ELI5: Why are SBCs nowhere to be found?
Been looking for RPI4 CMs for ages now and they've been sold out for as long as I can remember. Same with full size RPI4s and some Odroids. Is this just the new normal or are SBCs and CMs going to show up on the market again at some point?
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RPi's and RPi compatibles got co-opted by a huge number of commercial and industrial control systems companies being used for cheap full-fat embedded systems that needed more than a simple microcontroller, but where industrial PLC's were overkill or not sourcable. Everything they produce, which is not a lot given covid supply chain whiplash, has now been going towards those customer's contracts and fuck the little guy consumer they were meant for.
If you want to get into the SBC ecosystem leave rpi in the dust, they're dead to the enthusiasts and won't be coming back. There are much better options. See Linus tech tips video on them.
They aren’t even great platforms anymore in comparison.
Other SBCs are cheaper, more smartly designed, and have more features (emmc, pcie, etc)
The big thing RPI have going for them is that they are the standard and all the OS/software/etc end up being super turnkey
In their defence, the pi was never intended to be a powerhouse. Their focus was on getting good software support for a low cost system. This provided a stable foundation that built that turnkey reliability.
A lot of the other board providers have a habit of just creating a powerful little board, and throwing it out there to fend for itself. This is great for competent geeks, but less good for those still learning.
Meh, I don't know if they need defense. It's just kind of how it is.
They got big and popular and that means momentum. Momentum is good for adoption and momentum is good for support, but it's not great for huge jumps in technological sophistication.
I still LOVE the 2040, pico, etc, but there are just better options when you go bigger than that.
The Potato, Rock Pis.
This creator is great for when you want to SBC shop
The raspberry pi was never meant to be a power house. It's whole goal was to make support and learning easy. A few, very well maintained models, with the same core chips. The last bit is the cause of the shortage. They can't easily redesign without fragmenting the support base. That is completely against their ethos.
I've also found, once you hit a Pi's limit, that it's best to go to something more specialist. My go-to options are NUCs for general computing, or the Nvidia Jetson series, for portable brute power. Anything that saturates a pi will quickly saturate the smaller SBCs soon after, as well. They suffer from many of the same bottlenecks.
Any recommendations in the RPi price range?
Look at the Libre Computer boards. I got a Le Potato for 35usd last year and it's been rock solid. Seems to be about the same performance as a RBP 3B.
Finally someone mentions a product name. I am so sick of these "uh duuuh, there are better alternatives out there, hurhur" commenters who name not a single one.
I'd recommend one if I had tried any of them. The only one I've bought is the orange pi 5 which runs significantly higher than the basic RPi $35 and figured was outside the power envelope OP really needed.
Go check out ExplainingComputers on youtube.
https://www.explainingcomputers.com/sbc.html
He basically goes over every SBC possible. The good ones now are the Rock Pis and the Potato series
Thanks! I'll check it out.
See Linus tech tips video on them.
See Jeff Geerling's fab tour video on them instead.
Gotcha. I figured I'd try the RPI this time around since I had such a terrible time with Odroid's C1 (or C2? It's been 6+ years).
I'm not tied to the RPI at all, but ameridroid seems to be out of stock of everything low cost and low power with a decent amount of RAM (eg 4GB+).
Have you ever checked out OrangePi? I was considering them before picking up a jetson nano. It’s crazy to think that a rpi4b is going for the same price from resellers as a jetson with cuda and tenserflow support.
Over heard of it but haven't seen them. The other piece I was looking for was CMs for the Trying Pi that I got. It's been sitting in a box ever since I got it because .... no compute modules anywhere.
Can you provide the link for the LTT video, please?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=uJvCVw1yONQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thank you