{"id":128301,"date":"2021-09-29T17:23:49","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T00:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/ic-shortage-keeps-linux-out-of-phone-charger-for-now"},"modified":"2021-09-29T17:23:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T00:23:49","slug":"ic-shortage-keeps-linux-out-of-phone-charger-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/ic-shortage-keeps-linux-out-of-phone-charger-for-now","title":{"rendered":"IC Shortage Keeps Linux Out Of Phone Charger, For Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been eagerly following the development of the WiFiWart for some time now, as a quad-core Cortex-A7 USB phone charger with dual WiFi interfaces that runs OpenWrt sounds exactly like the sort of thing we need in our lives. Unfortunately, we\u2019ve just heard from [Walker] that progress on the project has been slowed down indefinitely by crippling chip shortages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At this point, we\u2019ve all heard how the chip shortage is impacting the big players out there. It makes sense that automakers are feeling the pressure<\/a>, since they are buying literally millions of components at a clip. But stories like this are a reminder that even an individual\u2019s hobby project can be sidelined by parts that are suddenly 40 times as expensive as they were when you first put them in your bill of materials.<\/p>\n

In this particular case, [Walker] explains that a power management chip you could get on DigiKey for $1.20 USD a few months ago is now in such short supply that the best offer he\u2019s found so far is $49.70 a pop from an electronics broker in Shenzhen. It sounds like he\u2019s going to bite the bullet and buy the four of them (ouch) that he needs to build a working prototype, but obviously it\u2019s a no go for production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been eagerly following the development of the WiFiWart for some time now, as a quad-core Cortex-A7 USB phone charger with dual WiFi interfaces that runs OpenWrt sounds exactly like the sort of thing we need in our lives. Unfortunately, we\u2019ve just heard from [Walker] that progress on the project has been slowed down indefinitely [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1512],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-mobile-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}