ODroid, Beaglebone black, even an Intel NUC.
| Depends on your constraints, those won't do to replace a zero
| or pico
| justizin wrote:
| i disagree, the rpi is not just a hobbyist tool, it's a
| learning tool and something for folks creating on the low-end
| or implementing custom solutions to use.
|
| For a major vendor (someone linked some korg devices below) to
| loot this market is no better than the auto vendors who are
| buying washing machines simply to pull out microcontrollers, or
| cryptominers destroying the GPU market.
|
| Major vendors can hire fabs to push out their own designs. The
| RPi is a licensed implementation of ARM, it isn't an industrial
| platform, from a supply chain point of view, clearly.
|
| Everyone who is shipping a product based on RPi is doing so
| because they were able to get cheap individual samples to build
| on. Now that's not possible for new folks.
|
| RPi was designed as an affordable learning computer, now there
| is not an affordable learning computer available to anyone who
| can't buy 10,000 parts or whatever.
| dugmartin wrote:
| Any suggestions for a generic cheap but good ITX running Linux
| from a vendor I could use for a small home server? I have two
| System76 Meerkats which I love (one for personal, one for work)
| but I don't want to fork out that much money for a home server to
| host things like PiHole and VaultWarden. I looked around last
| month for a RPi but as this article says they aren't to be found.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| There's cheaper devices available in the same form factor as
| the Meerkats. Intel's NUC11ATKC2 has a recommended retail price
| of $130, so it's a bit more pricy than a Pi as you'd need to
| add about another $50 for storage and memory; but it's also a
| lot more powerful.
| surge wrote:
| ODroid HC4
|
| https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/
| hedora wrote:
| I went that route, regretted it, and bought an x86 synology. It
| has a docker environment that can easily be client-side
| encrypted and backed up to S3 or similar.
|
| PC Engines' APU 2 line is also great, assuming it meets your
| needs.
| Saris wrote:
| Look for USFF sized PCs on eBay. They run around $80-100 for
| fairly recent Intel CPUs, and don't use much power.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I bought an old used Buffalo TeraStation like this[1] and
| followed online directions for getting a generic Debian install
| on it. Its intended use is a NAS so in addition to running my
| Linux services, it can act as my media server, too. You can
| probably still get them at a bargain (~$100) from ebay.
|
| 1: https://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-TeraStation-Network-
| Attached-...
| squarefoot wrote:
| My Xigmanas based NAS runs off a Supermicro X7SPA-L mainboard I
| bought used on Ebay; I also built a similar one for relatives
| of mine with roughly the same configuration and they both still
| work flawlessly after years. If you can find a X7SPA-H board,
| it employs 6 internal SATA ports, though for more ports you can
| always add a cheap SATA+eSATA PCI-E controller, such as the
| ASM1062 based one I have on my NAS; they're cheap on Ebay. The
| CPU's TDP is around 10 to 13 Watt; certainly higher than a
| Raspberry PI 4, but in the same ballpark and well worth the
| gain in performance and expandability. Speed is not stellar,
| still enough for most tasks including serving different HD
| video files (important: files, not streams) to more Kodi boxes.
|
| A future development I want to explore is using one external
| eSATA box so I can add more drives. I'm not sure however about
| any incompatibilities between BSD (or Linux) or the PCI-E
| controller and external SATA port multipliers.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you're OK with something that is like a 30W electrical load,
| you can do basic things a lot cheaper by buying a used ex-
| corporate "SFF" or "USFF" Dell or HP x86-64 desktop PC for
| under a hundred bucks on ebay. They fit in a quite small space
| under a desk or similar.
|
| Will almost certainly cost a lot less than buying a new mini-
| itx motherboard and compatible case, power supply, ram, etc.
|
| randomly chosen example in 20 seconds of searching, figure that
| the shipping cost is actually $25 of the price here, built into
| the final buy it now price.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/204098861051?hash=item2f853d77fb:g:...
| synicalx wrote:
| It's also worth looking around your local area for auction
| houses selling old hardware, a lot of ex-gov and ex-
| enterprise hardware gets sold off at these places for pocket
| change.
| ta467843567 wrote:
| I've been using these for probably over ten years now for a
| home router, they've been solid and haven't had any problems at
| all:
|
| https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
| dhon_ wrote:
| These are really great as a router/firewall. Multiple
| Ethernet ports, a low power (fanless) x86-64, battery backup
| for RTC (which is missing from a lot of SBCs), good
| connectivity for storage and wifi modules.
|
| I do wish it had video out as that would simplify setup &
| diagnostics for me, but the serial console is fine.
| hedora wrote:
| Their EOL policy says the APU 2/3 should be available
| through 2024. However, it is their newest model. I wonder
| if a replacement is in the works.
| pmontra wrote:
| Odroid? I bought two HC-4. I started installing one and it
| works fine so far.
|
| I think I'll never be back to Raspberry after all this drama.
| Fool me once, etc.
| gabrielhidasy wrote:
| I run my homeserver in a Lenovo m920q I bought for about 300USD
| (but it's a 32GB, 1TB NVMe 9th gen i5 model, there are models
| from like 100USD up). These 1-liter PC's are amazing, almost
| completely silent, idles at like 4W, but has enough grunt to
| transcode for plex and other stuff like that.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Another alternative is a laptop with a failed display, from
| ebay or your local thrift store. Plug in an old monitor from
| the same place when you need to, or ssh in.
| nzach wrote:
| For my home server I went with a Lenovo Tiny after watching the
| project TinyMiniMicro on Youtube[0].
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx4_QCX_khU
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I recently bought a used thinkpad from my local university
| surplus store for $25. Installed Linux Mint on it, then pihole
| and it's now my home lan ad blocker. Love it.
| Latty wrote:
| Not ITX, but if you are willing to accept a custom form factor
| (which are even smaller) check out ServeTheHome's Project
| TinyMiniMicro, they are great bang/buck for that kind of thing.
| If you can wait for some company to go through an upgrade and
| dump a load up on ebay or whatever, you can get particularly
| good deals.
|
| https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/
|
| They aren't going to be quite as small or efficient as a
| Raspberry Pi or equivalent, but instead you get full x86-64
| cores, and they are still pretty small and efficient.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I was going to ask this as well; I'm thinking about setting up
| a pihole but not sure what to buy for it.
| pyprism wrote:
| 1.5 years ago I bought a Orange Pi Zero for less than 20 USD.
| I am using this device for pihole. Without any issue, it is
| running smoothly.
| synergy20 wrote:
| search for 'orange pi zero LTS', shipping included is less
| than $30 now, I got it for $18 all included before the
| pandemic(a case, power adaptor). it's solid to run pihole for
| me.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Pretty much anything that can run Linux and has a network
| port would work. Most languages, libraries and well known
| software has been ported to work the same way on a lot of
| hardware. Save for low level hardware specific code, the rest
| is more or less standard.
|
| The Orange Pi other users suggested is a good choice, as
| would be the very similar NanoPi, and many others. However,
| although the scarcity hits more the popular boards such as
| the Raspberries, others also became somewhat harder to find,
| so I would suggest for example to take note of which board is
| supported by a well known distribution, then look for vendors
| offering it. A good start would be the Armbian and DietPI
| download sections in which you can easily find dozens of
| boards and devices with their support status.
|
| https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
|
| https://dietpi.com/#download
| pizza234 wrote:
| EDIT: see at the bottom for x86 SBCs
|
| Not ITX, but since you're responding an RPi thread, you may
| possibly be interested in Hardkernel's products, which have
| always been very competitive with RPis - in my opinion, simply
| better than them, although less popular.
|
| Currently, they offer the C4
| (https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-c4), and the blazing
| fast N2+
| (https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram-2).
|
| The N2+ not only ships the A73 (the successory to the RPi's
| A72), but it also runs it at high frequency.
|
| I am actually a big fan of the H2(+), which sadly, went out of
| production (it's an x86).
|
| EDIT: There are x86 SBCs. I absolutely recommend them. Two
| random picks:
|
| -
| https://www.axiomtek.com/Default.aspx?MenuId=Products&Functi...
|
| - https://www.seeedstudio.com/ODYSSEY-X86J4125800-p-4915.html
| ce4 wrote:
| I got a refurbished thin client, a Fujitsu Futro S720 with 2GB
| RAM (expandable via 2 slots) from ebay for 20EUR. Havent had
| the need to upgrade the RAM, but I put a 512gb mSata in it.
| Works great.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd really love to find something low power like this that can
| run 6-10 SATA drives without using USB.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Something like the ASRock J3455-ITX will do the job. 10 watt
| quad core, though my beef with this board is it features an m.2
| B key wifi slot instead of an M key for an NVMe storage device
| which is a poor choice. There might be a better board out there
| with a similar low power celeron.
|
| I have an older asrock j1900 celeron board running my 9front
| CPU/Disk/Auth server at home 24/7. No issues and it has been
| solid. At the current electric rate it costs about $2/month.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Something like a Dell thin client or what they call a Micro
| Form Factor could do the job. I got a couple of the micros to
| play around with and they're nice machines that sip power. I
| prefer them to rpi's now and with the pricing/availability
| issues of the pi's, they're price competitive used on ebay. I'm
| thinking there are a lot of offices that went remote and are
| unloading their desktops these days.
| ac29 wrote:
| I got a Dell thin client (Wise 5070) recently for next to
| nothing ($85 including shipping). Its a much, much nicer
| machine than anything ARM I've ever had, and has no problem
| running more or less anything Linux you'd like (its a recent-
| ish Intel Celeron with UEFI firmware).
| linker3000 wrote:
| I bought a Lenovo Mini PC M53 on EBay. It came with with 4GB
| RAM and I added a 500GB SSD. It's running Debian as a small
| office server (Apache, SMB, SSMTP, Node-RED and Mosquitto).
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Raspberry Pi availability has been such a bottleneck for
| PrintNanny.ai (deployed to a Raspberry Pi 4).
|
| Rather than wait around for stock to become available, I've
| decided to expand to Rock Pi and Orange Pi. I had to roll my own
| Linux distro and build tools to match the experience provided by
| the Raspberry Pi Foundation (e.g. SD card imaging tool). ... but
| where there's a will, there's a way.
| https://twitter.com/grepLeigh/status/1572683931769778176
| kubota wrote:
| Sometimes people write iot projects and target the pi because
| they are familiar with it (it's like a computer with gpio) when
| their use case could be better served by a less powerful
| microcontroller such as the esp32. Perhaps people in this group
| can use this as an opportunity to learn esp32 development. It's
| arduino ide compatible and has good support on platformio.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's what the Pico is meant to be for. In my experience
| RP2040 equipped boards are cheaper than similar ESP32 boards,
| and they both run MicroPython.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The rp2040 as an Adafruit Feather works great for me. No
| floating point unit though.
|
| I have an old Pi Zero W and I love it. I watch Adafruit for
| the new version constantly but no luck.
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't know, I tried to use micropython on some esp32 board
| and ran out of ram after the first few tests.
|
| Maybe my board was just ram starved, but my impression is you
| want to go bare metal with the ESP.
| gambiting wrote:
| Depends what you're doing I guess. My most complex project
| is a network enabled display that shows all the stats from
| my PC, it queries my machine every second and displays
| graphs for temperature and GPU/CPU usage. No issues with
| micropython and an ESP32 board doing that.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Speaking of clones. I'd be interested to hear how using BananaPi
| boards have worked out for people, from anyone who has used any
| of their boards.
| outworlder wrote:
| It seems that Pine64 has good boards that would be useful for
| many tasks performed by PIs, at a pretty good price. They say
| they have them all in stock, I'm probably going to pull the
| trigger as I don't need any raspberry-specific shields.
|
| https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/
| BanazirGalbasi wrote:
| I recently purchased a Quartz64B, which turns out to be a very
| new model. If you're looking at a board from Pine64, I'd say go
| for the Rock64 if you want something more likely to work with
| your preferred OS.
| [deleted]
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Jeff, if you're reading this, your website is pretty much
| unreadable without the reader view in Firefox. It's not just the
| tiny font which is solved by zooming, it's the combination of
| font choice and white text on black background.
| Zamicol wrote:
| Shows up fine for me.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| White on black, perfectly readable, firefox on 8" android
| tablet. Even when switching to desktop site.
|
| What's so bad about white-on-black? Light-gray-on-a-bit-darker-
| gray and similar are the evil choices.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| For dark mode, the site shows white text on pure black, to help
| shave energy use on OLED displays. For light mode, the site
| shows black on pure white.
|
| The text should look great across most browsers/sites, and I
| make sure the layout flows well if you increase or decrease
| font size... but if you can send a screenshot of what you're
| seeing and your device/screen configuration, I can take a look
| at what might be going on.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > For dark mode, the site shows white text on pure black, to
| help shave energy use on OLED displays. For light mode, the
| site shows black on pure white.
|
| That's exactly the problem. Too much contrast is a thing with
| text and can make a website uncomfortable to look at (for me
| at least). It's hard to find a source for that, but most
| people seem to agree (see ~95% of other sites).
|
| That's not a problem on commodity LCDs (maybe the one you're
| using) because "black" is fairly bright, but on OLED
| especially that's almost infinite contrast.
| uuoc wrote:
| > That's not a problem on commodity LCDs (maybe the one
| you're using) because "black" is fairly bright, but on OLED
| especially that's almost infinite contrast.
|
| Therefore, instead of having your browser enforce a lowered
| contrast for yourself, you prefer that the majority of the
| rest of us, with commodity LCDs, suffer too little contrast
| by asking for the colors to be changed on the website.
| jgneff wrote:
| It's the 'font-family: Georgia,Times,serif;' that ends up
| being Nimbus Roman as a substitute for Times (on my Ubuntu
| system, at least), and that font looks just terrible in white
| on a black background. I remove Times, or the entire font-
| family rule, and it looks great (DejuVu Serif or DejaVu
| Sans).
| spullara wrote:
| I think you might be in dark mode and Jeff doesn't use it. It
| is perfectly readable to me but it is black text on a white
| background.
| mtmail wrote:
| Yes, that's it @media (prefers-color-scheme:
| dark) body { color: #eee; background-
| color: #000; }
| jcynix wrote:
| I see black text on white background in Firefox (and Chrome)
| here. So this might be a problem on your side? But otherwise,
| yes the font is way to small.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Nope, it is the site. The CSS contains white text on black
| background for "dark" color scheme.
| mike256 wrote:
| Some kind of weird browser configuration? I see black font on
| white background...
| vultour wrote:
| Your system isn't set to prefer dark mode.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| If "Settings->Theme->Dark" is a weird browser configuration,
| then yes. I see white font on a black background, which looks
| great on many other pages and doesn't hurt my eyes looking at
| sunspots while most of the page is basically staring at the
| sun.
|
| There are dozens of us - dozens! - and Jeff's page looks
| uniquely bad. Something about the font weight, perhaps? The
| strokes are so thin as to disappear. Zooming to 150% makes it
| much more readable.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Can you tell me more about your configuration? On my Mac,
| at least, the site is quite legible in both light and dark
| mode. The main thing I'm wondering is what font is being
| picked up. On my Mac, I see Georgia... maybe it's just when
| it switches to Times or 'serif'?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's the 'serif', I'm on Ubuntu 22.04 with neither
| Georgia nor Times installed. Here's a screenshot at 100%
| zoom:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/xdMq8SJ.png
|
| and here's a screenshot at 150%:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/hKcCBo7.png
|
| I do see something funny going on with the ligature for
| 'ff' in "different vendors" and "official retailers, "
| especially at 100%.
|
| Running `fc-match serif` says that the fault being picked
| up is DejaVu Serif [0]
|
| [0] https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/Samples.html
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Oh wow, that's bad! I guess I haven't tested in FF on
| Linux recently, but I just updated to default to
| Helvetica/Arial/sans-serif, and in my quick peek from
| Ubuntu it seems to look a bit nicer now.
| lioeters wrote:
| Text looks fine to me, Firefox on macOS. Perhaps you
| could make use of the "system font stack", which might
| fall back to a decent Serif font on other OSes.
|
| https://systemfontstack.com/
| [deleted]
| cjcampbell wrote:
| A lot of folks have pointed to rpilocator, but my experience is
| that they made the situation far worse. Prior to the launch, I
| was able to buy a couple of pi's per month without too much
| effort (registering for stock notifications). Since rpilocator,
| I've only managed to buy about 3 pi's in total. Unless I'm able
| to drop everything on a notification, there's no chance. And even
| if I can do this, I get the feeling that I'm competing against a
| crowd that's automated the purchasing process.
| samstave wrote:
| What is the top app that ppl are using Rpis for these days, in
| qty?
| giobox wrote:
| One thing which hasn't been great in all this is the
| communication from the Pi Foundation itself. I've been struggling
| to buy them for months, the only real public communication on the
| matter from them has been that blog post in April and this post
| by Jeff. This is not a great way to communicate with the user
| base on a tough issue etc.
|
| The official blog is just marketing fluff for the most part,
| almost never mentioning the fact you haven't been able to easily
| obtain one for over six months.
|
| If what Eben told Jeff is the case, why not tell everyone on the
| blog, or some other public channel? "Ringing up Eben" is not an
| option for most of us.
|
| I also think with prioritizing commercial customers, we should
| drop the ruse that this thing is an educational board. I honestly
| don't think education has been a majority of users for a long
| time, but perhaps i'm grossly mistaken here.
|
| > https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/
| esskay wrote:
| I think what makes it worse is the "No, piss off" attitude of
| their forum team when anyone asks for an update, followed by
| locking the thread.
| sounds wrote:
| In all fairness, a forum thread would collect a bunch of
| anecdata but is not an official way to request a sale.
|
| If the Raspberri Pi foundation doesn't want to sell you their
| product, there's no way you can force them to sell you one.
| That there are no blog posts probably just means that some
| exec from Broadcom told Eben not to post anything.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >we should drop the ruse that this thing is an educational
| board.
|
| rPi stopped feeling like educational material when they moved
| on from whatever low price they were at the beginning.
|
| You are not going to convince me that a computer selling for
| $150~300 each or whatever it is nowadays is "for education". An
| educational computer is something like an Arduino board, which
| apparently sells for $25~50 currently from some quick checking.
|
| If I'm dropping two or three Franklins on a computer, I'd
| rather just get an older Intel NUC or something so I can take
| advantage of the much larger and capable Windows and Linux
| ecosystems.
| thom_ wrote:
| The orange pi's are so nice now. They come w a metal box just
| like a Mac mini
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Haven't seen that, I'll have to check it out! I've got an
| orange pi zero and zero2. The zero fits great in an Altoids
| tin, with a bit of extra space for the power cord.
| pGuitar wrote:
| Get in-stock alerts from here: https://rpilocator.com/?instock
|
| There's some stock in the US usually on Wednesday mornings if you
| are quick...
|
| I just sold a used Pi for 3 times what I paid for it
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _They are currently producing 400,000 Raspberry Pis per month._
|
| That is 4.8 million a year. So it's not like they're not trying.
| Where are they all going? OEMS, sure. But what do they end up
| being used as? What consumer tech? What tech? What field(s)?
|
| Pre-post edit: This thread has a ton of answers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072316
| causi wrote:
| One of the unfortunate side effects of the ongoing RPi shortage
| is the shrinkage of the accessories market. A lot of the coolest
| stuff still isn't available for the Model 4, like the SNES
| enclosure with working buttons and USB ports in the controller
| ports.
| politelemon wrote:
| My lack of imagination lacks the imagination to address this:
|
| > They are still prioritizing OEM customers (who have built their
| products around the Pi)
|
| OEMs use RPis? What are they using it for, does anyone know, got
| any examples? I've always assumed RPis to be a hobbyist tool. All
| the blog posts, documentation, examples I encounter are around
| the hobbyist's mindset. I've not encountered any "business"
| oriented documentation or examples or blogs.
|
| Edit: Everyone, thanks for the examples. I'm going through each
| one. It's like a whole new world opened to me.
| uoaei wrote:
| I could see it being folded into custom IoT / home automation
| setups where a relatively low-power controller is used just to
| coordinate signals across a network. Or how they are often used
| as dashboard-machines for home infra like solar panel setups.
| eisa01 wrote:
| Futurehome did use Pi's inside their hub, but may have moved
| to a custom board with the latest version
|
| https://futurehome.io
| [deleted]
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Many go into service as Home Assistant servers (and Nabu Casa
| is even making their own product for this purpose, the Home
| Assistant Yellow: https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-
| assistant-yellow).
|
| There are also hundreds of boards that work with the CM4 to
| build different types of systems or integrate into
| automation, industrial gear, and commercial products--this is
| a tiny listing that doesn't even cover stuff that uses the Pi
| 4 or older Pi models:
| https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm
| xondono wrote:
| > OEMs use RPis?
|
| It is used in a lot of products, specially legacy products that
| have been given a "facelift" to switch from buttons + screen to
| touchscreen.
|
| I've been always against it when it comes to the non-CM
| versions.
|
| The foundation receives donations, both private and public, and
| works as a non-profit with the original goal of giving every
| kid a computer, and now more broadly to teach through their
| platform. Having private companies leeching off it for me is
| very much scummy behavior.
|
| A company I worked for used the 2B, 3B and 3B+ in a bunch of
| products. My complaints were dutifully archived in the trash.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Having private companies leeching off it for me is very
| much scummy behavior._
|
| The private companies are funding the foundation. It's hard
| to call it leeching when the pi is a comparatively expensive
| board compared to alternatives
| xondono wrote:
| > The private companies are funding the foundation.
|
| Except that if you look at their financials, it's clear
| that they make very little on them. The sales of Rpis are
| not how they keep going, it's all the other activities
| around it.
|
| > It's hard to call it leeching when the pi is a
| comparatively expensive board compared to alternatives
|
| It's not only about COGs, support is a big ticket in this
| area, and one that most manufacturers are way behind. Also,
| yes, there are _some_ cheaper SBCs, but most of them are
| sold at "ask us for price", and they aren't any cheaper,
| especially at low volumes.
| blamazon wrote:
| For the market that I've seen, don't think "OEMs making
| products for the consumer market", rather "OEMs making
| solutions for the business market." RasPIs are huge in
| industrial automation for example. Sure, you likely won't find
| them at the Ford Motor Companies of the world, but at Tony's
| Midwest Hotel Supplying Baking Company? Absolutely, all over
| the place. Put together by crafty integrators at the lowest
| possible cost.
| nottorp wrote:
| I've written software for Pi based setups that measure
| something and are deployed in a few factories across the
| world.
|
| Wouldn't use them for something mission critical but for
| statistics where you don't mind missing a few minutes like in
| this case they're ok.
|
| Also I'm using a Pi to do some tests for a project that will
| run on custom hardware (not even Broadcom) eventually. Saves
| time when you don't have to deal with Yocto and editing dts
| files just to talk to something on spi and see if it can do
| your job.
| _joel wrote:
| It's not always lowest possible cost for hardware, there are
| cheaper SBCs ;)
|
| (edit for clarity)
| redblacktree wrote:
| Perhaps when you factor in development/engineering time.
| The machine is only a part of the cost of an automation
| project.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| This is exactly it. I work at a company that has used
| raspi's in hardware.
|
| There are cheaper alternatives, but there are not better
| supported alternatives. The most expensive rPi is a
| rounding error in terms of engineering time. Why bother
| saving ~$30 if you have to spend $1k worth of engineering
| time to diagnose a compatibility issue on some less well
| documented board.
| chubs wrote:
| I'm super curious, how do you solve for the issue where
| SD cards wear out in raspis reasonably quickly?
| _joel wrote:
| There's eMMC and SATA, even NVMe via PCI bus (with
| addons) as well as sd cards (hell even boot from usb now
| too).
|
| You can also reduce your write wear with putting stuff
| like temporal logs in ram etc.
| megous wrote:
| "Support." Wake me up when one of the Rpi boards starts
| supporting basics like suspend to RAM.
| nottorp wrote:
| > The most expensive rPi is a rounding error in terms of
| engineering time.
|
| * depending on volume.
|
| For a couple hundred/thousand devices doing industrial
| automation yes. For a million and up, it makes sense to
| pay an engineer 3 months to reduce the BOM by 10 cents.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Right. But these come with all the paperwork and
| compatibility required for "serious" automation. Yes, then
| there are also cheaper industrial controllers, but they are
| probably much harder to use (if nothing else because the
| RPI's mind share is higher in some circles). This puts the
| Raspberry Pi in a pretty good spot for a lot of people.
| munificent wrote:
| _> OEMs use RPis? What are they using it for, does anyone know,
| got any examples?_
|
| Korg released a few new digital synthesizers in the past couple
| of years: Opsix, Wavestate, and Modwave. They are all running
| Raspberry Pis inside.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I think this is referring to OEMs like ClockworkPi, Pi-Top, and
| Kano.
| joemi wrote:
| It's not the biggest OEM marketplace by a longshot (more of a
| boutique marketplace), but there are a few modules for modular
| synthesizers that use RPi's inside. The two I can think off off
| the top of my head: Sleepy Circuits Hypno and Erogenous Tones
| Structure, both video synthesis modules.
| petre wrote:
| Analog Devices uses it to build osciloscopes or clock
| generators.
| malfist wrote:
| For astrophotography ZWO has a custom distro for pi and extra
| hardware for custom, wireless control of an astrophotography
| setup, telescope, tripod, camera and all.
|
| https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asiair-plus
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The compute module is specially made for companies to integrate
| into products. Around the time they introduced the first
| compute module years ago they split Raspberry Pi into a formal
| company (with CEO etc) and a non profit charity/foundation.
| You've seen a lot of what the foundation has done but there's
| also a profit seeking company behind Raspberry Pi too.
| senko wrote:
| > OEMs use RPis?
|
| Yes. As an example, we use RPi in MusicBox[0], together with
| HifiBerry[1] sound card, as a music player appliance.
|
| In fact, you can still buy (well, you could, if you could buy
| any) RPi 1's, since OEMs tend to standardize and stick to a
| platform. Our base platform is 1B+, for example.
|
| [0] https://musicbox.com.hr/ (Croatian only, sorry, it's for
| the local market)
|
| [1] https://www.hifiberry.com/
| _joel wrote:
| Massive user base, great documentation, they're supported for
| 10 years, Have industrial cases and a plethora of accessories
| (not cheap, some of them), easy to swap compute units.
| emilecantin wrote:
| I have a MarineTraffic antenna at home, and it uses a Comar AIS
| receiver. The first one I got was a purpose-built device, but
| they later sent me an "upgraded" version from this series:
| https://comarsystems.com/product-tag/intelligent/
|
| I opened it up and I can confirm it has a Rpi inside.
| [deleted]
| xani_ wrote:
| Here are two
|
| https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/wavestate/
|
| https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/opsix/
|
| Although that's with the CM3
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| the modwave too.
| cylinder714 wrote:
| ISTR that Wyse Technology (fond memories of their WY-60
| terminals) made thin clients out of Raspberry Pis.
|
| Stratodesk makes them now:
|
| https://www.stratodesk.com/solutions/raspberry-pi-thin-clien...
|
| How Good is the new Raspberry Pi 4 as a Thin Client? (2019)
|
| https://www.stratodesk.com/how-good-is-the-new-raspberry-pi-...
| wvenable wrote:
| Look like you can get one inside of a DevTerm:
|
| https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-cm4-ser...
| wl wrote:
| Soma Shades used to have a "Soma Connect" device whose sole
| purpose in the world was to communicate with their shade
| controllers via Bluetooth and make them controllable over WiFi
| or ethernet. Just checking their website just now, it is now a
| strictly bring-your-own Pi arrangement, presumably because they
| can't get them, either.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Industrial automation is one use case:
| https://revolutionpi.com/
| thephyber wrote:
| Some TVs user RPis:
|
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/tv-thats-not-necs-pi-...
| adolph wrote:
| Probably should look into what TVs were using Pis a couple
| years ago, buy them refurb/2nd-hand and resell the Pis at
| profit.
| matt3D wrote:
| I believe companies use them in tools like air quality
| monitors, time lapse cameras in construction and other small
| batch boutique hardware.
|
| I believe most of them don't advertise the fact they use
| Raspberry Pis as it might cheapen their offering in the eyes of
| customers
| ashton314 wrote:
| Not sure if this counts, but Gardyn[1] uses a Raspberry Pi Zero
| W in their second-gen system. (Can't speak to the first-gen.)
|
| They leave an SSH port open (found with nmap) and I've asked
| support if I can have the password, but they won't give it to
| me. >:(
|
| My system is now currently powered down. I think it'd be cool
| if someone were to reverse engineer it and write their own FOSS
| firmware for the system. Shouldn't be _too_ hard, right?
|
| [1]: https://mygardyn.com/
| flutas wrote:
| > uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W in their second-gen system
|
| (assuming it's a standard version and you haven't already)
|
| Couldn't you just grab the SD card out of it and inspect the
| file system, then try to get the password through that? You'd
| have to spend some time bruteforcing it most likely, but it
| should eventually (tbh, seeing solutions like this I'd expect
| quickly) give you the password.
| ashton314 wrote:
| Wow! What a great idea! I definitely would never do that
| because it'd violate their TOS. Don't ask me how I know
| that it's a Zero W in the first place because opening the
| thing up is a big no-no. Yup. Would never do such a
| thing... Never ever... No way... Nu-uh... Nope nope nope
| the land of ten thousand nopes...
| someweirdperson wrote:
| When first reading this it sounded really strange. Buying
| a device and TOS don't really fit.
|
| Checking the website it seems to be a kind of PaaS, plant
| as a service. Am I reading that website correctly? They
| are offering remotely-managed plants for rent?
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| We use a CM3 in our Blackboard Classic control surface:
|
| https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/control/range_cn/index...
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| I must have been very lucky when 2GB pi4's showed up at the local
| Microcenter in August as I have been unable to find another
| since.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| My Microcenter hasn't even had a Pico in stock for months.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Micro Center is hit or miss--each location gets little batches
| here or there. But every time I've heard there's stock at my
| local store, they're gone by the time I can go check on it.
|
| The longest stock lasted was about 24 hours a couple months
| ago. I think people have scrapers even for their local Micro
| Center website so they can find when they're in stock and go
| snag one immediately.
|
| The Micro Center near me usually has a large bag full of Pico
| and Pico W, though, as well as practically every HAT and
| official Pi accessory.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Hmm I was wondering what happened to them. I'm debating getting a
| rockpi or orangepi, but just like the article suggests I like
| raspberry pi for their support.
| rjsw wrote:
| I mentored a Google Summer of Code project that used a RPi3, I
| think it would have gone better if I had been able to get one
| myself.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Jeff is always a raspberry foundation supporter. I do feel a bit
| more pushback is needed. The other companies he mentions like
| Apple and Nvidia _have_ shown considerable improvement in recent
| months. The raspberry is only ever harder to get.
|
| I have a feeling Broadcom is the main problem here, they probably
| prioritize other customers. Which is surprising in some ways
| because a lot of raspberry pi foundation members are ex-broadcom
| or still even work there.
|
| However I guess the other companies are willing to offer more
| whereas if the pi became more expensive there would be a lot of
| uproar (and rightly so because it defeats the purpose)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It's probably a price issue...
|
| You need a laptop/expensive graphics card, you needed it back
| them when you started on a "waitlist" (official or your own),
| and after them becoming available, you buy one laptop/card, and
| you're done.
|
| With raspberrypis, everyone doing anything with them outside of
| purely first time hobbyists, will order 5, 10, 50, however much
| they can get, because the waiting is killing the business. When
| rpi zero w 2 came out, it was hard to get, but the moment I
| could get one, I bought 3 pieces, even though i needed only one
| at the moment, but I knew, if I needed more, I wouldn't be able
| to get them for months again.
| wmf wrote:
| I wonder what Broadcom's endgame is. They appear to be selling
| the SoC very cheap to the foundation. I thought maybe this is
| to encourage other customers to buy that same SoC at a higher
| price but it appears they don't sell it. If there's no path for
| Broadcom to make reasonable margins then of course they have no
| incentive to increase production.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The pi foundation was started by a group of Broadcom
| engineers. If not for that connection, Broadcom would likely
| have never given them the time of day - they are notoriously
| bad to deal with if you are a small company.
|
| It's possible they see this as some sort of marketing, but I
| don't think they are using it to drive a sales funnel of low-
| volume customers.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| they are notoriously bad to deal with if you a large,
| small, medium, government or anything....
|
| Which is why i soooo excited they bought VMWare.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| if broadcom were supplying at below cost as a marketing
| expenditure it would explain a bunch of things such as why
| raspberry pi doesn't allow bulk sales but would give them
| away with magazines
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It doesn't, but the foundation does make a loss on the
| zero as far as I remember (remember reading somewhere..)
| which is why they never lifted the "one per order"
| restriction. It's very annoying because I give trainings
| sometimes and it would be nice to give each participant
| one.
| joezydeco wrote:
| The first Pi was based off a failed set-top streaming box
| SoC that Broadcom didn't know what to do with.
|
| The original goal (remember that?) was to make it a cheap
| educational Linux system. And it was a nice idea. The cheap
| sticker price got it noticed compared to the other more
| expensive (but better supported) ARM single-board
| computers. And here we are.
|
| I sure as heck don't know what Broadcom's endgame is here
| either, because like you say they don't even answer your
| call if you're <100K EAU. So unlike other EVKs that can be
| used to rip apart and spin into real projects, you're stuck
| with RPi as a standalone unit.
|
| The chip shortage is hurting everyone, but at least with
| other SoCs you can find them from multiple sources
| eventually. Or use a broker if you're desparate.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yup, Raspberry Pi kind of sucked the oxygen out of the
| Beaglebone ecosystem. Speedier and cheaper. The
| Beaglebone has a lot of features that hardcore embedded
| engineers want (real-time support, eMMC, tons of IO, good
| platform documentation), but the Raspberry Pi really
| appealed to the maker crowd. I guess the $25 price
| difference made a big difference? I never really
| understood it.
|
| I was a big Beaglebone Black supporter, but figured the
| winds were blowing towards the Raspberry Pi, so just
| started using that instead. Now I'm here with the need
| for several mini Linux boxes and instead I have nothing.
| Beaglebone Black feels outdated. Raspberry Pi is
| unobtainium. Unfortunate where the random walk leads.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In a world where TI had been able to get a foothold with
| hobbyists on the beaglebone, the world might be very
| different. TI doesn't hate small-volume sales like
| Broadcom.
|
| The hobbyist market has weirdly strong network effects:
| we saw this with Arduino, too, which was a lot more
| expensive than its competitors! I assume there is a
| measure of influencer marketing here that old-guard tech
| companies didn't grasp.
|
| 10 years ago, the beagleboard was a game changer, though.
| They are still making beaglebones and beagleboards, both
| of which are cool, but they are last-generation computers
| with lots of useful embedded SoC features, while the Pi
| is a computer first.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, TI always seemed nice to hobbyists. I think the RPi
| foundation was just better organized. Beaglebone always
| felt very scrappy. RPi feels like they have full time
| employees around to do all the running-the-org stuff.
| Well run org + OK project > OK org + great project, I
| suppose.
| joezydeco wrote:
| From my POV the companies were happy to see people
| experiment with their designs and SoCs but they just
| didn't have the resources to put the necessary amount of
| customer support forward.
|
| In my many argumen^H^H^Hdiscussions with RPi users here
| and elsewhere, the counter-argument for Pi has always
| been _the community support is excellent_. And, yes, it
| is. When you aren 't large enough to get a TI or NXP FAE
| to answer your email then having a robust community is
| great. But it was built ground-up from all the RPi fans
| having the object in their hands and little else to do
| with it.
|
| When TI dropped OMAP I left for Freescale, now NXP. I've
| been developing on i.MX for well over a decade now and
| have really enjoyed it. Their foothold in automotive has
| allowed them to keep growing the line and branching it
| out in different ways, more so than TI or Broadcom will.
| [deleted]
| tpmx wrote:
| This is a key question that needs more daylight/exposure. I
| guess Pico is their first hedge, perhaps there will be more.
|
| Relying on Raspberry Pi as a business means relying on the
| goodwill of Broadcom - which is a severely broken company.
| _joel wrote:
| Really needs to be a resale market imho. Loads in my drawer that
| are doing nothing and I'm not too fussed about putting them on
| eBay for what it's worth, but maybe if there looked like proper
| forum (however how long until those got bought for resale for a
| markup, I dunno)
| archontes wrote:
| reddit.com/r/hardwareswap will buy 'em
| _joel wrote:
| Cool, will take a look (if I remember!)
| rjsw wrote:
| From trying to get one on eBay, I'm sure you could sell them
| for more than you paid.
| senko wrote:
| If they're B's and you can ship em to Europe, ping me (email in
| profile), I'd probably buy the whole lot.
| odysseus wrote:
| When I ordered a Pi 4 from CanaKit back in January, it took 54
| days to get to my house. It felt like a long wait at the time,
| but looking back, it wasn't that bad, given the chip shortage.
| Took me another month to get around to setting it up anyway.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I ordered from CanaKit back in July of 2021. Still no update on
| my order. Claims it doesn't exist when I contacted them about it.
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