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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 P

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).
      - whiskers 3y ago
        This is correct, and we have been able to ease up on the restrictions a bit recently: - we reset the date before which you needed to have a previous order - the Pi Zero W is now available to all customers up to 10 per order I appreciate it's been frustrating but things are improving and will continue to improve - you'll see a lot change over the next couple of months I'm sure. We've done our best during this time to combat the scalpers - no solution is going to be perfect but we did what we felt was right to give our loyal customers as much support as we could.
        michrassena 3y ago
        I've ordered something now to at least get in the queue for the next time. Hopefully by then, some Zero 2 boards will be available.
my123 3y ago
Raspberry Pi Ltd is not wholly owned by the RPF anymore. They did raise outside funding a while back.
thevagrant 3y ago
Discontinue 4B? Why? Should Sony discontinue the PS5 when they failed to supply enough to meet demand?
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  Not sure what you mean about the PS5 unless you've misunderstood what I mean. The CM4 can do _most_ of the work that the Pi 4 and Pi 400 can do. A hypothetical future CM5 might feasibly be designed to be the CPU board of a still-tiny Pi 5B, Pi 500 and maybe even a smaller form factor. The CM units are shipped in a bunch of different varieties, which would allow e.g. schools and consumers to decide which variation of a Pi 5 or Pi 500 they want. It could eliminate all the "5B" SKUs and allow them to focus on manufacture of fewer SKUs at larger scales. And this way, the market gets to solve the endless "I wish it had USB-C", "I wish it had two gigabit ethernet ports", "I wish it had two CSI ports", "Nobody serious will use it without some onboard flash" criticisms (that proponents of other SBCs have), with variations of the CM and the host hardware. There are already some good reasons to buy a CM4 and a host board instead of a Pi 4B. I wonder if this is a decision that could have been taken two years ago; there were already host boards on the market, and they could have produced one themselves by now. They were churning out half a million CM4s a month but there was no way to use that to serve the consumer market.
  - thevagrant 3y ago
    I see your point. Perhaps they will move in that direction given time.

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).
    - whiskers 3y ago
      This is correct, and we have been able to ease up on the restrictions a bit recently: - we reset the date before which you needed to have a previous order - the Pi Zero W is now available to all customers up to 10 per order I appreciate it's been frustrating but things are improving and will continue to improve - you'll see a lot change over the next couple of months I'm sure. We've done our best during this time to combat the scalpers - no solution is going to be perfect but we did what we felt was right to give our loyal customers as much support as we could.
      - michrassena 3y ago
        I've ordered something now to at least get in the queue for the next time. Hopefully by then, some Zero 2 boards will be available.

my123 3y ago

Raspberry Pi Ltd is not wholly owned by the RPF anymore. They did raise outside funding a while back.

thevagrant 3y ago

Discontinue 4B? Why? Should Sony discontinue the PS5 when they failed to supply enough to meet demand?

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Not sure what you mean about the PS5 unless you've misunderstood what I mean. The CM4 can do _most_ of the work that the Pi 4 and Pi 400 can do. A hypothetical future CM5 might feasibly be designed to be the CPU board of a still-tiny Pi 5B, Pi 500 and maybe even a smaller form factor. The CM units are shipped in a bunch of different varieties, which would allow e.g. schools and consumers to decide which variation of a Pi 5 or Pi 500 they want. It could eliminate all the "5B" SKUs and allow them to focus on manufacture of fewer SKUs at larger scales. And this way, the market gets to solve the endless "I wish it had USB-C", "I wish it had two gigabit ethernet ports", "I wish it had two CSI ports", "Nobody serious will use it without some onboard flash" criticisms (that proponents of other SBCs have), with variations of the CM and the host hardware. There are already some good reasons to buy a CM4 and a host board instead of a Pi 4B. I wonder if this is a decision that could have been taken two years ago; there were already host boards on the market, and they could have produced one themselves by now. They were churning out half a million CM4s a month but there was no way to use that to serve the consumer market.
- thevagrant 3y ago
  I see your point. Perhaps they will move in that direction given time.