1 yr. ago • 95%

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?

83 comments

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.

43
- 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
  
  16
  
  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.
  
  7
  
  Any recommendations in the RPi price range?
  
  4
- See Linus tech tips video on them.
  
  See Jeff Geerling's fab tour video on them instead.
  
  7
- 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+).
  
  3
  
  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.
  
  2
- Can you provide the link for the LTT video, please?
  
  2
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJvCVw1yONQ
  
  @pipedlinkbot@feddit.rocks
  
  4
Supply and demand, pandemic, chip shortage, scalpers. That pretty much covers it.

22
These days you can find some kinda NUCS which are way more powerful and customisable for not a lot more than a fully fledged RPI4 with SD card and PSU

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- At least until the NUCs run out, now that Intel's discontinuing them
  
  7
  
  That's why I added the "kinda". There are a lot of small AMD boxes that can do a lot with those Ryzen.
  
  4
  
  There's a lot of used mini PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo that go for cheap on ebay. Those are a good alternative.
  
  4
I don't get why people want these for self-hosting. They're meant for GPIO and automation control. They're massively underpowered.

Just use an actual SBC and leave these for electronics.

10
- Underpowered is probably the reason, they're small and really low powered. A pi could be a 1/10th the power consumption of an x86 computer, and thus less noise and heat.
  
  20
  
  Back in 2016 or so you could get a RaspberryPi 3 for $35. Add a $5 power supply, $5 SD card and $10 case (or 3d print your own) and you've got a nice little piece of hardware for running a tiny project at home for ~$50. More than enough for hosting some simple web services, backup software or something like Home Assistant.
  
  Plus it was popular (which makes it even more popular). It's always been very easy to find guides written specifically for the hardware, despite it's limitations.
  
  I think the value proposition has been dropping steadily though. They cost more, are hard to find and there are now a lot more competing SBCs on the market. RaspberryPi still has name recognition though, for now.
  
  21
- They're great for low strength, dedicated platforms instead of using something with more muscle like a NUC, also where a VM or container can't be used.
  
  4
  
  Out of curiosity, what are some use cases that would fit this criteria? VMs and containers are very capable and it's much easier to debug a failed VM than a failed piece of hardware.
  
  2
- For one they make terrific 1Gbps routers with SQM. The Pi 4 has a pretty capable CPU.
  
  1
Not to steal your post but I have had the same issue and my concern is always on OS support since some of the alternative boards I have tried in the past were stuck on custom kernels or old OS versions, has anyone had better luck these days? It has been a few years since I have tried any though.

Also, if you aren’t familiar with it this website has a bunch of real time inventory listings for the various Pi models.

9
- Yeah I think that was another huge complain I had when I started out with an off brand SBC (Odroid C1). I think you had to do stage things to get a kernel to work and to be honest, my days of compiling kernels went out with the 90s. I remember reading years ago that the RPi had kernel integration with mainline oses like Ubuntu, so I wanted to give that a try as a dedicated key store machine and some other stuff.
  
  I've got two clusters of nucs currently so they aren't exactly foreign to me. Just wanted to find something cheaper and lighter to do some dedicated db work on. Sounds like I'll just get another i5 NUC off eBay.
  
  1
  
  Yep that was exactly my thought process haha. For what it’s worth, raspian is pretty good and Ubuntu 22.04 works great on the PI4, I have 4 or 5 around here and they have been awesome.
  
  Now I am curious though, what are you going to use for the key store? That is one of the things on my list to set up pretty soon here as well and I was going to put it on a pi myself. Also, if you haven’t seen this thing or this thing? They are pretty neat and I was going to get one just for the novelty haha.
  
  1
Raspberry Pi is based on smart phone chips, very specific chips from one manufacturer. Raspberry Pi Foundation is not the main customer for this manufacturer and chips used for Raspberry Pi are not their only product – and now, during the big 'chip shortages' and supply chain problems other customers and other chips are given priority. There are no (or not enough) new chips for Raspberry Pis so there are no new Raspberries, so availability is dropping and prices are soaring.

I guess the same is true for most other SBCs.

For my hobby projects I switched to Raspberry Pi Pico. It is not a SBC, you won't run Linux on that, but it is a very capable microcontroller board which is enough for my needs. It is way cheaper much more available. And I won't look back – it occurred to me that things are much simpler when there is no whole OS on my devices and everything the device does is in my own code.

There are no problems with Pico availability, as it is based on a simpler, custom chip, designed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and manufactured for Raspberry Pi Foundation – they are no longer dependent on a single supplier.

9
Still the same situation, high demand, low production capacity, part shortages. Try finding an alternative SBC.

Personally I really like the BeagleBone black (https://beagleboard.org/black), because it has integrated flash (no more rummaging for a micro SD card), and lets you ssh over USB. (no more debugging network connectivity, or searching for a unused monitor). It still can boot from a micro SD or USB drive, so if the flash breaks (or gets bricked) it's easy fixable. The best part is no USB Mini-B connectors that break after ten uses. (Those things are cancer, they are absolutely awful and everywhere)

One thing to be aware of with them is the lack of on board WiFi, so if you need that make sure to get a USB WiFi radio.

</soapbox>

7
Take a look at Pine64 Quartz64 boards as a decent alternative

7
Take a look at LibreComputing's RPi clones on Amazon.

6
- Cool recommendation! I just bought one!
  
  I am hoping with all hope that it will let me replace my Roku for streaming.
  
  As great as the functionality of the Roku is, the constant advertising makes me loath this thing. I do not want it anymore.
  
  1
- Yes. I bought a libre pi to use as a backup DNS. Besides the minor tweaks, it's been running perfectly. Also only ~€75 for the libre+case+SD card combo.
  
  0
  
  I'm looking for SBCs which can accept 2 SD cards, one for the OS and another to run k3s. Know anything?
  
  1
I was under the impression that it's mostly Raspberry Pi stuff out of stock nowadays, and similar boards from Odroid and Orange Pi are easier to find? I see both of those in stock at Amazon right now, though I don't know the exact models you want.

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redacted

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For a while there Adafruit was stocking pi4bs every business day at around 11am est, was able to get one by camping it at that time. Make an account first and add your address and payment

But that was a few months back I don't know the situation now

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rpilocator

~~Assuming you are in the US link~~

Edit: at the time of posting, the above store was in stock. They go fast

4
Last month it was hard to find these in India, but since few days RPIs are back in stock, got a couple of Pi4s (75$ each) and Zero 2 Ws (20$ each) for myself. Checked now, they are still in stock.

4
- which site did you use to purchase those?
  
  3
  
  Bought RPi 4Bs (4GB) from thingbits and Zero 2 Ws from silverlineelectronics
  
  2
Le Potato aka Libre Computer is still on Amazon in the US for $35.

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I have 2 pi4 4GB boards and was waiting forever to get a third to run RAFT based services across.

I gave up last year and bought 3 chinese boards at $60/ea with 2x 2.5Gb Ethernet each, emmc, and a m.2 slot - and they run at half the temp of the pi4 boards.

I never needed the wifi/bt and form-factor the pi boards offered anyway - really no reason to stay as long as you can find software that boots on other boards.

3
- Link to said boards please?
  
  4
  
  Nanopi R5C
  
  1
- Curious which board you ended up buying
  
  2
  
  Nanopi R5C. Cute little buggers too.
  
  2
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers

RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC

SBC Single-Board Computer

[Thread #5 for this sub, first seen 19th Jul 2023, 07:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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According to the Raspberry Pi tracker, they are becoming available again. You may have to get them as soon as they arrive, but at least it shows they are stocked again

2
Because manufacturers prefer profits over the race to the bottom pricing strategy of many SBCs.

-1
- The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity.
  
  1
  
  The Raspberry Pi Foundation doesn't own factories... They have to pay for manufacturing capacity and thus are limited in that capacity because their boards are built to a very strict cost that they seldom raise.
  
  1