Raspberry Pis Found in Abandoned Spin Scooters in Seattle
Where was this knowledge when the Pi supply was low?
Free pis as far as I'm concerned. If they were ever gonna "recover" their assets they would have to track them down and if anybody has just the pi in their possession they'd have to prove it's one of theirs, probably by getting law enforcement involved. I doubt the city would be all that happy to help when they've literally just littered throughout the city and left.
So that's where they all went!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
However, when Spin backed out of Seattle, many residents discovered unused scooters scattered throughout the city.
This discovery was recently shared to social media where Pi enthusiasts are simultaneously befuddled and ready to book their tickets to Seattle.
Legally speaking, if the scooters are abandoned then snagging one for the Pi inside is fair game but it’s currently not clear if Spin has plans to recover their remaining assets.
The Seattle government has an official blog available to the public where we were able to confirm that Spin was originally welcomed to the city back in 2021 as a fourth scooter rental option.
At first glance, it seems like an overpowered option for something like an electric scooter but without exact confirmation of its purpose, we can only speculate.
If you want to get a closer look at the insides of one of these Spin scooters, check out some of the pictures shared to social media.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why would you use Pi’s at production scale? Surely there must be better (cheaper, right-sized, readily available) purpose-built ARM SBCs.
Pi's in production is becoming much more common these days.
Lazy solution and 'we'll fix it later'?
The Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd. literally generates most of its income via companies using Raspberries in production. The dual HDMI ports on the RPi 4 are another acknowledgedment of that (the ability to drive two monitors at once was added in recognition of digital signage customers).
If not the 4b there are half a dozen cheaper RPi systems that are way more power efficient and capable for this use case.
Imo Raspberry Pi may have shot itself in the foot trying to make bank by overselling the 4B to business customers who didn't need them which exacerbated their shortage for people who DID need them.
Wish I had known about this a year ago.
So you're saying I can go downtown and grab any of these that I see?
more photos of the components would be great. maybe even get shell access 😈?
