... almost impossible.
I had to hunt high and low. Every normal US supplier was out. Some places are taking backorders with October or November delivery dates (saying they expect shipments on Sep 30 or Oct 30). Some places are saying that their backorders are sold out (so I assume that means that all the items they have coming in the fall are already spoken for).
It appears to be impossible to order just the boards at this time, but Pi Hut in the UK had a starter kit in stock with the RPi4B, 32GB micro-SD, UK power supply, case, HDMI cable for GBP 58 for 2GB and GBP 83 for 8GB (no 4GB available).
RPi recommends 4GB or more for Ubuntu. From what I read (LM would know I'm sure), if you use zswap you can run Ubuntu on a 2GB RPi, but since I don't know anything about this I went for the 8GB to be safe. A bit more power consumption, but that's not my main concern.
My goal is to use it with Speedify as a bonding router to combine my two crappy internet sources into what I hope will be one sorta decent one. I figured if it is handling two WAN connections and streaming to multiple devices (which should be possible when Starlink functions), I don't want to be constrained by my router. Or, for that matter, worry that I'm constrained by my router.
So I ordered the 8GB kit + US power supply + heatsink/fan kit for what came out to $150 -- $124 in hardware plus $26 in shipping.
More than I had hoped to spend, but better than $140 for a Model 4 from 2019 (maybe that's the same as what I'm getting, but I didn't know) for just the board on Amazon and well worth it if I can figure out how to fit all the pieces together.
Before it's all said and done, I think I might need a powered USB hub and a USB wifi adapter for the hotspot function (with the idea of using the on-board wifi for one of the two WAN connections).
Littleman has piqued my curiosity about RPi many times, but all my other use cases were more puttering than trying to find a genuine solution to a problem. But I finally took the plunge!
**Pi Hut starter kits - the only ones I could find on planet earth
https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-starter-kit?variant=31994566639678
**Overpriced 2GB board on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Model-2019-Quad-Bluetooth/dp/B07TD42S27/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=fp9wJ&content-id=amzn1.sym.bbb6bbd8-d236-47cb-b42f-734cb0cacc1f&pf_rd_p=bbb6bbd8-d236-47cb-b42f-734cb0cacc1f&pf_rd_r=18TZRH4P35XP6H95V7C6&pd_rd_wg=l4eEl&pd_rd_r=283d2f21-0d01-4764-9c99-9cedccda1991&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mi
**RPi statement about supply issues
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-our-first-ever-price-increase/
TL;DR: yes, there is a chip shortage, but there has also been a spike in demand.
**Media coverage of the current RPi supply issues
https://www.makeuseof.com/eben-upton-raspberry-pi-shortages-400-pico/
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-supply-issues
https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-why-they-are-so-hard-to-buy-right-now-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
> current RPi supply issues
Yeah, it has been a long term shortage, pretty much throughout the pandemic. That crossed my mind when you mentioned it re Starlink.
>plunge
Is this going to be a user machine or dedicated to starlink management?
Dedicated to internet management.
The idea, if it works is to use Speedify, which can bond two connections and provide (based on one Youtube review I saw) essentially instant failover. This has two advantages over using a load balancing router for failover
1. You keep the same IP, so Zoom does not disconnect (important for my wife's meetings and for the class I teach).
2. It's almost instant. Given how frequent and brief the Starlink outages are, a traditional dual WAN router set up for failover would not work (it seems 20 seconds to failover is common).
Basically it would be Starlink and Hughesnet as ISPs, Speedify as a bonding VPN. The "normal" way to do this is to install Speedify on every device and have two network cards on every device. With the RPi, you basically end up with a sort of Speedify gateway router that everyone connects too.
The one part I'm still pondering is how to hook it all up. The Starlink router does not come with an ethernet port. You can buy an adapter, but I'm hoping to connect it to the RPi as a wireless bridge. That uses the RPi wifi card for Starlink and the ethernet card for Hughenet.
Then I need another wifi card for the clients to connect to (i.e. the actual hotspot). I'm mostly worried that having them so close physically will cause a lot of interference. So I'm thinking of ways to separate them in space a bit.
But I don't know jack about networking. Is having two wifi routers a few inches apart a problem or will they find separate frequencies? I think that power decreases as a square of distance, so it seems like going from 10cm apart to 200 cm apart would have a big impact on interference.
Dedicated.
http://th3core.com/talk/hardware-technology/raspberry-pi-speedify-two-isps/
The availibility issue has really been tough. Timing wise I feel pretty lucky with my setup. I recently updated to the 64 bit OS and have been quite happy with it after doing my regular tweaks.
>RPi recommends 4GB or more for Ubuntu. From what I read, if you use zswap you can run Ubuntu on a 2GB RPi, but since I don't know anything about this I went for the 8GB to be safe. A bit more power consumption, but that's not my main concern.
If you are doing all command line then it Ubuntu vs. RPiOS won't make much difference with ram. Though, if that's the case I would go ahead and install a server version of Ubuntu to avoid the unneeded bloat. That said, consider the 64 bit RPiOS. It is well optimized for the device and you will get the most support/documentation with that OS when you need to troubleshoot. From my experience it also has the greatest software support of all the Pi OSs. Ubuntu and RPiOS are both Debian based, so if you are familiar with the underlying processes in Ubuntu you should be good to go in RPiOS.
>>consider the 64 bit RPiOS
I misread the Speedify docs and thought I needed to run Ubuntu (I'm so clueless that, at the time, I didn't realize that the Raspberry PI OS is another Debian flavor and uses the same package managers I'm used to etc).
Now that I've learned a bit, I came to the same conclusion and am planning to run RPiOS. I also finally figured out that Raspberry Pi OS is just the new name for Raspbian. I thought one was an official name and other was a nickname.
>Raspberry Pi OS is just the new name for Raspbian
Yeah, that caused a lot of confusion when they made the switch.