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Comment by monkmartinez | Hacker News Reader

The shortage of Raspberry Pi's is going to be their undoing. Everyone in the circles I travel (3D printing, Hobby CNC, Self-hosting, cyberdeck, plotters, etc.) are looking for replacements. There are quite a few contenders, and more recently lots of folks are grabbing thin clients (then installing Linux).

My thought process; In a silo, the raspberry pi isn't all that spectacular and needs a lot of do-dads/thing-i-majigs for even basic functionality. Power supplies and real HDD/SSD's for Rpi's can be a pain point. There are cheaper and better alternatives imo. What makes the Raspberry Pi so cool is the community and ease of use due to said community effort. If that community coalesce around another platform, the rpi foundation will be in big trouble.

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At the moment some of those competitors may have spare supply because people weren’t interested in them before. But once that runs out, I don’t see a reason they won’t all run into the same problems as the RPi Foundation as they get in line behind them for the limited-available time at the fabs.

I've been trying to find a pi zero 2w for quite a while, and have started looking at whatever else I can import at a decent price.

so far, I've run into things like https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804186541934.html with such interesting features as:

    * Performance garbage, single core, very cardy to use
    * Some software porting risc-v has wonderful bugs
    * No GPU, very laggy

and really nothing exciting on arm. I'm expecting these to disappear soon as well. really hoping some fab time opens soon to get even the allwinner devices back on the market at reasonable price/quantity.

Why do you think they will be supply constrained? Does Allwinner make Rockchips?

I see the competitors being a bit more flexible in regard to SoC used. There seems to be a plethora to choose from with different chips, but I am speaking from a very lay person POV.

I think RPi's problem is specifically Broadcom because the Pi Pico is available and the only one that doesn't use a Broadcom chip.

This level of supply issues isn't affecting competitors.

I just bought a thin client and replaced three of my Pis and added a lot of spare room to host a Plex server and a Pleroma instance. The only remaining Pi in use drives my 3DPrinter. Thin clients seem really great for most typical server-type use cases with low power needs.

Yep, and there are thousands of them around the $30 dollar mark. The case and power supply included!!!!! Governments (Local and State in the US) auction them off cheap if you really want to buy in bulk.

People have adapted all manner of thin, thick and virtual clients to run Klipper. I had it running on a VM in VirtualBox before I moved it to a Jetson Nano.

I don't see why an RPi is needed for a thing like that.

If you need a cheap Linux desktop, or a cheap Linux server, there is a ton of x86-based options.

It's when you need all these numerous GPIO pins is when an RPi starts making serious sense. (But an ESP32 could do, too, if running Linux is not a hard requirement.)

The power draw and size is substantially lower.

I read a comment recommending used thin clients on HN like a week ago and did the same thing. I set up one as an octoprint server, one for the hardware lab, and one for a retro gaming station. At ~$30 a piece, it was a no brainer.

I reused the rPis into a k3s cluster for experimentation so they aren't going to waste.

At this point, I think I'm going to rely on esp32 + thin clients for most of my projects. The only uses for rPis that I can still think of is a PiKVM, rPi Weather Station, and maybe a cyberdeck (mostly for the low power usage).

That sounds great, I don't know why I didn't think of that. Any models that you would recommend? Also, are there any independent retailers that gather and resell these that you'd suggest looking at?

I did a bunch of research on thin clients before buying one and I found a site[0] that compiles data on a bunch of different machines.

I ended up going with a Wyse 5060, it's a quad-core machine at 2.4ghz + 4gb of ram. It was pretty widely available for ~$35 on ebay so I figured even if it didn't work out, I wouldn't be out too much money.

As far as other retailers go, every discussion I found online basically told me to look at the usual places. eBay, FB marketplace, maybe craigslist. Unfortunately I didn't find any independent retailers.

Also, depending on your use case, you might want to look into AIO thin clients. You can pick up a full machine with a screen for under $50. Unfortunately, the specs on those machines were a little underpowered for what I needed, but it might be a better fit for other projects.

[0]: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml

Interestingly, those Wyse 5060 (at least the Dell ones) have 2x SO-DIMM slots so the ram can be upgraded (to 16GB):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvg7hOXpHFU

Thanks, these should be fun to dig in to. Most of the applications I look for involved 'detuning' the machine until I can run it fanlessly. I use these for servers for various things, small test hosts, etc.

We were an industrial customer; comparatively small volumes (~100/quarter) but scaling up. The shortage has meant we've pivoted to something more guaranteed, so no more raspberry pi for us. Which is a shame as it's a nice platform and community.

> and more recently lots of folks are grabbing thin clients

But thin clients are typically much bigger than a Pi and consume much more power. Sure if it's something that never moves and is used as a server in an attic somewhere it might work, but if it's something small that you want to be able to carry around and throw in a backpack then the Pi is irreplaceable?

It's true that availability is a big problem though.

They are not that much bigger and the power draw isn't much more either, what would you say? The DELL WYSE Dx0Q has 15w printed on the case. How many people need to print or buy a case for the rpi? The dell comes with one... and is easily interfaced with a HDD/SSD and super easy to connect a cheap microcontroller to get GPIO if you need that.

I have been trying to find a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for months now. They are unobtainable, and I can’t find any communication from Raspberry Pi about it.

I was able to order a pi 4 B+ this morning by watching this site. They sell very quickly once listed so it took couple weeks before I could land one.

https://rpilocator.com/

If you are in the US and have a MicroCenter near you, they usually carry them. I see them every time I visit the MicroCenter near me.

Are you sure you aren't seeing the pico? Those are still easy to find.

I see both, I am sure.

Don't know the backstory, but if the comapny that makes Raspberry Pi can make them enough to fulfil demand, how are those replacement going to come by? If it was easy, Raspberry's company would do it themselves...

I've read that the production is favouring industrial/commercial users, and that would include Korg. I was wondering where the large-scale users were (enough to create a consumer drought), but this would go some way to explaining it.

Raspberry Pi's supply chain & distribution were their biggest strength IMO, I can get their products on day 1 in India from number of vendors which I've not witnessed for any other HW.

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