Scrapegoat - Raspberry Pi Price Tracker

by Tony
  • projects
  • scrapegoat
  • raspberry-pi
  • microcenter
Scrapegoat - Raspberry Pi Price Tracker

Scrapegoat is a small Python + PHP project that automatically scrapes Micro Center’s Raspberry Pi listings, tracks prices over time, and publishes live tables and charts. It builds daily snapshots, flags sales and all-time lows, and outputs Reddit-ready markdown tables — all powered by static JSON data, no database needed.

Back in August’s Raspberry Pi Price Tracking post, I talked about a quick Markdown table I built by hand to compare Micro Center’s Raspberry Pi prices. It worked fine for a snapshot, but those numbers go stale fast — and I wanted something that could keep itself up-to-date.

Enter Scrapegoat — a small Python + PHP project that automates the whole process.

View up to date pi pricing data here!

View up to date pi pricing data here!

What it does

  • Scrapes Micro Center’s official Raspberry Pi brand listings once a day.
  • Offers Reddit-friendly markdown tables at the click of a button.
  • Runs as a GitHub action and stores the data on the repo.
  • Normalizes the data and keeps a dated CSV + JSON history.
  • Flags when an item goes on sale or hits an all-time low.
  • Publishes interactive tables and charts at
    xtonyx.org/scrapegoat/tables.php

The front-end uses PHP + DataTables + Chart.js so you can search, sort, and visualize trends without any external database — everything runs off static JSON exports generated by the scraper.

Under the hood

Scrapegoat is a lightweight pipeline:

  1. search.py – pulls the latest product listings from Micro Center.
  2. 10_merge_history.py – merges snapshots into a long-term history.
  3. 20_flags.py – computes rolling medians, sale flags, and low-price markers.
  4. 25_export_json.py – exports tidy JSON bundles for the website.
  5. A local cron job (or GitHub Actions) runs these scripts and syncs the new data to the site.

No external services, no login, no ads — just clean, reproducible data.

Why it exists

The goal is to keep a transparent, community-friendly record of Raspberry Pi pricing over time.
Micro Center has long been the go-to benchmark for realistic hardware pricing, and now those prices are tracked automatically — perfect for comparisons, budgeting projects, or just nerding out on market trends.

More features are coming — I’d like to add historical comparisons, notifications for new lows, and perhaps support for other SBC brands.
For now, Scrapegoat quietly keeps an eye on the Pi shelf so I don’t have to.