The Great Pi Zero Showdown

Doesn't he provide power draw already? For your use case you can just use the idle power

> * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.?

This has been the only reason to buy only RaspberryPis (when I could actually get them).

Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place.

I wouldn't try to build a product on anything that depends on an SD card for storage.

My hardware reliability case:

- the network card of my first Pi (some 2 model) failed

- a PI Zero completely died years ago

- a PI Zero 2 W doesn't boot anymore but it apparently powers on

- a number of SD cards failed after months of use, but that's to be expected. I turn off swap and don't write log files much [1]

I'm left with a couple of PI 3 but I don't have a use case for them anymore and frankly the unavailability of the product doesn't make me feel like investing on it. It's becoming a kind of retrocomputing.

I switched to Odroid HC4 to build a NAS with it's two SATA slots. I can recycle a ton of disks I put in a drawer along the years. It's about 4 W with the disks off, plus whatever a disk consumes: 2 W for a 2.5 1 TB HDD and 9 W for an older 750 GB 3.5 HDD. I have other disks to test.

[1] https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-lo...

Edit: actually I'm using a PI 3 with a TV Hat to stream free to air TV to my phones and tablets around the home. I'm never sitting in front of the TV set.

The huge advantage of the RPi is that I can get it up and running doing things that are useful for me just by following online guides. Whereas I ran into lots of problems when trying to do useful things with other SBCs (I'm not a "computer professional" the way most people on this site are). I don't doubt that others are more capable, but the RPi lets me just get on with my projects with minimal fuss.

Yeah, we should weight those results for availability of the hardware.

I was just thinking, the best Pi you can buy is the one you can get… This quote was stolen from another fruit computer company (Apple) sales manager who used it in the late 2000s, when Apple had its inventory issues.

Apple Australia director Tony King would say: “Sell what’s on the truck!“, to which he would reply: “Tony, we’ve sold the [bleeping] truck…”

I have one Pi 2, two Pi 3 and one Pi 4 and I hold on to them for dear life. I bought them each when they were first available. Never could get my hands on a Zero though. And now it seems impossible to buy any Pi of any kind.

An Orange Pi Zero 2 is around €50 on Amazon, or €30 on Aliexpress, which seems expensive for what it does.

If a €10 Zero existed I think it would sell like hotcakes; I can think of so many use cases! But maybe it's impossible to do, IDK.

RPi 400 is available, you can also buy other RPis in bundles with other accessories, only bare bones are missing.

Examples: https://botland.store/raspberry-pi-400/17918-raspberry-pi-40...

https://botland.store/forbot-sets-and-courses/14856-forbot-k...

Maybe I've been fairly lucky, but excepting the initial Pi v1 release I've never really had any problems getting hold of them. Until now of course. I'm desperate for a couple of Compute Module 4's and gawd only knows when they'll re-appear.

I've been playing with Pi's for quite some time now (I used to even run a Pi Jam in my city!) and prior to the pandemic, I never had trouble getting my hands on a Pi here in mainland Europe. When the ZeroW2 was released I was able to grab one on the day of release without issue. The Pico and PicoW have been such a breeze to get that I throw one in with every order when ordering other components for projects.

I saw a discussion (I think on Mastodon). Apparently they believe the supply issues should return to a much closer level of normality in the next couple of months. As they ramp up again they have been prioritising supply for companies who need the hardware to stay alive (i.e. not making layoffs) over retail sales.

Personally, I think that sounds like they're doing the right thing since most "normal" people don't urgently need a Pi.

>"It's pretty much unobtanium for as long as they've been in business"

I've been using PI4s and had no problem obtaining them so I would disagree. But yes everything was fine until it was not. I had to cancel a product because "unobtanium" and price going through the roof.

> It's pretty much unobtanium for as long as they've been in business

> I've yet to see a Pi 'IRL'

This is such an interesting contrast to where I live in the United States. Until some time in 2021 I could go to Microcenter and expect to find what I wanted on the shelf most of the time. Mail order availability has sort of fluctuated over the past decade, but usually the stuff was available without too much difficulty. I don't think I've ever had to buy one at a marked up price, and certainly not as part of a bundle.

Oddly, Adafruit used to markup their Pis something like five or ten bucks when purchased in small quantities, buy they don't do that anymore. If you're willing to leave https://rpilocator.com running on your PC on Wednesday (it used to be that Wednesday was the day of the week Adafruit sold that week's allotment of Pis, I'm not sure that's still the case but this worked for me in August) you can probably get a Pi 4 from them. This kooky approach worked better for me than Adafruit's email notification of availability. By the time I received their email one Wednesday in June, they were sold out.

Of course rpilocator might locate something closer to home. Adafruit's 2FA keeps the product from being sold out instantly, which is nice.

I’ve never had any problem getting one until this last year. Right now they’re just temporarily prioritising B2B customers - people whose livelihoods depend on it rather than those using it for hobby projects.

Eben has said[1] that he expects supply to improve considerably in the new year, starting with the Zero.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/yswb2d/raspbe...

You say "always", others say "never", I guess my anecdote will split the difference. From my perspective, the first two Pis were easy to get; I remember some noise about Pi 3 selling out very fast (I scored a couple then, IIRC, on the release day), and starting with Pi 4, I've heard they're effectively unobtainable.

The Pi Foundation accidentally stumbled on their true purpose in the marketplace - inexpensive, well supported and easy to build around industrial computers. They have admitted that since the pandemic they have prioritized production for B2B customers. The education/hobbyist market has completely fallen off, so personally I'm moving to x86 variants. The UP 4000 would be an almost perfect replacement but the processors being many years old is unfortunate - if UP would switch to Jasper/Elkhart Lake variants it would be a huge bump in compute in the same package. Odroid H3+ is a nice alternative too. Otherwise NUCs or old 1L Dell/Lenovos seem like the next most popular replacement.

Can't upvote you enough. I'm buying RaspberryPi' since they first launched and I've never seen such a shortage. I lost my stash and somehow I can't find any respectable device for my PiHole setup.

They've been okay before Chipageddon for most SKUs

Prior to the pandemic, I rarely had an issue with obtaining a Pi 4. I would usually get them at Adafruit. If they weren't in stock, I would just wait a couple of days and buy what I wanted when they were.

I didn't have much of a need for Pi 4s in the past, but that has changed. I could use 3 or 4 more Pi 4s. Thankfully, I have plenty of Pi Zero W's. In the past, Adafruit put a limit of one Pi zero (per configuration) per order. Every time I ordered something, I added a Pi zero W & a Pi zero W with an installed header.

Right now I've got almost a dozen Pi zeros for the projects I'm working on. But I do agree with you, they could have sold as many as they made.