6 ms·

Rpilocator – find in stock Raspberry Pi

78 points by myth_drannon 5y ago

chrisshroba 5y ago
I’ve been checking this every week or so and the scene seems to be pretty dismal. Does Raspberry Pi have any plans to address the huge supply/demand gap?
- myth_drannon 5y ago
  74 weeks lead time....
- seabird 5y ago
  Good luck finding anything at all. This is not a problem exclusive to Raspberry Pis and there is not a huge amount they can do about it.
jordansmithnz 5y ago
I recently bought an rPi 4. After trying in vain to find any in stock at a reasonable price, I figured out you can buy units that are preconfigured for another purpose and re-flash them (eg https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-w-optisigns-pre-configured/ https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-w-optisigns-pre-c... - in stock right now). I’m not sure others have caught onto this yet given these are still in stock.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Seems that’s about $20 markup? Not bad if you’ve been looking for awhile. Comes with a case, sd card and psu.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    official PSU is $15-20, SD card is $5-10, and a case can be 3d printed or bought for $5-$20 depending. I didn't look at the link so i could be missing that if you add all that up, there's still a $20 markup above and beyond that.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
The associated Twitter account is more useful, especially if you turn on alerts: https://twitter.com/rpilocator https://twitter.com/rpilocator
geerlingguy 5y ago
For added context, Raspberry Pi announced[1] that they're currently prioritizing industrial and commercial customers instead of retail channels for Pis like the Pi 4 model B and Compute Module 4. It seems like they're also making fewer of the older model Pis (though I don't know if this is confirmed) since the silicon for the BCM2711 can be had in greater quantities than the older chips in the 3B+, 3+, and earlier models. They're making 500,000 units per month, supposedly (though I don't doubt it), with a million or two orders in the backlog. I know most people I've talked to who want to order anything less than multiple hundreds of units are unable to do so right now, and scalpers on eBay and Amazon are charging outrageous prices for the few Pis that end up in circulation :( [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain-update/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain...
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  I've had success buying a Pi 4 recently using rpilocator's twitter. Installled twitter expressly for this purpose. They have RSS feeds too, I believe capped at a refresh per minute. But I don't think background tasks on iOS are allowed to refresh that quickly.
- latenightcoding 5y ago
  Thanks for the context. I did notice they were 2x more expensive than the last time I checked on Amazon. I thought it was mostly due to the chip shortage.
- tbillington 5y ago
  From memory the RPI mission was to make cheap compute available to everyday people. I wonder what went into the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers? I fully accept there is nuance and difficulty to mass hardware production & sales that I have no knowledge about, so this isn't an accusation of anything :)
  - jdboyd 5y ago
    I was under the impression that the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers was a temporary one during the current shortages. At least, I certainly hope that is the case.
EnigmaCurry 5y ago
The official raspberry pi is super user friendly, and has a great community. But I feel like most of the HN crowd that has used linux before can manage to follow the instructions to install Arch Linux ARM [0] on a very wide array of alternative devices. These other devices don't have the community support that the official pi does, but they are known devices with known configurations so they work pretty reliably. I'm mostly talking about odroid here because thats what I use. If you really like to "distro hop" on the pi, get a real pi. If you just want to run Arch, you got way more options, with added hardware options (eMMC, dual-nic, etc.) [0] https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms
- mkj 5y ago
  Do you know if those are all using the same upstream kernel as the rest of Arch? If so that's a pretty useful list, it's hard to find. Even if rpi kernels aren't exactly upstream at least I can know the people paid to work on https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux are fairly responsive, and someone else will have hit an issue first.
  - EnigmaCurry 5y ago
    yea, i think so - latest 5.17 - heres the package with a few patches https://archlinuxarm.org/packages/aarch64/linux-aarch64/files https://archlinuxarm.org/packages/aarch64/linux-aarch64/file...
- metadat 5y ago
  Do odroids come with the custom GPIO header pins? Arch vs Ubuntu and other common distros: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/arch_compared_to_other_distributions https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/arch_compared_to_other_dist...
  - EnigmaCurry 5y ago
    yea, my odroid n2 has the same 40 pin header as the pi.
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sircastor 5y ago
This reminds me so much of my search for parts for my projects. Searching Digikey for very common parts in very common packages results in a barren wasteland of inventory, excluding the “marketplace” which is undoubtedly of dubious state.
- inferiorhuman 5y ago
  Last month I got a survey from DigiKey's Manager of Production Control about my satisfaction with their shipping carriers. The only feedback I could come up with was that their third-party marketplace continuously encouraged me to look elsewhere.
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
It really feels hopeless right now trying to get a 4GB model. It actually came back in stock for me at adafruit and I even had one in my cart! But alas they required me to enable 2-factor which holds back tear required me to log out and log back in and it was gone. I notice even old models are hard to get, like the zero W.
- genewitch 5y ago
  the last time there was a shortage of pi hardware (before the 4) - target in the US had these "learn hardware!" boxes on clearance for a few bucks, with a Pi Zero (not sure which one, wifi only) and a cardboard case and a daughter board. I still have a couple of unopened boxes in a cabinet. Unfortunately, i've lost about 2 pis a year to hardware failure since 2018, usually the SD card overheats and practically melts. I'm not sure why, humidity maybe, or bad SD cards.
  - 2xpress 5y ago
    I've had this happen to me when the SD card would snap in 2 inside the SD card holder on the PI. Happened twice with the CanaKit PIs, once for PI3 and another time for PI4, with the SD cards that came in the CanaKit. I just put Raspbian on some fresh SD cards that I bought separately, plugged them in, and everything was back to normal. I think the overheating was from the short circuits inside the snapped SD cards.
zeristor 5y ago
Are there specific components they’re short of?
2xpress 5y ago
Stop complaining that you can't get an RP4 you stingy mofos! Under $200 is still very reasonable -- https://www.ebay.com/itm/313962570333?epid=18047669553&hash=item4919a0a25d:g:RwcAAOSwrQ1hYtTH https://www.ebay.com/itm/313962570333?epid=18047669553&hash=... (I'm not associated with the seller)
pjc50 5y ago
How's the secondary market? I should fish some of mine out of drawers and ebay them.

78 points by myth_drannon 5y ago

I’ve been checking this every week or so and the scene seems to be pretty dismal. Does Raspberry Pi have any plans to address the huge supply/demand gap?

myth_drannon 5y ago
74 weeks lead time....
seabird 5y ago
Good luck finding anything at all. This is not a problem exclusive to Raspberry Pis and there is not a huge amount they can do about it.

jordansmithnz 5y ago

I recently bought an rPi 4. After trying in vain to find any in stock at a reasonable price, I figured out you can buy units that are preconfigured for another purpose and re-flash them (eg https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-w-optisigns-pre-configured/ https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-w-optisigns-pre-c... - in stock right now). I’m not sure others have caught onto this yet given these are still in stock.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Seems that’s about $20 markup? Not bad if you’ve been looking for awhile. Comes with a case, sd card and psu.
- genewitch 5y ago
  official PSU is $15-20, SD card is $5-10, and a case can be 3d printed or bought for $5-$20 depending. I didn't look at the link so i could be missing that if you add all that up, there's still a $20 markup above and beyond that.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

The associated Twitter account is more useful, especially if you turn on alerts: https://twitter.com/rpilocator https://twitter.com/rpilocator

geerlingguy 5y ago

For added context, Raspberry Pi announced[1] that they're currently prioritizing industrial and commercial customers instead of retail channels for Pis like the Pi 4 model B and Compute Module 4. It seems like they're also making fewer of the older model Pis (though I don't know if this is confirmed) since the silicon for the BCM2711 can be had in greater quantities than the older chips in the 3B+, 3+, and earlier models. They're making 500,000 units per month, supposedly (though I don't doubt it), with a million or two orders in the backlog. I know most people I've talked to who want to order anything less than multiple hundreds of units are unable to do so right now, and scalpers on eBay and Amazon are charging outrageous prices for the few Pis that end up in circulation :( [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain-update/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain...

wlesieutre 5y ago
I've had success buying a Pi 4 recently using rpilocator's twitter. Installled twitter expressly for this purpose. They have RSS feeds too, I believe capped at a refresh per minute. But I don't think background tasks on iOS are allowed to refresh that quickly.
latenightcoding 5y ago
Thanks for the context. I did notice they were 2x more expensive than the last time I checked on Amazon. I thought it was mostly due to the chip shortage.
tbillington 5y ago
From memory the RPI mission was to make cheap compute available to everyday people. I wonder what went into the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers? I fully accept there is nuance and difficulty to mass hardware production & sales that I have no knowledge about, so this isn't an accusation of anything :)
- jdboyd 5y ago
  I was under the impression that the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers was a temporary one during the current shortages. At least, I certainly hope that is the case.

EnigmaCurry 5y ago

The official raspberry pi is super user friendly, and has a great community. But I feel like most of the HN crowd that has used linux before can manage to follow the instructions to install Arch Linux ARM [0] on a very wide array of alternative devices. These other devices don't have the community support that the official pi does, but they are known devices with known configurations so they work pretty reliably. I'm mostly talking about odroid here because thats what I use. If you really like to "distro hop" on the pi, get a real pi. If you just want to run Arch, you got way more options, with added hardware options (eMMC, dual-nic, etc.) [0] https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms

mkj 5y ago
Do you know if those are all using the same upstream kernel as the rest of Arch? If so that's a pretty useful list, it's hard to find. Even if rpi kernels aren't exactly upstream at least I can know the people paid to work on https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux are fairly responsive, and someone else will have hit an issue first.
- EnigmaCurry 5y ago
  yea, i think so - latest 5.17 - heres the package with a few patches https://archlinuxarm.org/packages/aarch64/linux-aarch64/files https://archlinuxarm.org/packages/aarch64/linux-aarch64/file...
metadat 5y ago
Do odroids come with the custom GPIO header pins? Arch vs Ubuntu and other common distros: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/arch_compared_to_other_distributions https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/arch_compared_to_other_dist...
- EnigmaCurry 5y ago
  yea, my odroid n2 has the same 40 pin header as the pi.
5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sircastor 5y ago

This reminds me so much of my search for parts for my projects. Searching Digikey for very common parts in very common packages results in a barren wasteland of inventory, excluding the “marketplace” which is undoubtedly of dubious state.

inferiorhuman 5y ago
Last month I got a survey from DigiKey's Manager of Production Control about my satisfaction with their shipping carriers. The only feedback I could come up with was that their third-party marketplace continuously encouraged me to look elsewhere.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

It really feels hopeless right now trying to get a 4GB model. It actually came back in stock for me at adafruit and I even had one in my cart! But alas they required me to enable 2-factor which holds back tear required me to log out and log back in and it was gone. I notice even old models are hard to get, like the zero W.

genewitch 5y ago
the last time there was a shortage of pi hardware (before the 4) - target in the US had these "learn hardware!" boxes on clearance for a few bucks, with a Pi Zero (not sure which one, wifi only) and a cardboard case and a daughter board. I still have a couple of unopened boxes in a cabinet. Unfortunately, i've lost about 2 pis a year to hardware failure since 2018, usually the SD card overheats and practically melts. I'm not sure why, humidity maybe, or bad SD cards.
- 2xpress 5y ago
  I've had this happen to me when the SD card would snap in 2 inside the SD card holder on the PI. Happened twice with the CanaKit PIs, once for PI3 and another time for PI4, with the SD cards that came in the CanaKit. I just put Raspbian on some fresh SD cards that I bought separately, plugged them in, and everything was back to normal. I think the overheating was from the short circuits inside the snapped SD cards.

zeristor 5y ago

Are there specific components they’re short of?

2xpress 5y ago

Stop complaining that you can't get an RP4 you stingy mofos! Under $200 is still very reasonable -- https://www.ebay.com/itm/313962570333?epid=18047669553&hash=item4919a0a25d:g:RwcAAOSwrQ1hYtTH https://www.ebay.com/itm/313962570333?epid=18047669553&hash=... (I'm not associated with the seller)

pjc50 5y ago

How's the secondary market? I should fish some of mine out of drawers and ebay them.