Raspberry Pis Found in Abandoned Spin Scooters in Seattle
www.tomshardware.com
Where was this knowledge when the Pi supply was low?

Title says most of it. Spin electric scooters exited the Seattle market and abandoned their scooters all over the city and apparently they have a pi 4 in them!

  • dan@upvote.auEnglish
    241·
    1 year ago

    Pis are pretty commonly used in industrial automation use cases (production lines, robot arms, etc) too. They’re not the best thing for those use cases, but they’re far cheaper than anything else, and anyone with basic programming knowledge can get something running on them, rather than having to find someone experienced with embedded systems (usually in C or C++).

    When there were major supply chain issues, a lot of the limited supply was going towards those use cases, as the companies using them had already placed large orders very far in advance.

    • FryHyde@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      It wasn’t just that they placed orders in advance. The pi foundation literally told people it was prioritizing those customers over anyone else. Kinda shitty IMO, considering the reason the pi was built in the first place.

      • Wrench@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I’m not well versed on the details surrounding this, but it sounds like Pi pivoted to supply businesses during the chip shortage, instead of direct to consumer in the more hobbyist space.

        That seems like a win win, well within moral business practice.

        Yes, Pi was founded (afaik) as a cheap minimalist PC. No thrills or bullshit, with a strong moral stance on making a barebones PC available to all.

        Pivoting to help keep a global chip shortage from causing a global collapse of anything needing simple circuit boards isn’t evil. It’s helping everyone get through potentially a lot worse than not having access to a mostly hobbyist device. And it probably meant they could use their own impacted supply line in the most efficient way possible.

        Hopefully the consumer Pi isn’t lost for good, but this seems far from corporate greed, but a necessary concession during a global disaster.