SBC Review of the Week – January 22nd, 2023

DPHacks Posts of the Week

I published a review the new Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3. Previously, Raspberry Pi only offered a standard version of the camera modules with a 75 degree field of view. Now, they also offer a wide-angle camera with 120 degree field of view. Check out Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Comparison for more information and side-by-side comparisons like the below.

Raspberry Pi Availability

Availability is still not great. After a big push to get Pi computers in the hands of makers and the general public in late in 2022, availability to consumers has fallen again to pre-holiday season levels.

The large stock of Pi 3 A+ is diminishing and while they stayed mostly in stock since December 2022, rpilocator.com only shows them in stock at a couple of stores.

We got an encouraging post from Raspberry Pi themselves implying that Zero W availability will be increasing soon. This is supported by a blog post from Eben Upton (CEO), that also mentions Zero W will be available in larger numbers. This is the OG Zero W, not the version 2.

Fill yer boots – you’ll see more and more Zeros coming available now! https://t.co/vT73GI2ORg

— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) January 19, 2023

As usual, Adafruit has been a solid source of Pi 4B, restocking the 4GB model 4 times this week. These are selling out in just a matter of a couple of minutes so follow your tips bellow for a better chance on getting on.

Tips for buying from Adafruit: create an account, fill out all the info and make sure to setup 2FA. You will not be able to buy a Pi without 2FA. Log out!! You have to log out, it’s in the instructions 😉
1/3

— rpilocator (@rpilocator) January 20, 2023

Interesting Tidbits from the Wide World Web

ROCK SBCs Picking up Steam

Rock SBCs seem to be picking up steam. ETA Prime has been testing their newest SBC, the Rock 5B and claims that it is fast enough to replace a desktop computer.

On a not so positive note, there has been many reports of this board acting up when being powered by a PD power source. Hopefully they will fix this issue in the next iteration.

OKdo, a subsidiary of RS, has been marketing the Rock boards pretty heavily and have just launched an engineering challenge where they are giving 500 boards for free if you submit a qualifying idea.

On a positive note, Phil Howard (aka Gadgetoid), Pimoroni’s software developer got his hands on a Rock SBC. It would be amazing to see third party hardware support for the Rock like of SBCs.

Pimoroni Is On a Roll

Speaking of Pimoroni, they had a really successful launch of Galactic Unicorn a couple of months back. Galactic Unicorn is a programmable LED matrix for the Raspberry Pi Pico. A keen-eye reader informed me that they are working on another version (bigger? better?) dubbed Cosmic Unicorn. You can see the pull request in one of Pimoroni’s GitHub repos.

Kevin McAleer Is Also On a Roll

I’m envious of Kevin’s productivity (don’t worry Kevin, it’s the good kind of envy). Kevin has been pumping out Raspberry Pi and Robotics content like a mad man. Recently he published a series of educational articles on how different components work. Definitely check out Kevin’s website (kevsrobots.com), which is hosted on a Raspberry Pi cluster, and get your mind blown.

Raspberry Pi CM4 Blade Computing

Ivan Kuleshov, aka @merocle, has been working on a blade-like carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 for well over a year now. He just announced on Twitter that he is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this project and will report back when the campaign is live.

Looks like I have a busy weeks ahead of me.
In the next few days I’ll open a preview page where you can sign up for a Kickstarter notification.
Requires a little preparation to ensure a good response in the early days of the compaign#computeblade #raspberrypi pic.twitter.com/tlvJgiwAq9

— Ivan Kuleshov (@Merocle) January 19, 2023

Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for another update next week.