Raspberry Pi zero 2 now costs $114.99 (used to be 7$ few months ago)
amazon.com
amazon.com
Edit:
Forgot to add a link to this article that goes through some of the alternatives:
A lot of Raspberry Pi projects could just as easily be using BeagleBone Blacks. There's a pretty robust community around those products too.
I don't know that the Raspberry Pi Linux boards are particularly notably well documented compared to competitors. Maybe I'm just unaware, because it generally runs Linux well and causes few problems.
I will say that I think their support for the Pico microcontroller is pretty exceptionally high quality.
Idk who needs them so badly to pay these prices just use a different board
Speculation, and artificial scarcity through predatory automation is the issue.
No one wants to concede that though, because that'd put a giant spotlight on what is a disproportionate part of the finance industry, and start prompting serious questions around whether or not this type of thing is desirable behavior worthy of tolerance from them.
It's not artificial scarcity, though. The number of Pis or PS5s that get into the hands of end users is determined by the manufacturers. The scalpers only affect the allocation. Rather that the devices being allocated randomly among folks willing to pay the sticker price, they go only to the ones willing to pay the most.
Obligatory, and apropos:
The bit people don't realize, is finance draws in people like this, and does the same thing, day in, day out. No value extraction opportunity left unexploited lest one "leave money on the table".
These people are a significant contributor to why we cannot have nice things.
I have nothing more to say.
At most I have set the subject being modified to (Pi at MSRP) from what you were operating on, (the Pi, no price included). The conjunction of Pi at a pricepoint, was the endgoal of the engineering process.
Nothing about the meaning of the word scarcity has changed. What you seem to object to is that I don't accept the practice of decoupling the price point from the output as being morally desirable/defensible to have from the original intent of the engineering process. If someone builds a thing and stands by that price point for the express purpose of making that available at that price point, going the ideal market way you suggest is essentially socially parasitic.
They set out to make a $15 bundle of compute. Jerks with automation come along, clear out that unit of compute at $15 and plop it at a price point greatly in excess of the original intent.
I do not hold that one that does so is immune from being called a burden, because they read an economics book once. Your point, if granted, is bollocks. It admits it is perfectly fine to take things priced at cost, and jack the price up sky high despite the fact we nailed the engineering to make it that cheap.
I am not willing to concede that. I'm sorry. Your point is rubbish. Even if most of the market operates that way, we'd almost universally be better off if everyone just stopped doing that.
Left unaddressed, the pattern of behavior siphons capital from those just trying to get by plying a trade, to those looking to capitalize on someone else leaving money on the table.
Which is again, as previously stated, rubbish. If you've got nothing more to say, that's fine. It's just another case of a potential Sinclairism. It being hard to get a man to understand something his livelihood is dependent on them not understanding.
But don't try to say I redefined anything. I most certainly did not.
In an ideal market, the producer would increase the price and get more profit. But since this action is not taken by the Raspberry Pi foundation, other market participants (scalpers) appear that attempt to profit from this price difference between then price set by the producer and the price that can be achieved on the market.
Thus, the existence of scalpers is rather a symptom that shows that the producer could set the price higher (and thus balance supply vs demand).
Demand that outstrips supply does not necessitate a price increase must happen. Sometimes, the entire point of such an arrangement, is to render something accessible to individuals otherwise priced out.
Let us not trouble ourselves trying to justify economic's desperate attempt to legitimize greed as a virtue.
The problem is that if you sell things insanely cheaply, the demand increases a lot, i.e. not everybody who would like to get one, is able to - this is called scarcity.
There exist two approaches to this problem (mixed solutions between these two approaches are also possible):
1. increase the production rate such that there is sufficient supply for the given demand - this is the solution that you, I think, wish.
2. increase the price of the product and be happy that producing cheaply and selling more expensively makes you a lot of money
In other words: the lesson that you miss in your post is that it does not suffice to engineer a package so cheap that anyone can afford it, but you also have to ensure that you have sufficient production capacity that you can fill the demand which comes from this cheap price.
Scalpers have lots of costs associated with transaction. Tools, bots, ips, platform fees taxes, fraud etc. You by raising prices to 10-15% under the secondary market you basically price out the secondary and bring costs down for everyone
[0] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-raspberry-pi-zero-2-w-2... [1] https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B09LH5SBPS
[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-zero/
[2] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/
And either way, as my previous post points out, the Amazon price history has never dipped below $40.
I distribute an aarch64 Linux distro for the Pi (PrintNanny OS), which handles monitoring and automation tasks. The Pi also hosts a web GUI.
Are you saying you don't think your software could run on a 32 bit SoC? That would surprise me, but you would certainly no better than I would.
Edit:
I didn't realize there was CV involved, that probably uses a lot more resources. Really awesome project, I hope the supply issues get better.
Yeah, I run a WebRTC stack and gstreamer+nnstreamer application to stream video from the Pi. I'm running a TensorFlow Lite model on-device for object detection. Getting that stack to run on a 32-bit SoC without an operating system would be tough.
That said, there are some incredibly talented people in the world advancing the field of "TinyML" https://www.tinyml.org/ - it's not like you're suggesting something ridiculous! There are already specialized camera + NPU (Neural Processing Units) boards on the market for specialized edge CV tasks. PrintNanny's workflow/automation requires general computing capability though, which rules out a lot of specialized CV boards.
Seems wired that you works run any size business off em and either not be able to just pay extra and pass on costs or switch to a different platform
I'm porting to Rock Pi and Intel NUC for enterprise support agreements, but am basically locked out of the self-serve / mid-market until I build equivalent tooling like Raspberry Pi's imager (but for Rock/Orange Pi). https://twitter.com/grepLeigh/status/1572683931769778176
Starting a business with off-the-shelf hardware like Raspberry Pi is extremely common, especially for a bootstrapped business.
The price jump is pretty annoying.