Major sadness in the crafting community: no Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023

The computer tinkering community had it hard enough in 2022: the acute lack of chip manufacturing capacity drove the motivation to tackle printed circuit boards, diodes, and input/output logic. Shortly before Christmas there is another bad news: next year there will be none Raspberry Pi 5 donate.

For those who only understand the train station, here’s a brief explanation: Raspberry Pi is an ultra-small computer that can be used for everyday activities such as browsing, creating documents and the like. Its variety of connections and low power consumption make it a popular tool in the handicraft community especially, for example to control an automatic plant watering system or a webcam server.

From the fifth version – too Grate 5 called – the expectation was that the computer would become even more powerful. However, this won’t happen anytime soon, as Eben Upton, head of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explains in an interview with the YouTube channel “ExplainingComputers”.

Upton justifies this with several factors: on the one hand, the lack of chips has led to a supply backlog that they now want to reduce. On the other hand, they don’t want to get in the way of this by launching the Raspi 5. In other words: the focus is on the existing models.

In any case, the production of a new version could not have started quickly. So far, it’s completely unclear what the Raspi 5 might look like. Brainstorming for this will not start until next year – probably in the summer, which means the product could not hit the market until 2024.

After all, Upton can also bring positive news. Because the focus on the existing models could mean that products that have been ordered for a long time can also be delivered. The devices of the Zero and Zero-W lines are given priority, which mainly benefits commercial and industrial customers. Then come the more famous devices of the third and fourth version.

(pit)