Why there might not be enough Raspberry Pi to go around

I have felt for a long time that Raspberry Pi would be something far beyond the scope of education and could well be re-purposed as a super-economical Arduino equivalent, complete with its own ecosystem of add-on boards, enclosures, power supplies and applications.

Could I see myself getting at least one? Most definitely. I'd pay double for what it offers, and all my hacker friends agree. There's so much we'd love to dig into, set-top boxes, surveillance, emulation and gaming, jukeboxes, audio synthesis, demoscene productions... it's just a fantastic platform I can't wait to get my hands on.

I think they may well deliver on this regardless of any scepticism, although over time it will be at least exciting to see what kind of community is developed.

My only slight concern is whether it will encroach on Broadcom's business too much, perhaps they will constrain orders to set amounts so commercial applications are prohibited, or at least artificially constrained and referred further up the supply chain. That said, it does open up the market more for a similar device.

I do appreciate the fact it is a relatively static specification though - write once, run everywhere is a great place to be.

I'm not sure there's the absolutely massive untapped demand that is being suggested from hobbyists, though it is going to sell a lot to them (in the 10,000s, maybe more).

I picked up a BeagleBone[1] last week, made by Texas Instruments for £60, which has significantly more CPU power than the Raspberry, 256MB of RAM and has embedded Ethernet (so is more comparable to the $35 model).

So while D-Link and Netgear aren't exploring this area, TI definitely are, and are very much in a position to roll out millions of these devices if the demand is there.

However I think the Raspberry Pi exists in it's current form to drive demand for a bulk order from governments as an educational tool, and if someone ordered either the BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi for every 10 year old child then I think that would be a brilliant step.

[1] http://beagleboard.org/bone

this seems rather pessimistic; while the initial run is 10,000 units, they have said things like "We have a very low fixed-cost base, and will break even when we reach sales of 20-30k units per year," which imply to me they have much higher goals than just the first run. And unlike many of the open source efforts around things like this in the past, it's being produced by experienced engineers with close ties to a large electronics corporation. Calling them "a non-profit from the UK focused on education" is pretty misleading. To even consider selling to the government via the education system suggests they're ready for serious scale.

Sadly, I have been saying the same thing that there will be a big shortage of Pis since I first heard about Pi and visited their forums this summer.

So far nothing has changed. Delayed production, initial production run of 10k. It is being run as a hobbyist project(I am judging mostly from the Pi forums). Hobbyist project is not a bad thing, just not what the market is asking of this device.

At the moment, it seems like one mid-level guy at Broadcom, got some company support and got volunteers to help out.

Only saving grace would be, if someone higher up in Broadcom gets behind the project. The problem is that Broadcom does not want to really make these devices, it wants to sell its chips to manufacturers (who are unlikely to see much profit in making $25 devices when they can sell $100 devices)

Think Asus EEE line and how it trended upwards pricewise and netbooks in general..

All that said, the future is a bit rosier. Once the initial fixed R&D costs are amortized, we will see plenty of inexpensive devices like this in the next 2-3 years.

I'd love to learn what the story is, but this is too painful to read in 12px (i.e. 9pt) gray type.

Maybe, just maybe, if you're doing advertising, and you have a strong need for some specific look, tiny low contrast type may be appropriate. For anyone else, it only reduces the number of people who will read your content.

Would you go to a tech talk and do a mumbling Marlon Brando impersonation? I didn't think so. Please don't do the same in print.

I really hope this guy is wrong, because, like him, I have a bunch of project ideas kicking around that would be too frivolous for the time/money cost of an Arduino and some shields, or a Beagleboard/Gumstix/etc. When the price of doing something drops a zero, things change.

I mean, a hundred bucks and hours getting a rickety webserver stack to run is a huge investment for "controlling some LED mood lighting in my living room with my phone/pad/computer". But ~$30-40 for a Pi and a wifi dongle? That's still a little frivolous but whipping up a bit of C and PHP on top of Apache seems utterly trivial.

I want a handful of Pis SO BAD.

There are plans for other similar boards in the works eg

http://rhombus-tech.net//allwinner_a10/orders/

Which is higher spec, cheaper and has full source.

This is so true.

I could consume a million of these a month at that price point. Let that sink in. One million a month, 12 million a year. Its not even difficult, there are probably a half dozen ideas that can consume them in this quantity.

Why? Because I can put software on them and resell the package for $99. Going through distribution and giving them 40 points of margin and I'm still making better than 65% gross margins.

They are so not ready :-)

how is not being able to serve everyone who wants to buy one a problem?

This is a charity with a very clear goal:

"promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing"

as long as they can achieve that they are a success and not being a business means they can gladly "ignore" everyone else.

I really want one (or three) but if they are hit but astonishing demand and decide to give priority to those who will serve they overall purpose the best and not me I'm fine with it. I will not start complaining all over the interweb and accuse them of being a failure.

Slightly off-topic: are there any Linux options between a $25 Raspberry Pi and a $200-$300 Atom-based nettop?

Too much demand is a good problem to have. Raspberry Pi is certainly counting on mass production to meet their target price; and if people still want more, competitors will spring up.

I agree the demand will be high, and especially at release it will be impossible to find a board.

However this group is tied tightly with Broadcom and are going to be able to deal in high volume. Even if they end up wholesaling to digikey for $25, and we pay a markup, it will still be a great deal and I have no doubt, a success.

cheapness may open new frontiers. 10(or more)-pack raspis available at your local store at the cash register next to the cigarettes may open new ways to computing where hackers and admins may install to places previously unplanned.

for example, i may feed my cat remotely and get a mobile webcam at home to by deploying several rasperries, some usb equipment and apt-get install and a full linux, or create a videochat only computer for gtalk sticked to the kitchen wall. instead of arduino, a standard pc, and usb may provide more values. of course battery will be a problem.

I was going to disagree with you but you might have a point, it's not open source: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs#comment-2220