A Pi-culiar Discovery

Oh where, oh where, has my little Pi gone? Oh where, oh where can it be? The global chip shortage that emerged in recent years left many of us singing the blues when trying to purchase one of our favorite electronics devices, such as the Raspberry Pi computer. That chip shortage has finally begun to ease up, and stock levels of the Raspberry Pi have started to normalize. But the wounds have not fully healed yet. Memories of a time when we had the perfect project idea for a Raspberry Pi ready to go, but the only availability was through a scalper charging ten times the normal retail price, are still too fresh.

Some new information came out recently that might not help you to feel any better about that Pi drought, so I am going to get right to the point — there were tons of free (sort of) Raspberry Pi 4 Model B computers laying around on city streets right under our noses the entire time. It stings, I know, but it is best to just rip the band-aid off quickly. And look at the bright side — many of those Raspberry Pis are still out there.

A company by the name of Spin got into the motorized scooter rental service in Seattle recently, but the arrangement did not work out very well for them. So, Spin closed up shop in the city, but they left all of their scooters behind, apparently abandoned on the streets. After some time had passed and no one came to pick up the scooters, some residents decided that finders keepers rules applied, even if these rules hold more force on a playground than in a court of law.

The more curious among these people cracked open the cases to see what makes them tick. To their surprise, they found each was powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 computer. Exactly what purpose it serves has not been reported on yet. There is no word on what the functions of any of the other components connected to the Raspberry Pi are either. Perhaps with a bit more time some more detailed explorations of the hardware will be written up.

We can wildly speculate based on some images that have been posted online for now, however. There does appear to be a camera attached to the Pi that looks out through a hole in the casing. And given the power of a Raspberry Pi 4 (as compared with a Pi Zero, for example), we might be able to infer that the scooter is doing some type of object detection or classification, perhaps for safety purposes. Only time will tell.

Until then, it is important to note that Spin has not declared their intentions for these scooters, so grabbing one off the street is still very much a gray area. But with Raspberry Pi stocks being what they are today, and with prices coming back down to Earth, the temptation to fly to Seattle to bag a bunch of Pis is greatly diminished in any case.