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> When opportunists go to crack them open, they find a raspberry pi, an SBC created for educational and hobby purposes but has been infamously out of stock beca

> When opportunists go to crack them open, they find a raspberry pi, an SBC created for educational and hobby purposes but has been infamously out of stock because larger companies want to vacuum them all up to use in their own products. What a strange complaint. RPIs are out of stock because they're useful - this company found a use for them. Really the issue isn't one of who's buying, but rather an issue of the Foundation not making enough of their wildly successful product. Seems like a high-quality problem. I can't imagine the Foundation being up in arms over someone finding a use for their product. The more users, the better the economy of scale, the cheaper the product is for everyone. > Then you wonder where all the engineering cost for these scooters went. Well, into the backend, the integration, the mechanical engineering - the myriad other things that mark the difference between a fun thing you made at home and a product you sell to the public. > After the presumably thousands of hours of labor that went into designing this, they went with a consumer grade, off the shelf product for an application that would have required a fraction of the power it was capable of? Again, economics of scale. One product that's more capable than any one person needs - but has a bigger audience - is likely cheaper than a niche one that's 'right-sized.' Your remote control doesn't need a Cortex M0 but they're cheaper than an 8051 now. > Not to mention that Spin can be identified as one of offenders of why the raspberry pi is so goddamn hard to find. So can anyone who hit 'add to cart.' Especially since they only have like 500-1000 scooters per city in which they operate. That's not exactly Apple-scale orders. The issue is supply, not demand.

xeckr 3y ago
>RPIs are out of stock because they're useful - this company found a use for them. While I sympathize with this sentiment, it should be noted that their use case could have been most likely accomplished with something like an ESP32, which is only slightly more difficult to work with but boasts a bulk price of $1-3 a pop. Using a Raspberry Pi 4 for this is a bit like flying a private jet to get to the grocery store.
- notatoad 3y ago
  developing for esp32 is way more difficult than developing for raspi. raspi lets you basically treat it like a normal computer, you can use standard python and sqlite and install whatever nonsense you want from pip and basically assume it will run whatever your laptop can. it means you can hire kids straight out of school, or outsource to india, and whoever you get can work on it without really any concern - it'll run whatever crap you give it. esp32 is embedded enough that you have to develop for it like you develop embedded software - you need to do things like think about how much ram you're using that you just don't have to on raspi.
  - adolph 3y ago
    You would like Python and SQLite on ESP32? Looks like a solved problem. https://github.com/spatialdude/usqlite/wiki/esp32 https://github.com/spatialdude/usqlite/wiki/esp32
    - squeaky-clean 3y ago
      Micropython isn't actually Python.
  - superdisk 3y ago
    Problem: We need to outsource the software to India. Solution: Put a way overpowered computer in the product so they can program it. Ridiculous problem with a ridiculous solution. Are they allergic to any level of correctness? Sometimes I'm ashamed to be in this industry.
    - jorl17 3y ago
      Why outsource to India? Pick any random set of Software Engineers from any country. I guarantee you that you are more likely to find people who can develop fast on an RPi than on an ESP32. Now if you're a startup needing to build very fast and iterate quickly, it's obvious you're going to use the RPi4. Then, once you've grown, you can make the system more efficient, port it, etc. It'll be a growing pain, but a sustained one. And without being completely immersed in ridiculous amounts of VC-funding (hopefully) I'm the CTO of a company who helps startups go from the idea to the scale-up phase. We helped build a tiny startup to one of the most promising startups in europe using this idea. We're very proud of what we've achieved. Could we have built something with an ESP32? Sure, and we might have even made it in the same timeframe given the amazing team we have, but it was less risky to bet on the RPi than the ESP32. In fact, the first iteration had an ESP32 and we were brought in because they needed to move faster and it was becoming hard to develop for and iterate at their pace. Again: perhaps we could have built the same with the ESP32, but it's a matter of risk analysis! Sometimes I feel like people talk about these things in a kind of vacuum of perfection and utopia, outside of the real world. In the real world things get messy and move very fast. Supply-chain issues arise, hardware has to be swapped, people move cities and quit their jobs. Where we have excelled as a partner is in dealing with very very very fast change and using an ESP32 for that would have made things harder. Now instead of a dead product there's thousands of the thing we helped build out there, and growing. And we're finally moving away from the RPi4. Technology is actually a very small part of what we do. Most of it is creating the logistic and the "system" around the technology to get everything to work. Sometimes, as engineers, we forget that.
- jahsome 3y ago
  The only time I think I'll ever see a pi compared to a jet, hah!

xeckr 3y ago

>RPIs are out of stock because they're useful - this company found a use for them. While I sympathize with this sentiment, it should be noted that their use case could have been most likely accomplished with something like an ESP32, which is only slightly more difficult to work with but boasts a bulk price of $1-3 a pop. Using a Raspberry Pi 4 for this is a bit like flying a private jet to get to the grocery store.

notatoad 3y ago
developing for esp32 is way more difficult than developing for raspi. raspi lets you basically treat it like a normal computer, you can use standard python and sqlite and install whatever nonsense you want from pip and basically assume it will run whatever your laptop can. it means you can hire kids straight out of school, or outsource to india, and whoever you get can work on it without really any concern - it'll run whatever crap you give it. esp32 is embedded enough that you have to develop for it like you develop embedded software - you need to do things like think about how much ram you're using that you just don't have to on raspi.
- adolph 3y ago
  You would like Python and SQLite on ESP32? Looks like a solved problem. https://github.com/spatialdude/usqlite/wiki/esp32 https://github.com/spatialdude/usqlite/wiki/esp32
  - squeaky-clean 3y ago
    Micropython isn't actually Python.
- superdisk 3y ago
  Problem: We need to outsource the software to India. Solution: Put a way overpowered computer in the product so they can program it. Ridiculous problem with a ridiculous solution. Are they allergic to any level of correctness? Sometimes I'm ashamed to be in this industry.
  - jorl17 3y ago
    Why outsource to India? Pick any random set of Software Engineers from any country. I guarantee you that you are more likely to find people who can develop fast on an RPi than on an ESP32. Now if you're a startup needing to build very fast and iterate quickly, it's obvious you're going to use the RPi4. Then, once you've grown, you can make the system more efficient, port it, etc. It'll be a growing pain, but a sustained one. And without being completely immersed in ridiculous amounts of VC-funding (hopefully) I'm the CTO of a company who helps startups go from the idea to the scale-up phase. We helped build a tiny startup to one of the most promising startups in europe using this idea. We're very proud of what we've achieved. Could we have built something with an ESP32? Sure, and we might have even made it in the same timeframe given the amazing team we have, but it was less risky to bet on the RPi than the ESP32. In fact, the first iteration had an ESP32 and we were brought in because they needed to move faster and it was becoming hard to develop for and iterate at their pace. Again: perhaps we could have built the same with the ESP32, but it's a matter of risk analysis! Sometimes I feel like people talk about these things in a kind of vacuum of perfection and utopia, outside of the real world. In the real world things get messy and move very fast. Supply-chain issues arise, hardware has to be swapped, people move cities and quit their jobs. Where we have excelled as a partner is in dealing with very very very fast change and using an ESP32 for that would have made things harder. Now instead of a dead product there's thousands of the thing we helped build out there, and growing. And we're finally moving away from the RPi4. Technology is actually a very small part of what we do. Most of it is creating the logistic and the "system" around the technology to get everything to work. Sometimes, as engineers, we forget that.
jahsome 3y ago
The only time I think I'll ever see a pi compared to a jet, hah!