Is RS components trying to screw Raspberry pi?

[Simon]

After the due dates of two orders we get an email from RS to say that our raspberry pi boards order is cancelled and they recommend that we use  boards that "they" have released that are same but more powerful. These are made by Okdo which RS owns.

I am rather pissed off, they took our orders, months ago they ended their deal with Raspberry PI and had no stock and only now do they tell us and now that we are truly over a barrel try to shovel their own PI look alike boards down our throats.

It seems that they are trying to oust Raspberry PI and muscle in on the action - yea, true to RS form the datasheet sucks for the rock 4 SE, but I was expecting that from the underhand low life copycats that they are! It's not like they are competent or anything.

I don't know if there is any fault from the Pi foundation in any of this but RS could have behaved better. The email is marked "Business (Not Public)" which to me says: "please don't tell the world about what a bunch of cunts we are". They seem to be recommending their boards but not wanting to admit to have scuppered the supply of Pi boards and to letting us know months after they did.

[MK14]

It's disappointing that RS, didn't deliver those items, at approximately the dates, when they claimed they would.

But it is difficult to be too annoyed with RS.  Because it could have been the Raspberry PI suppliers, who caused the items to be cancelled and/or in fairness, there is still a significant chip shortage situation.

The offering of alternatives, is a mixed bag.  Because it could be considered helpful of a supplier, to advise the customers, as to what alternatives are available.  Especially if those alternatives, are currently in stock.

I wonder what long-term impacts, there might be on the future use of Raspberry PIs, given the supply difficulties, situation and how it has been handled by them.  Because some sources seem to say, they delivered to business, with bigger orders, and withheld them from other markets, such as hobbyists.  Which doesn't seem to be the most sensible of decisions, because one-off buyers, are still rather important.

[Simon]

The annoying thing is that we ordered in february RS had no stock, in June or July (can't remember which) RS stopped being a licenced manufacturer, I don't know why they fell out and RS clearly are not up for giving details. So RS who were probably one of the major manufacturers were no longer manufacturing, did they tell us? no. We find out now and they are trying to push their own brand of boards that are more expensive and as okdo the official brand is owned by RS fuck knows what support we may be able to expect or perhaps one day on another whim they decide to ditch some of their products and make life hard again.

The only salvation here which is kind of why I was keen to use such a single board computer is that it's a computer that runs an OS that whatever code we developed should still run on, but still it feels like we are missing a lot of the picture here.

Yes Pi do supply large volumes straight into large customers like one that I bumped into at a show. Yes it makes sense that if supply is constricted then some people getting stock and some not is better than no one getting enough to support their products and we are certainly small fry so not expecting favours.

[Simon]

I have one too:

Business (Not Public)

Dear Mr. ***screwed customer***

We are writing to you today regarding your current back order with us for Raspberry Pi products. As you may be aware, the supply chain disruption with Raspberry Pi continues and we expect this to run through until the end of 2023.  Unfortunately, we are unable to influence this market-wide issue, and with no confirmation from Pi on inbound stock, we will unfortunately have no choice but to cancel your order from our system. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

We have recently released a portfolio of single board computers called ROCK, that offer superior performance to Raspberry Pi and share a similar form factor. We have five boards now live on the RS website and many more boards, kits and accessories in development that will be released over the coming weeks. Check them out here. (naturally this leads to an empty search in RS style)

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with a ROCK alternative to your current back order, but if you would like to learn more information about ROCK, please check out product information on our website or contact your local RS sales lead.

In addition to this, we will be hosting a ROCK webinar in January which we would love for you to join. It will be here that you will learn more information about OKdo and their vision, why ROCK is the board of choice and what features and benefits the ROCK board could offer you to accelerate your project or business. Click here to sign up to this event.

[rstofer]

There is plenty of nonsense going on.  Yesterday, I got an email from NVIDIA that Jetson Nano's were back in stock at Sparkfun and Arrow.  Not exactly!  Sparkfun had none and Arrow had 5.

The new and improved price is $149 versus the $99 I paid a while back but that's a lot better than the $298 at Amazon.

I have no idea why I need a 3rd Nano but I bought one of the 5 at Arrow.  Kind of a 'while I can' kind of deal.

You really need to hunt around on price.

There seem to be plenty of Pi 4s in stock at Amazon with prices all over the map.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raspberry+pi+4&crid=V7GCNDC0ESME&sprefix=raspberry+pi+4

[Simon]

There seem to be plenty of Pi 4s in stock at Amazon with prices all over the map.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raspberry+pi+4&crid=V7GCNDC0ESME&sprefix=raspberry+pi+4

Yea, the price gougers....

[MK14]

The Youtube Video Channel, ExplainingComputers, often features a wide range of SBCs, such as the Rasberry PI.

https://www.youtube.com/@ExplainingComputers/videos

But a partial trend, I sometimes notice.  Is that the first 90%+ of the video, looks really great and promising.  Until they get to the supported/available operating systems bit.  Unlike Raspberry PI boards in general, which have a number of operating systems available, some of which get good support and updates.  There are only one or two OSs, available for the non-Raspberry PI board.

One of which is so buggy, at an early alpha stage (somewhat typically), misses too many features, and its exact release date (for a proper working version), is unknown.  It is not even clear, if/when the OS/board will be supported in the future (similar to what you have said in your posts).

Which is why I tend to go for Raspberry PIs.  If it is that type of project.  But this long term unavailability situation, has been a real damper on the situation.

So, on the other hand, I can understand why some people, move over to other boards (despite these issues), if they can't wait, for the stock to eventually appear.

[james_s]

That's the problem with all of the competitors, it's the software that makes or breaks a platform like that, and the RPi has the software part in pretty good shape.

[rstofer]

The Jetson Nano is pretty well supported and based on Ubuntu 18.04.  An upgrade to 20.04 is possible to support Python 3.8

https://qengineering.eu/install-ubuntu-20.04-on-jetson-nano.html

The process is well documented.

I have had a couple of the Nano's for over a year and they seem to respond pretty much like any other Linux system.  I first set up SSH and VNC and unplug the USB keyboard and mouse.  I can leave it running in the back room and reach it from anywhere in the house.  Yes, built in WiFi would be nice but it is easily added:

https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-AC8265-Wireless-Developer-Support-Bluetooth/dp/B07SM4SPLV

Of course, the Nano is quite a bit different than the Pi in that, in theory, they would be used for AI applications.  NVIDIA is producing a lot of content around this field of endeavor.

[Simon]

I don't trust anything out of RS but we have just designed a prototype and now we could stand scuppered for production. RS was one of the manufacturers, they have stopped making them and are trying to replace them, so now there will be even more different boards to wonder if it's worth using. With so many different ones all competing for core parts, the risk is that whatever you go for you will be buggered.

[tom66]

The Jetson Nano is a neat board but it pulls about 10W under high CPU load - for many applications that is a problem.  You can cap it to about 5W but the performance is quite poor, CPU wise slower than a Pi 4 as the GPU eats up so much of the power budget.

[james_s]

IMO the cost and power consumption of the Jetson Nano puts it in a whole different class than the RPi. There are applications where it would be a good fit, but in most cases I'd just go with a mini PC if I were going to spend that much.

[MK14]

IMO the cost and power consumption of the Jetson Nano puts it in a whole different class than the RPi. There are applications where it would be a good fit, but in most cases I'd just go with a mini PC if I were going to spend that much.

Also, I think we have got to, or are rapidly getting to the point.  That these (higher end) SBCs, should at least have either a M.2 slot and/or eMMC (memory or slot), having a microSD card slot as well, is fine.

M.2's have got to the price/capacity/speed/size points, making them somewhat desirable, and microSD cards tend to be unreliable, if used as the ONLY boot medium.

[Veteran68]

In addition to various micros, I do a lot of stuff with Pi's and have several in the 3B+ and 4 lines. I've been able to snag 2-3 Pi 4B's and Zero 2 W's over the past couple years but it hasn't been easy, so I'm always on the lookout for alternative solutions.

I realize a lot of people in this forum will have a GPIO requirement, but if not and if you're in North America, a cheap and readily available SBC with horsepower equivalent to a Pi 3B+ is the Inovato Quadra. It runs Armbian, a popular and pretty robust Arm-based Debian distro. It's great for things like small servers and IoT hubs (PiHole, Home Assistant, MQTT broker, etc.). Cost is $29 and includes everything you need to run including power supply and a nice case. It's actually a re-purposed Android TV box design, and they even provide instructions to hack your own together from a TV box, but at this price I don't know why anyone would bother. It has fewer USB ports than a Pi and only b/g/n Wifi built in, but they offer a $10 upgrade option (which I got) that adds a USB hub and a 802.11ac Wifi dongle.

I got one to test with and have been impressed, so will be grabbing some more to free up the Pi4's that run my PiHole and HA servers.

[Veteran68]

Also, I think we have got to, or are rapidly getting to the point.  That these (higher end) SBCs, should at least have either a M.2 slot and/or eMMC (memory or slot), having a microSD card slot as well, is fine.

M.2's have got to the price/capacity/speed/size points, making them somewhat desirable, and microSD cards tend to be unreliable, if used as the ONLY boot medium.

You can buy Pi cases with M.2 slots built in. I have this one and it works quite well. I'm a fan of the Argon series and had a non-M.2 version before this one.

[MK14]

You can buy Pi cases with M.2 slots built in. I have this one and it works quite well. I'm a fan of the Argon series and had a non-M.2 version before this one.

Thanks.  I've been very tempted buy them, but the big lack of (easy) Raspberry PI availability, stopped me from getting it.  I know, with big effort, I could eventually get PI(s).

[eti]

RS have more of a clue, and vastly more experience in electronics than “the foundation”.

“The foundation” as they love to call themselves, are full of it. Check out their stinky attitude on their own forums. It has been discussed to death many times, notably on Element 14 forums. Their elitism and arrogance will be their downfall. It’s like an “Insiders club” on there - it’s all a big, very transparent front for ensuring Broadcom SoC are shifted, sold under the cuddly “bedroom coder” (cringe!) image, playing on nostalgia.

They’re run by academics. There’s an old phrase “educated idiots”; I think it’s a mixture of that and immature forum managers.

They won’t be missed, nor will their products. Far better exists and they’re not too big to sink.

[Kasper]

Quote below from RPi in April 2022.  I wonder if RPi postpones orders to distributors when a business calls in to talk about their livelihood.

we’ve consistently been able to build around half a million of our single-board computers and Compute Module products each month
[...]
Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake. There is currently enough supply to meet the needs of those customers. (Read to the end if you’re in this position and are struggling.) Unfortunately this comes at the cost of constrained supply for individual customer, who might be looking to buy a small number for home projects or for prototyping

[james_s]

Quote below from RPi in April 2022.  I wonder if RPi postpones orders to distributors when a business calls in to talk about their livelihood.

we’ve consistently been able to build around half a million of our single-board computers and Compute Module products each month
[...]
Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake. There is currently enough supply to meet the needs of those customers. (Read to the end if you’re in this position and are struggling.) Unfortunately this comes at the cost of constrained supply for individual customer, who might be looking to buy a small number for home projects or for prototyping

I find this quite annoying actually. They're prioritizing business customers over the hobbyists and educational market which are exactly what the RPi was intended for in the first place, the hobbyists in the open source community have done a lot of the work to make the software support as good as it is.

[AndyBeez]

@eti The same kind of academics who brought to market the pointless BBC microbit.

Correct me if I am wrong... My understanding is Sony, who manufacture the Pi range in Wales/UK, supply exclusively to the RPi Foundation, RS and Farnell. Which means UK and EU (commercial volume) buyers cannot buy direct from the Sony factory; only through RS and Farnell who have an exclusive distribution deal with the RPi Foundation. So how much volume does one need to be regarded as a commercial customer? 1+ million units?

I also note the wide range of RPi products on AliExpress, shipping (in volume) from warehouses in China. That's made in the UK, shipped to China, finally sold back to the UK because China is the only source of UK made RPi's in the UK for customers who don't need 1+ million boards. Go figure?

[tszaboo]

Quote below from RPi in April 2022.  I wonder if RPi postpones orders to distributors when a business calls in to talk about their livelihood.

we’ve consistently been able to build around half a million of our single-board computers and Compute Module products each month
[...]
Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake. There is currently enough supply to meet the needs of those customers. (Read to the end if you’re in this position and are struggling.) Unfortunately this comes at the cost of constrained supply for individual customer, who might be looking to buy a small number for home projects or for prototyping

I find this quite annoying actually. They're prioritizing business customers over the hobbyists and educational market which are exactly what the RPi was intended for in the first place, the hobbyists in the open source community have done a lot of the work to make the software support as good as it is.

If you have a business and this is a core product then on the other hand, people could loose their job. Or be without payment for month because production shuts down. IMHO it's a bad idea to rely on the RPI foundation for your business, and if I would be in charge of designing the product I would never do that with at least having an alternative for it, but you know how startups break best practices all the time.

[Fraser]

Whilst working on some China manufactured systems I came across the Banana-Pi (BPI). I had never come across these units before so did some research on them. I found that they were like a R-Pi but of Chinese origin. It seems Chinese product developers like these units and the manufacturer is keen to sell product to anyone who needs such a device.

https://www.banana-pi.org/web/?pcd=1&wap=1

R-Pi vs B-Pi

https://www.educba.com/raspberry-pi-vs-banana-pi/#:~:text=Thus%2C%20Banana%20Pi%20is%20compatible,NetBSD%2C%20Android%2C%20Debian%20etc.

I have no idea whether B-Pi is a serious alternative for Simon but it could be a case of thecChinese taking the R-Pi design and improving upon it ? For example, it has a SATA interface  HDMI performance is inferior though.

Fraser

[rstofer]

The Jetson Nano is a neat board but it pulls about 10W under high CPU load - for many applications that is a problem.  You can cap it to about 5W but the performance is quite poor, CPU wise slower than a Pi 4 as the GPU eats up so much of the power budget.

The GPU is probably the only reason for using the Nano.  Even then, there aren't that many compute cores.

The Jetson Nano is built around a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A57 CPU running at 1.43GHz alongside a NVIDIA Maxwell GPU with 128 CUDA cores capable of 472 GFLOPs (FP16), and has 4GB of 64-bit LPDDR4 RAM onboard along with 16GB of eMMC storage and runs Linux for Tegra.

472 GFlops of FP16 is nothing to laugh at for a small board. But, certainly, it is a niche product.  128 CUDA cores is pretty minimal.

[james_s]

If you have a business and this is a core product then on the other hand, people could loose their job. Or be without payment for month because production shuts down. IMHO it's a bad idea to rely on the RPI foundation for your business, and if I would be in charge of designing the product I would never do that with at least having an alternative for it, but you know how startups break best practices all the time.

Yes it's kind of on them I think, the RPi was never meant to be an embedded industrial computer, high volume products should not be designed around it.

[Veteran68]

Banana Pi's have been around for quite awhile, they just never got much traction because the cost differential compared to a "real" Pi was negligible. Similar to Orange Pi's.

These days, these knock-offs are getting a lot more attention, although the B-Pi's prices have gone up quite a bit as well -- whether due to their own supply shortages, or just supply & demand or inflationary pressures, or both. Their new-ish 4GB M5 model, roughly equivalent to a $55 RPi 4b, goes for $70-$80 from China, even though they do have 16GB eMMC built in and don't require an SD card for the OS.