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>"...should began this July..." Seriously? Should? How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? In the timeless words of George W Bush Junior "Fool me once sh

>"...should began this July..." Seriously? Should? How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? In the timeless words of George W Bush Junior "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... Wait, I can't be fooled again!" No way I'm going to get hopeful here and then pi locator will show one pi zero 2 W in entire Europe, in the one shop in Belgium the owner of refuses to ship out of his country... How many cool open source projects could we have by now on other boards that remained available throughout this time if the liers at the Pi foundation (and people that believed them) didn't tell us every few weeks for last X years "it's only few weeks. We're making millions, this will all resolve the next quarter the latest!" All Bull**! I've been saying it since year 2 of the shortage. Those Pis are not coming back. If your favourite project uses raspberry pi encourage them to support another board. If they(the foundation) was honest from the start and said "look guys, we've burned through all the charitable donation money and this business model is unsustainable, we have to pivot" I would have some respect for them, but not this. Having said that I also have to submit some self critique. In my own projects it has been oh so much easier to just pull one of my remaining rpi zero 2w from the drawer (it has to be zero because I'm mostly doing RC stuff) and put something together in a day vs developing software for months. Still Rockchip has gotten a lot better with their documentation. It's not a documentation a not so technical user can take and run with it, but for developers it is perfectly usable. Now if we (developers) just wanted to use those other boards seriously...

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Not coming back? But they clearly are? Pimoroni was shipping Pi 4Bs last week. It has nothing to do with "burning through the charitable donation money". The Pi is sold by a (profitable, AFAIK) wholly-owned subsidiary, the Raspberry Pi Trading Company. Manufacturing them does not absorb Foundation money at all. They have been supply-constrained on components. It's that simple, surely. Eben Upton has said it again and again, and sometimes gone into detail about which components. They chose to try to keep the whole ecosystem alive, which meant prioritising commercial customers, they've been manufacturing millions of devices per year, and it still isn't enough to meet demand. FWIW, if I was in their shoes I would have discontinued the 4B series entirely, by early 2022. I personally think they should not be operating in that segment with an SBC. I think there should just be a Pi 400 that takes a CM4. Both to simplify things in the educational sector, and to get out of the "high end SBC I am not using that is in my desk drawer" segment entirely. They should focus on the Pico, which is clearly now their most interesting product line and their most interesting educational device.
- martin_a 3y ago
  > Pimoroni was shipping Pi 4Bs last week. How many? Four? Six? Did they go to scalpers as usual?
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    Nope. You could actually order Zeros in packs of 10. There is increased availability of many models - the Zero 2 W, however, has an in-chip memory package that makes it a rarer item in general, and will take a while longer to ramp up.
  - whiskers 3y ago
    We shipped thousands last week and we didn't ship them to scalpers: https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/ordering-restrictions-for-raspberry-pi https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/ordering-restrictions-for-ra... Plenty more will come in short order, the past couple of years have been a real mess on supply chains - it's been hard on all of us.
    - michrassena 3y ago
      It looks like it's not possible to order one unless you've ordered something from Pimoroni before 12 May 2023. The only one in stock currently is the Pi Zero. So unfortunately it's still the same story. Yeah, we had lots of stock, but it's gone now and you couldn't order it anyway. I hope it gets better soon, and all this pent-up demand doesn't collapse once stocks are full.
      - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
        AFAIK Pimoroni have had those "existing customer" measures in place for some months for the Pi boards; it's not a new measure. It's a good way of resisting scalpers, IMO. As is allocating some of the stock to the "essentials kits" that most new customers actually need anyway (particularly Pi 4B customers; the official USB-C PSU is one of the few safe bets).
        3y ago
marcosdumay 3y ago
> How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? Personally, it's the first I've heard of this. I have heard them saying that the problem won't be solved at least until $SOME_DATE a lot of times. But this is a completely different statement. > "look guys, we've burned through all the charitable donation money and this business model is unsustainable, we have to pivot" AFAIK, the problem is that the chip manufacturer decided not to build it anymore. Again, AFAIK, none of the decision falls into the project. Besides, clones have been unavailable too, and if it was just about the project, the clones would still be created. Yes, it's all a shame, and it had many bad effects.
theaiquestion 3y ago
> How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? AFAIK what they've been saying so far has at best been "we're able to continue making them at our current pace". They've also been saying they were focusing on commercial partners over consumers (which IMO is better because commercial customers need some level of assurance of future stock to actually use pi's in their designs). Neither of those things particularly screams "Regular customers will soon be getting pi's in their hands" December 2022 They said they expected better stock this year, which appears to be accurate. I'm more curious to see if they can manage to make a PI 4 successor given how many years the pi 4 has been around already.
whiskers 3y ago
"Those Pis are not coming back." Yes, they are. Disclaimer: CEO of Pimoroni - an approved Raspberry Pi reseller.
sys_64738 3y ago
I never knew GWB used Raspberry Pis.
_ea1k 3y ago
The last I remember was them saying that they thought things would be in good shape by the end of 2023. I'm pretty sure I heard that about 6 months ago. This announcement seems to be consistent with that. Not only that, but I'm seeing more availability now than earlier this year. I see no need to call them liars.
baryphonic 3y ago
> In the timeless words of George W Bush Junior "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... Wait, I can't be fooled again!" I agree with your comment, but I can't let such an eloquent presidential quotation be so misquoted. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. You fooled me, [I] can't get fooled again."

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

Not coming back? But they clearly are? Pimoroni was shipping Pi 4Bs last week. It has nothing to do with "burning through the charitable donation money". The Pi is sold by a (profitable, AFAIK) wholly-owned subsidiary, the Raspberry Pi Trading Company. Manufacturing them does not absorb Foundation money at all. They have been supply-constrained on components. It's that simple, surely. Eben Upton has said it again and again, and sometimes gone into detail about which components. They chose to try to keep the whole ecosystem alive, which meant prioritising commercial customers, they've been manufacturing millions of devices per year, and it still isn't enough to meet demand. FWIW, if I was in their shoes I would have discontinued the 4B series entirely, by early 2022. I personally think they should not be operating in that segment with an SBC. I think there should just be a Pi 400 that takes a CM4. Both to simplify things in the educational sector, and to get out of the "high end SBC I am not using that is in my desk drawer" segment entirely. They should focus on the Pico, which is clearly now their most interesting product line and their most interesting educational device.

martin_a 3y ago
> Pimoroni was shipping Pi 4Bs last week. How many? Four? Six? Did they go to scalpers as usual?
- rcarmo 3y ago
  Nope. You could actually order Zeros in packs of 10. There is increased availability of many models - the Zero 2 W, however, has an in-chip memory package that makes it a rarer item in general, and will take a while longer to ramp up.
- whiskers 3y ago
  We shipped thousands last week and we didn't ship them to scalpers: https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/ordering-restrictions-for-raspberry-pi https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/ordering-restrictions-for-ra... Plenty more will come in short order, the past couple of years have been a real mess on supply chains - it's been hard on all of us.
  - michrassena 3y ago
    It looks like it's not possible to order one unless you've ordered something from Pimoroni before 12 May 2023. The only one in stock currently is the Pi Zero. So unfortunately it's still the same story. Yeah, we had lots of stock, but it's gone now and you couldn't order it anyway. I hope it gets better soon, and all this pent-up demand doesn't collapse once stocks are full.
    - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
      AFAIK Pimoroni have had those "existing customer" measures in place for some months for the Pi boards; it's not a new measure. It's a good way of resisting scalpers, IMO. As is allocating some of the stock to the "essentials kits" that most new customers actually need anyway (particularly Pi 4B customers; the official USB-C PSU is one of the few safe bets).
      - 3y ago

marcosdumay 3y ago

> How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? Personally, it's the first I've heard of this. I have heard them saying that the problem won't be solved at least until $SOME_DATE a lot of times. But this is a completely different statement. > "look guys, we've burned through all the charitable donation money and this business model is unsustainable, we have to pivot" AFAIK, the problem is that the chip manufacturer decided not to build it anymore. Again, AFAIK, none of the decision falls into the project. Besides, clones have been unavailable too, and if it was just about the project, the clones would still be created. Yes, it's all a shame, and it had many bad effects.

theaiquestion 3y ago

> How. Many. Times. Have we heard it already? AFAIK what they've been saying so far has at best been "we're able to continue making them at our current pace". They've also been saying they were focusing on commercial partners over consumers (which IMO is better because commercial customers need some level of assurance of future stock to actually use pi's in their designs). Neither of those things particularly screams "Regular customers will soon be getting pi's in their hands" December 2022 They said they expected better stock this year, which appears to be accurate. I'm more curious to see if they can manage to make a PI 4 successor given how many years the pi 4 has been around already.

whiskers 3y ago

"Those Pis are not coming back." Yes, they are. Disclaimer: CEO of Pimoroni - an approved Raspberry Pi reseller.

sys_64738 3y ago

I never knew GWB used Raspberry Pis.

_ea1k 3y ago

The last I remember was them saying that they thought things would be in good shape by the end of 2023. I'm pretty sure I heard that about 6 months ago. This announcement seems to be consistent with that. Not only that, but I'm seeing more availability now than earlier this year. I see no need to call them liars.

baryphonic 3y ago

> In the timeless words of George W Bush Junior "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... Wait, I can't be fooled again!" I agree with your comment, but I can't let such an eloquent presidential quotation be so misquoted. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. You fooled me, [I] can't get fooled again."