It kind of caught me by surprise when I was planning a new Raspberry Pi project.
I decided the thing I needed was an older Raspberry Pi 3B+, so went to Amazon to see what they were going for, expecting to pay around $35…what a surprise I got–
You cannot find any Raspberry Pi hardware anywhere for list price–if you want a Pi, you will pay scalper prices of 4x or more. There is even a website dedicated to showing up-to-the-minute worldwide Pi stock: rpilocator.com. For some reason, I only ever see two or three places in Spain and Portugal with stock.
This whole thing made me rethink my project and juggle the three existing Pi devices I have to free one up. After some shuffling, I now have a Pi 3B+ available for the new project.
I designed a Pi Compute Module-based controller for my company. They are completely unavailable, so we can’t ship new product. I’m looking at changing to ESP32-S2, and FreeRTOS, but that’s a lot of work.
A motor controller board we make is causing us all kinds of sourcing issues. We finally convinced our client to order two years of production so we could secure processors and FETs.
I’ve had a Bronco Badlands on order since 7/16/20.
It’s not even scheduled for production.
Our oven died about six weeks ago. The gidget that controlled the temperature is dead, there was extreme heat, and I had to pop the circuit breaker to turn it off.
Turns out modern ovens have chips.
Best ETA for the new oven is May 1. That’s 10 weeks since the old one died on us.
I need to get a newer vehicle to replace my high mileage pickup. I want to find a Ford Explorer but prices are high and I’m lead to believe this is because the chips are not available to build new vehicles, driving up the cost of used vehicles.
I bought a new garage door opener last fall and it included an insert that said some features advertised on the box were not available because of the chip shortage and if you mailed in the postcard (included) they would send you a new part when available. I think it had something to do with being able to check the open/close status of the door using your smartphone. Not really an issue for me.
I had a timing chain break in my old car so I really had no choice. As I went from dealer to dealer and saw the empty lots, I realized that the used car world was totally different.
I found the truck I wanted, but I had to pay asking price with no haggling, and they wouldn’t accept a down payment to hold it unless I filled out all of the finance paperwork on the spot.
I love the truck so I try not to think about the buying experience.
My city (where I am on the council) had plans in 2022 and 2023 to buy new police cars and service vehicles. And a fire engine. Staff has been scrambling to find stuff to buy and if we find them we’re buying them early due to fears they won’t be available in 2023. We did find a cache of police cars and bought them all, ahead of schedule. Still waiting on a fire engine we bought last year. And the service trucks so far are no-go. It’s a mess. And expensive.
I am a repair, design, build, technician. I am running into problems at the single chip/device level up to the full functional product level of getting things.
I only seek single or low quantities of things. But I am seeing wildly varying problems of supply. I order from huge level suppliers like Digikey to specific finished product companies. I do see shortages at both extremes. But they are at this point still somewhat random. It depends on the specific item or what is needed to build that item. What amounts anybody had in stock before the shortages started.
It is affecting even my quite random low volume needs.
well, munchos are hard to find anywhere and the convenience stores have been out of chili cheese Fritos for a bit …
oh wait …
Our computer is so old that you can’t find the original chips for it when the graphics card to a dive we had to buy a later one and gett a piece to hook on it so we could get it to fit …
We design and build equipment that needs electronic components rated or qualified to 150C and that also need to meet some fairly extreme shock and vibration qaulifiction tests, so the available pool of qualified components is quite small.
An electronics card used to have a lead time of about 8 weeks including assembly, now it is 18 - 26 weeks. Making it fairly hard to meet demand for equipment
High strength steel (140ksi) lead times are at 16-20 weeks, no mills are producing speculative orders.
Our supply chain organization is still stuck in some delusional just in time mode and doesn’t update lead times, so wont order parts until they think they have to, by which time it is too late, then they delay ordering other parts because they won’t be needed until later, which then also have extended times.
IT guy here. The laptop availability is getting back to normal, but peripherals are taking TONS of time. For example, we use docking stations for our laptops, to provide dual monitor capability and other things. If purchased from the manufacturer, they are taking 60-90 days. If I buy them from Amazon, I can get them in a week - For DOUBLE the manufacturer’s price.
Same goes for any monitors or devices that have any integration. If it has a chip in it, it gets delayed 2 or 3 months.
I paid more for my GPU than I should have. I was getting worried about issues with my current one not working, and I don’t have an integrated GPU. So, when there was a dip in prices that the experts were saying probably wouldn’t last, I set a maximum price and went for it.
My old card wound up lasting a year more, so I probably could have waited and got a better deal. Or even dealt with the stress of trying to snatch something before the scalpers.
Wow, that sucks. I hadn’t even imagined what must be going on with many companies that have invested in Raspberry Pi for their products! That’s insane!
Never heard of it–that’s a cool looking vehicle. What color is your unscheduled Bronco going to be?
And that’s why I ended up paying sticker price for my new used truck. The lots were empty!
But again, it brings me joy so I think how lucky I was to find it before somebody else did.
This may not be the right answer for the thread, but my father is getting paid a huge amount of extra money at his job, indirectly due to the chip shortage. So in a certain sense the chip shortage has been financially good for the family.
The cars lack semi-conductor chips. It’s not that they won’t operate but certain components, like rear seat heating and air conditioning controls and other add-ons are inoperable without the chips.
But demand is now so high, Ford has decided to begin selling these cars with essentially an IOU. They promise to install the non-critical components down the road once the overseas producers can catch up.
On a personal note, I managed to upgrade my kid’s GPU three times and mine once for free as a result of the GPU shortages. I bought both cards at MSRP early on before the shortages really hit and then would get opportunities to buy an upgrade (usually through the queue system EVGA was running) and would easily sell the old card for what the new one cost. I never bought with the intent to resell but, when the chance would arise to get an upgrade, I’d grab it.
I am , indirectly, on the buying side for a lot of this stuff but seeing how overly entitled and arrogant supply chain idiots have treated suppliers , then I would say , go make hay and a lot of it.
Last week i had to sit through a litany of whining from SCM as to why the current batch of equipment was delayed because , oh the humanity two suppliers for subcomponents had declined the POs . No shit, you don’t pay them on time, you make submitting a invoice hell on earth and no matter how many times we say “critical vendor” , you respond “our buying power will solve it trust us” no there are only 4 machine shops that can cut steel , or a handful of IC parts and less than an handful of compentent companies that can stick them on a pcb. When the first ’ alternate supplier review uncovers the new vendors have just gone out and got a quote from the original critical suppliers and trying to resell their stuff , and its not hard to figure out who the ultimate customer is perhaps we just told our critical vendors all the talk of partnership was BS and we really are over a barrel , anyone care to guess what happens to price and lead time ot even accepting the PO.
There is a difference between a liquid commodity market pricing and just fucking people over because you can.
Fuck em, the balance of risk and reward needs restoring at many levels in the supply chain.
After much back-and-forth, I settled on Velocity Blue. I originally had Cyber Orange, and I still like that color, but it can be a bit “School Bus Yellow” in the wrong light.
The ECM failed on my Chevy Silverado last fall. Took it to the Chevy dealer and found out they would replace it free of charge due to a recall. The only problem is there is a shortage of ECM’s out there. I now have a repaired unit in my truck and a promise of a new part when they become available. At last check, I am number 61 on the list at this one dealer.
Since I drive a GMC pickup, a first cousin to your Silverado, it surely uses the same ECM.
Surely there is no reason why mine would be anything but perfect, but now my ECM is feeling itchy. I hope it’s doing fine!
