So my dad uses Raspberry Pi 4s at tower sites for remote access. Dad, has it been easy to get
Raspberry Pi 4s lately? No. And that's why I flew over 4,000 miles to the UK to visit the
official Raspberry Pi store. I want to see if there actually are Raspberry Pi 4s in stock
anywhere. Coming into the Raspberry Pi store we have a little family room area that has...
there's a cute little bear under there that my daughter would love. Along with it, it looks like
there's a Grow Hat Mini and an outdoor rain thing. So this looks like the
store is set up in a few different areas. There's that, there's also a little
welcoming, and that's nice. First of all, I apologize for some of the audio in
this video [at least the subtitles are good!]. I had to use my backup mic because I plugged my main microphone into
the output of my recorder and not the input. Oops! But walking around the store,
this first area is a welcoming living room type set with a bunch of hidden
gems like these Enviro hats that are actually connected back to another Pi
running Home Assistant.
Then as you walk in, the store was actually just remodeled a couple weeks ago, and the
centerpiece is a new Pi display with practically every product Raspberry Pi has ever made
after you pass by a bunch of Pis set up at just the right height for kids to hack on
them.
And behind that, there's a maker wall with some live demos like Pico bricks, where
you can modify the code and play around with them.
In that area also, it demos some other things like this Argon Neo case and the Pi Mouse
pads.
They even sell an Ender 3 S1, a 3D printer I actually just bought from my new office
back home. It's a nice printer. The centerpiece of the store is definitely this Pi display,
though. In just a few square feet, they have tons of Pi kits, and they also sell every
accessory from the Pi cameras to build hats and everything else. There are demos of the
Pi 400 and Pi 4 desktop kit, and well, that's pretty and all, but this wall, this is where
the action is, at least for me. I'm calling it the Maker Wall, because it has everything
from more Raspberry Pis to Pico Build kits, veroboard, soldering accessories, storage
cables, adapters, and even an oscilloscope. And of course, all the Pi bling, too, starting
with that cute little Babbage Bear. I did pick up one of those for my daughter, by the
way. And finally, when you go to check out, you can spend an hour looking at all the different
Pi prototypes they have on display, from the original Pi and Zero prototypes to alternative
case designs that are straight out of the 80s [or 90s, actually].
[Jeff talks to employee] One thing that, to me, the most impressive in the store is this wall. There are some
Raspberry Pi's over here, but there's so many little maker parts and wires and breadboards
and scopes and things. It's cool, but it's like I have a Micro Center too and they have
that. But you know, what is the experience here in the UK?
[Store employee] So we used to have a store called Maplin, which probably would have been as close as you could
get to a Micro Center over here. But sadly that closed down a good number of years ago.
Some of my managers who used to work in Maplin, they came across to Raspberry Pi when we were
opening up this first store. A lot of the stuff here is more or less the only place that you
can actually find them. So we have a whole bunch of resistors, we've got an
oscilloscope up there, breadboards, veroboards, just a whole bunch of like
maker products and everything where this is probably the only place that isn't
online you can actually find them in the UK. [Jeff] You can walk in...? [Employee] Yeah and you must go
off the shelf and yeah and we don't have everything of course but we have
enough that for a lot of people it covers all their bases. [Jeff again] Look there's
There's actually Raspberry Pi's.
It's not a myth.
They are here.
So if you need a Raspberry Pi, you can get a kit, the desktop kit.
There's a Pi 400.
There's a bunch of those.
So this is, looks like there are some.
And over here, I think I can get one for my dad.
There's, let's see, Pi 4 8 gig and 4 gig and 2 gig.
So any of these.
So I think, I'll probably get my dad a 4 gig.
So they do exist.
And I know you're going to ask, they actually do sometimes sell single Raspberry
Pi units outside of the kits and things like that, but they've had to do a lot of things
to prevent scalping. There actually was an underground scalping ring [lol, seriously!] that was going on that was like
coming in and buying up all the stock from the Raspberry Pi store every day. So yeah, scalpers
ruin everything. There's another Pi, this one has Home Assistant. So let's see here. Oh,
that's actually connected. Ah, that's kind of cool. So the buttons actually do things.
That's nice and it all works too. This is the end of the day—to be clear—and everything is still
working so that might be a good sign of the worth of the products that they put on display is that
they actually work at the end of a day at a retail store where the public can walk in and
and hammer on it. Camera module threes, global shutter camera that I just covered but that was
a weird time for me so I didn't do a full video on that yet. High quality camera,
Sense Hat build hat, PoE+ hat, all the different parts that you could need to do a Raspberry Pi project.
And from what I've heard, this setup here is going to be integrated into some Micro Centers [in the USA].
I think somebody already has one setup.
So St. Louis apparently is not cool enough to get one of these, but maybe someday [hopefully!].
This is the wall that I'm most interested in.
This is a fun wall. It has pretty much everything that you can need to build your own little maker space.
everything from—there's ESD mats and trays and containers and all the
bit sets that you'd ever need from iFixIt. Voltmeter, oscilloscope, all the
prototyping parts and things, soldering gear, the jumper cables and stuff and then
you have a bunch of cool Pi projects. There's a reel of... oops! [Jeff is clumsy] Well the retail
people are gonna kill me for doing that. I saw how good they were about
keeping this all clean throughout the day. I'll fix that for them. There we go.
That's a cool little kit. It's like the Galactic Unicorn, except it's teeny tiny. Oh I
didn't even see this. There's large veroboard for your big projects. You know
Micro Center doesn't have one that big! Pi zero. Look, they're in stock. You can buy one.
Pi Zero W, Zero WH with headers. Power supplies, keyboards and stuff. A bunch of
cases. I did see a few other things. They have USB drives. They have, I don't know what is this,
they have some game pads and things. They actually have SSDs and there's some merch,
Pi cables and all here are—and this; I think this is kind of new. Some of these stickers at least,
there's a bunch of stickers that you can get "Resistance is Futile". One other area that I like is
all these books. [sarcastically] They don't have my Ansible for DevOps book though. But then back here is a really
part of the store some of the Pi history so it looks like pretty much all the
different Pi models including a lot of prototypes. This right here was the first
Raspberry Pi prototype board and then you got other boards that are interesting.
It says that one is an LCD board. There's some compute models here. I guess they
never released a bling case but if they did that would be it. Some other case
designs. This one really reminds me of like the 19—late 90s of computing. So if
they were ever wanted to do a—you know in 10 or 20 years that'll be retro. And
check out, where now I'm gonna check this out and bring it back home to my dad.
Is this it today? Yep. That's it.
It comes to 90 pounds in total [British Sterling]. Great. Use that reader there.
There you go, and would you like your receipt? Yes, please. It'll print out that box in just a few minutes.
Thank's very much! [back at hotel] Goodbye beautiful hotel room
[British Elevator voice] Ground floor.
(wind blowing, train moving)
Alright, so 4,000 miles back from the UK to St. Louis, and Dad, here you go.
Hey, you found one!
Well... sort of.
I got that Pi from the Pi Store, but I also visited the Sony factory in Wales where
they make Raspberry Pis.
And I have good news.
Evan Upton, Raspberry Pi's CEO, told me they expect Pis to be back in stock soon.
Check out the whole interview right up here [Jeff gesticulates towards top right corner].
The Pi factory video is taking a long time to finish, but it's gonna be worth it, so
make sure you're subscribed.
And until next time, I'm Jeff Gereling [seriously, that's how AI thinks I spell my last name!].