Been looking for RPI4 CMs for ages now and they’ve been sold out for as long as I can remember. Same with full size RPI4s and some Odroids. Is this just the new normal or are SBCs and CMs going to show up on the market again at some point?

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    3 years ago

    I don’t get why people want these for self-hosting. They’re meant for GPIO and automation control. They’re massively underpowered.

    Just use an actual SBC and leave these for electronics.

    • Goodtoknow@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      3 years ago

      Underpowered is probably the reason, they’re small and really low powered. A pi could be a 1/10th the power consumption of an x86 computer, and thus less noise and heat.

    • thisisawayoflife@lemmynsfw.comOPEnglish
      3·
      3 years ago

      They’re great for low strength, dedicated platforms instead of using something with more muscle like a NUC, also where a VM or container can’t be used.

  • nothacking@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    Still the same situation, high demand, low production capacity, part shortages. Try finding an alternative SBC.

    Personally I really like the BeagleBone black (https://beagleboard.org/black), because it has integrated flash (no more rummaging for a micro SD card), and lets you ssh over USB. (no more debugging network connectivity, or searching for a unused monitor). It still can boot from a micro SD or USB drive, so if the flash breaks (or gets bricked) it’s easy fixable. The best part is no USB Mini-B connectors that break after ten uses. (Those things are cancer, they are absolutely awful and everywhere)

    One thing to be aware of with them is the lack of on board WiFi, so if you need that make sure to get a USB WiFi radio.

    </soapbox>

  • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 years ago

    Not to steal your post but I have had the same issue and my concern is always on OS support since some of the alternative boards I have tried in the past were stuck on custom kernels or old OS versions, has anyone had better luck these days? It has been a few years since I have tried any though.

    Also, if you aren’t familiar with it this website has a bunch of real time inventory listings for the various Pi models.

    • thisisawayoflife@lemmynsfw.comOPEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      Yeah I think that was another huge complain I had when I started out with an off brand SBC (Odroid C1). I think you had to do stage things to get a kernel to work and to be honest, my days of compiling kernels went out with the 90s. I remember reading years ago that the RPi had kernel integration with mainline oses like Ubuntu, so I wanted to give that a try as a dedicated key store machine and some other stuff.

      I’ve got two clusters of nucs currently so they aren’t exactly foreign to me. Just wanted to find something cheaper and lighter to do some dedicated db work on. Sounds like I’ll just get another i5 NUC off eBay.

      • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        Yep that was exactly my thought process haha. For what it’s worth, raspian is pretty good and Ubuntu 22.04 works great on the PI4, I have 4 or 5 around here and they have been awesome.

        Now I am curious though, what are you going to use for the key store? That is one of the things on my list to set up pretty soon here as well and I was going to put it on a pi myself. Also, if you haven’t seen this thing or this thing? They are pretty neat and I was going to get one just for the novelty haha.

  • blastofffox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 years ago

    Last month it was hard to find these in India, but since few days RPIs are back in stock, got a couple of Pi4s (75$ each) and Zero 2 Ws (20$ each) for myself. Checked now, they are still in stock.

  • tiwenty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    3 years ago

    These days you can find some kinda NUCS which are way more powerful and customisable for not a lot more than a fully fledged RPI4 with SD card and PSU

      • Lrobie@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        3 years ago

        There’s a lot of used mini PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo that go for cheap on ebay. Those are a good alternative.

        • jayrule@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          These are my go to. I think between rasp pi and the likes of those, Intel nucs and these, these are the best option by far

      • tiwenty@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 years ago

        That’s why I added the “kinda”. There are a lot of small AMD boxes that can do a lot with those Ryzen.

    • NewDataEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      3 years ago

      Yes. I bought a libre pi to use as a backup DNS. Besides the minor tweaks, it’s been running perfectly. Also only ~€75 for the libre+case+SD card combo.

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 years ago

    According to the Raspberry Pi tracker, they are becoming available again. You may have to get them as soon as they arrive, but at least it shows they are stocked again

  • iluminae@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 years ago

    I have 2 pi4 4GB boards and was waiting forever to get a third to run RAFT based services across.

    I gave up last year and bought 3 chinese boards at $60/ea with 2x 2.5Gb Ethernet each, emmc, and a m.2 slot - and they run at half the temp of the pi4 boards.

    I never needed the wifi/bt and form-factor the pi boards offered anyway - really no reason to stay as long as you can find software that boots on other boards.