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Comment by spicybright | Hacker News Reader

So has have the market for raspis mellowed out yet?

Last I checked the past few years made them near impossible to get as industrial orders got priority over hobbyists.

I think things are starting to improve, yes. If you look at rpilocator[1] now, you see a LOT more green in general than, say, a month ago. Now to be fair, a lot of it is for Pico boards and/or Pi 3 boards, but still, progress is progress. And this lines up with that they told us back in December[2] when the word was that the situation would start to improve sometime in Q2 2023 and that stocks (and prices) would reach normal levels sometime in the second half of 2023.

I suspect that once enough supply hits that the scalpers start getting stuck with stock they can't resell at a premium, and turn off their bots, things will improve very quickly. Of course that's just my hunch. YMMV.

Also, FWIW, there's no difficulty in getting a Pi 4 now. You only have to be willing to done one or the other of two things:

1. Pay an exorbitant price. If you're willing to buy from scalpers who scoop them up and resell them, you can buy an 8G Pi 4 right now on Amazon for the low, low price of $180.00.[3]

2. Be very patient. There are authorized resellers selling at MSRP who are taking backorders and who will ship you a board as soon as they get it (relative to your position in the queue). I believe both Mouser and Newark are taking backorders for most Pi models (and one or the other, or both, have some Picos and other low end boards in stock).

The only real problem is if you want one RIGHT NOW and you want it as MSRP. And even then, if you watch rpilocator enough, you'll eventually catch a few in stock somewhere and be able to order one for immediate delivery. I understand that Adafruit receive stock fairly frequently (which unfortunately sells out very fast) but I've had luck getting Pi's from Elektor a couple of times in the past year. Or one could drive to the nearest Microcenter store that has stock, if you happen to live within reasonable driving distance of one of their stores.

[1]: https://rpilocator.com/

[2]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-goo...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Computer-Suitable-Workst...

Doesn't look good[1].

[1]: https://rpilocator.com/?country=US&cat=PI4

this has to be forecasting mismanagement at this point. The chip shortage has mostly come to an end, they're either severely underforecasting from incompetence or intentionally

There's still shortages of a whole bunch of random parts (wireless chips, etc).

Unsure if its actually impacting Pi manufacturing specifically, but its hit some other products I want.

I don’t even think it’s a forecasting issue at this point. It’s a lack of a plan B.

In this time they could have launched new products that make the most of available supply. They didn’t.

They could have recognised the hit that their b2b-first distribution model has had on their reputation and tried to make amends. They didn’t.

They could have coordinated with the alt-board suppliers to make “RPi approved” models for the Rock Pi, Orange Pi etc as a stop gap. They didn’t.

Hell, they could have bumped costs up a bit to spend on mitigating supply issues, reduce demand and burn scalpers. They didn’t.

So instead they just keep promising, just keep delaying, and we keep waiting. Even if their supply issues are through no fault of their own, it feels like they aren’t even trying.

The Raspberry foundation at this point is no diferent from TI's Beagleboard, a veneer of educational project who's core business is to cater for industrial clients.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical in lumping it with BeagleBoard but at this point to me the bbc micro:bit + MicroPython is effectively filling the educational void that Raspberry left behind.

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