March | 2012 | Raspberry Pi

Some little bits and bobs of news – and more photos

A post for little bits of news that didn’t really fit in anywhere else.

First of all, we’ve added a new page to the bar at the top. It’s a list of trademark rules; we’ve been getting a lot of questions from you about using the words “Raspberry Pi” or the logo on websites, books or products, so we thought we should put the rules in a central place. As always, you can mail me if you’ve got any questions.

Pete Lomas, who did the hardware design for the final version of the Raspberry Pi, did a blog post for element14 yesterday about his experience of the compliance stuff we’re working through this week. It’s well worth a read, and he’s said he’ll drop by to answer any questions you might have here later, so leave a comment if you’d like to ask anything.

And finally, some of you were asking whether there were any photos of the Raspberry Pis we have already in the UK. (We showed you some pictures from the factory the other day.) Jack, trustee extraordinaire and our COO, sent me these. Sadly, he has not done the hostage proof-of-life thing by making the pallet hold today’s newspaper, nor has he balanced a cucumber sandwich and a cup of tea on the Raspberry Pis to demonstrate that they are in England; but they’re here, waiting to go out to you as soon as EM tests are passed and the CE docs are filed.

Palletised Pis

I'm wondering if this counts as the first unboxing post!

Each of these little boxes holds 50 Raspberry Pis.

We're really pleased they pack down so neatly - one of the reasons we aimed for a footprint as small as possible was to ensure shipping costs for schools and other institutions around the world would be nice and low. You could outfit two classrooms with what's in this box alone.

Jack's removed one from the box (remember, it's the size of a pack of cards) and put it on top so you can get an idea of scale.

Fuze – a ZX Spectrum emulator running on Raspberry Pi

At the celebrations for the BBC Micro’s 30th birthday on Sunday (more on that to come, when the organisers’ videos are available), we met the rather excellent Andy Taylor. Andy volunteers for the UK Computer Museum, and had been working on getting their Raspberry Pi software ready to exhibit at the event. Rather than sitting back and twiddling his thumbs when he was done, he decided to fill his spare time by porting Fuze, a ZX Spectrum emulator, to the Raspberry Pi. I’m not sure why (nostalgia’s a powerful thing), but seeing Manic Miner running on a Raspberry Pi was, for me, even cooler than seeing Quake 3 back when we demoed it last year. (I note we never did set up that Deathmatch. I shall add it to the Big List of Things to Do.)

Andy also took some device photos on the day which are on Flickr. You might want to swing over; there’s a good shot of the underside of the board, which is something I know some of you have wanted to see more of.

Did you get an August date from element14? Don’t panic!

We got this mail late last night from the guys at element14′s head office – it’s of relevance to those of you who got a very discouraging delivery update yesterday from Newark.

We’d like to apologise to all customers who placed orders with Newark element14 and have seen their acknowledged delivery date suddenly change on our website’s order backlog to August 2012.

At present, as already communicated by Raspberry Pi, all deliveries are on hold awaiting the outcome of the compliance testing currently taking place.

To avoid misleading people while the compliance testing takes place, our system auto-generated the August date, which has clearly caused confusion. We’re sorry!

We can absolutely commit that our orders will be shipped in the order they were originally received and that no-one has lost their place in the ‘queue’ as a result of this latest change.

Once the compliance testing is complete we will then have a clearer idea about our future deliveries and we will confirm accurate delivery dates to our many thousands of customers.

Apologies again for any confusion this action has caused. We firmly believe delivery will be much sooner than August.

Newark element14

An update on CE compliance

Update 23.45pm Mar 30: minor changes to the article to reflect the fact that recent versions of the BeagleBoard-xM appear to have acquired a CE mark.

Update, 8.40pm Mar 28: element14 have put out a new update to their FAQ, enlarging on what’s happening with CE compliance. It’s well worth a read – head on over!

Update, 6pm Mar 28: we have spoken with BIS this morning, and they have confirmed that, given the volumes involved and the demographic mix of likely users, any development board exemption is not applicable to us; as a result, even the first uncased developer units of Raspberry Pi will require a CE mark prior to sale in the EU. As we mention below, we are working with RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell to bring Raspberry Pi into a compliant state as soon as is humanly possible.

Following on from last week’s discussions, both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell have now informed us that they are not able to distribute the Raspberry Pi until it has received the CE mark. While this differs from our historical view (as we’ve said before, we believed that the uncased Raspberry Pi was not a “finished end product”, and could be distributed on the same terms as earlier versions of the BeagleBoard and other non-CE-marked platforms), we respect their right to make that decision.

The good news is that our first 2,000 boards arrived in the UK on Monday and that we are working to get them CE marked as soon as is humanly possible, in parallel with bringing the remainder of our initial batch into the country. Pete and Eben have been burning the midnight oil – literally; I only exchanged about three words with Eben yesterday, and those were when he got back in from a long day’s hacking at two in the morning. On the basis of preliminary measurements, we expect emissions from the uncased product to meet category A requirements comfortably without modification, and possibly to meet the more stringent category B requirements which we had originally expected would require a metalised case.

We’re also talking to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), to better understand the terms under which other non-CE-marked platforms are permitted to ship to domestic end users in the UK, and to obtain a definitive statement as to whether we can distribute on the same terms. We should say the UK Government in general, and BIS in particular, have been incredibly supportive of the project so far; they are looking into this as a matter of urgency, so hopefully we should have another update for you soon. With graphs in. We know you guys love graphs.

All this means that we’re waiting on one of two things – the results of further EMC tests, and whatever BIS comes back to us with – before RS and element 14/Premier Farnell can give you any firm delivery dates. We’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Finally, here, as promised, are some pictures from the factory (taken by one of the observers RS sent in – both RS and element14 have people onsite to oversee production) of the boards that the Foundation now has.

Raspberry pis in the factory

Each board spends a short while at the test bench. These are functionality tests which are performed in China, not the compliance tests we're doing later this week in the UK.

Once a board has passed, it's ready to be put in an anti-static bag and sent out.

RS availability and purchasing info update

This has just landed in my mailbox from the guys at RS Components, and needs sharing:

Hi Liz! I wanted to give you a quick update on some progress we have made with simplifying the international ordering process for Raspberry Pi’s from RS. This is in addition to the universal worldwide pricing info shared recently, and we believe that it will provide help for RS customers all over the world.

We will be opening up a bespoke Online Raspberry Pi Store for customers to order their Raspberry Pi Model B boards and all associated accessories. The store will be opened up to customers who have registered with RS, in sequence, according to the time that they registered their interest with us. Our new Raspberry Pi Store has been designed to support private individuals wishing to purchase Raspberry Pi’s and has a number of advantages for customers:

The current RS websites do not support PayPal but the new RS Raspberry Pi Store will accept orders via PayPal, Visa and Mastercard. (I know there has been some questions about this!)

Customers will be able to select between payment currencies of GBP£, Euro€ or USD$.

We are no longer restricted from selling to private individuals in Austria, so we are able to support all countries unless we are legally prohibited by trade restrictions.

If you have any questions please leave them below, and I’ll try to get someone from RS to come along later and answer them. I know some of you are waiting on an update on CE marking; I hope we’ll have something for you before the end of today, so keep your eyes on the blog.

Update, 14:27: RS just emailed me to say:

[Conversation about Liz's knee redacted.]

…Please reassure everyone that RS have not removed ANYONE from our queue of registrants and that we will be inviting people into the Raspberry Pi Store just as soon as we can get a fix on the compliance implications! We are unable to respond to individual enquires from registrants for now, but we are issuing weekly updates via email to everyone who has registered with RS. If people are not yet receiving our weekly emails then it’s possible that the wrong email address may have been entered at the time of registration. In this case, we would strongly recommend that people re-register with RS Components as soon as possible.

Pricing matrix update from element14/Premier Farnell

The folks at element14 have just emailed me to ask me to let you know about an update to the pricing table for the Raspberry Pi they put out a couple of weeks ago. The update addresses a couple of errors in the previous version, in particular the slip-ups (they said I should call these “unforgivable”, which is awfully nice of them, but given some of the mistakes I make round here from time to time, I think we’ll let it slide) where Italy was left out, and the delivery charges which were being made in error in Australia. They’ve asked me to pass on their apologies, and to say that they commit that all orders will be charged at the price shown here, unless the previous price you ordered at was lower, in which case that price will be honoured. There are also sales tax updates on the grid where relevant.

There are also a few changes and clarifications in response to specific questions some of you raised here on the forums:

Greece and Southern Cyprus are classified as EU (VAT rates differ according to which countries they’re VAT registered for).
Element14/Premier Farnell will be able to take consumer credit card orders from all European countries ~~from tomorrow morning, Wednesday 28th March~~
[[Liz edit, 8pm Mar 27 - Our friend J from element14 just emailed to say: It seems that the system will go live but initially access will be restricted to the thousands and thousands of customers who have registered interest and have waited patiently to place their orders so it will be next week before its open access to all. I have seriously upset our IT department…]] when their new Export website goes live (the new Export website will be at the same URL as the current site). This means an end to the sales to businesses only.
They will be handling all consumer transactions through their UK business, and this means the card transactions will be taken in £GBP, constrained by their current card processing capability. This means that the price is shown in the currency in which you’ll be charged (i.e. £ GPB and not € Euros.) You will then see the transaction on your card statement in the appropriate currency, as worked out by your card company.

Here’s the whole grid (click to enlarge) – WordPress and Word don’t play nicely together when it comes to tables, so I’ve had to take a screengrab:

Element14/Premier Farnell pricing matrix

Gertboard rev2 video

Here’s some video from Gert on the new revision of Gertboard, an expansion board for the Raspberry Pi which brings out the GPIO. There are some lovely demos of Gertboard enabling the Raspberry Pi to work with an analog slider controller and a motor here.

Apologies to Gert, who sent me this last week while I was offline; I only saw it today. The “next week” he mentions is, in fact, this week – hooray! A general rule for everyone: if you want to get in touch with me and it’s important, please email rather than PM me. (Famous last words before being buried in a ton of mail.)

Gert should be able to answer your questions below.

Compliance testing

Some people have been in touch to ask about an email they’ve received from RS Components, talking about compliance testing and Raspberry Pi.

The compliance testing referred to here relates to assessing the device’s electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and in particular the extent to which it generates unacceptable levels of electromagnetic noise. EMC testing is a necessary prerequisite to obtaining various consumer-protection certifications including (in the European Union) CE marking. It is common practice for development hardware to be sold without such certification, with the proviso that it should not be considered to be a “finished end product”; for example the BeagleBoard System Reference Manual contains the following disclaimer:

This evaluation board/kit is intended for use for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION, OR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY and is not considered by BeagleBoard.org to be a finished end-product fit for general consumer use. Persons handling the product(s) must have electronics training and observe good engineering practice standards. As such, the goods being provided are not intended to be complete in terms of required design-, marketing-, and/or manufacturing-related protective considerations, including product safety and environmental measures typically found in end products that incorporate such semiconductor components or circuit boards. This evaluation board/kit does not fall within the scope of the European Union directives regarding electromagnetic compatibility, restricted substances (RoHS), recycling (WEEE), FCC, CE or UL, and therefore may not meet the technical requirements of these directives or other related directives.

While we had intended to defer compliance testing of Raspberry Pi until the cased educational release later in the year, demand for the uncased version (and the level of interest from outside the engineering community) has been so high that both RS Components and Premier Farnell have asked us to bring this forward. We did a first trial run in a test chamber this week, and will have a detailed technical update for you in the next few days.

Programming the Raspberry Pi webinar with Eben, April 4

I can’t believe I’ve just typed the word “webinar”. It’s a horrible neologism – right up there with “mentee” and “edutainment”. Still, a webinar is what Eben’s* doing, so that’s what we’re having to call it. We hope all you mentees will find it edutaining.

A monster hand attached to a tiny person.

Eben’s hosting this (deep breath) webinar with Element 14 on April 4 at 2pm GMT. (Edit – as people are mentioning in the comments, you may be thrown off here by daylight saving. 2pm GMT is 3pm BST, and 10am EST for our friends who want to work the time out using a standard closer to home.) The subject matter will suit beginners, and should be pretty interesting for those of you who are hardened hackers too. He’ll be showing you how to:

download and install the Operating System on the SD card
run the boot up script
use the script editor and begin to create applications using the presupplied Python scripts

If you want to attend, you’ll need to sign up for the event at Element 14′s website. We hope to see you there – we’re looking forward to it!

Edited to add: We’ve checked with Element14, and a video of the webinar will be made available for those of you who can’t attend because you’re at work, it’s 2am where you live, etc. etc. You’ll have to be an Element14 member to watch, but we’ll make sure you have instructions on how to sign up and view when it’s released.

*If you are wondering: “Who the hell is Eben?”, we suggest a visit to the About page.

As to Qs for Pete Lomas

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with Pete Lomas, the Raspberry Pi Foundation trustee and all round good bloke who did the hardware design for the Raspberry Pi. It was a good opportunity to put some of the questions our Twitter followers had sent to him. (You may have seen Pete in some of our videos – he’s the fella in the lab coat and tartan trousers with the soldering iron and a fistful of capacitors.) At some point the names of those asking the questions went adrift from the questions themselves (entirely my fault) – if you asked one of these and would like to be acknowledged, please leave a comment below!

Pete’s answering questions here rather than on Twitter because he is constitutionally incapable of expressing himself in fewer than 140 characters. Over to Pete:

Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Cos I have bird seed in my pocket – why else?

Will RAM upgrades be available soon? And do you think you will move towards the multi processor boards?

We are looking at the possibility of a Model B+ with additional RAM, but the costs do not look promising and unless we really run out of space for the cool stuff people want to do then it will be a while

Why is the Pi selective about SD cards it will work with, surely the SD SDHC is a standard? [[Liz: This is about the problems we've had with Class 10 cards.]]

It looks like the jump to smaller die and process has created some anomalies that for some reason the BCM2835 cannot handle, this is also reflected in issues with Class 10. We will publish a tested list but we have already found that the same Card manufactured in different years – have different die, the early one is OK and the later one not. This is an issue and a real pain but we are looking at it. It also affects microSD cards for identical reasons.

What beer do you like?

Peroni & Guinness – how end of the spectrum can you get. [[Liz: I will point out here that while Pete is trying to present himself as the Common Man in his beverage choices, we *did* spot a bottle of Cristal on his desk just before Christmas.]]

Are you surprised by the demand, or just feeling quietly justified that you’ve made something really cool that everyone wants?

Overwhelmed – never justified – we have a target to get these in schools and filling that gap – that’s my focus. However my 9 yr old son tells me its cool!

How to be so awesome?

(Do I even understand the question) I’d say do your best – s**t happens – but keep focused and you’ll get there…eventually. That’s what I kept telling myself trying to route out the BGA…

Why alre the USB ports so misaligned with the ethernet one?! Ok, I know the answer, but tell him – crying – all the same!

When I saw the prototype I realised I’d messed this one up – my PCB symbol’s outline was just plain wrong – makes cases kind of interesting. Eben is threatening to buy me beer until I agree to fix it – I think we will as soon as we spin.

Why no sound input on RPi ? (could have used the same audio jack but with 4 contacts – like on a mobile phone)

There are no inbuilt Audio ADC’s so there would be a cost adder – everyone was sat on my head to get costs down. They can be easily added via the GPIO.

Was there ever consideration to put Bluetooth on the Pi?

Would have been really cool but the budget would be blown - Bluetooth to USB is the way to go.

No holes, difficult casing Why not microSD and combined composite video + stereo jack to free some board space?

OK but mounting holes cost 7-8mm diameter where no tracks can go – could not see any sensible locations without compromising I/O. In plastic it is quite easy to mould catches – there is something on the way…

Ask him if there is anything he would have done differently, knowing what he knows now? Also – What was the biggest sacrifice?

There are a few niggles with the design, mounting holes, connector alignment but in the basic design, but no, it does the job. The biggest sacrifice….hmmm staying sober to do the layout …..seriously if it achieves the goal we have set – its awesomely worth it . Thanks for your support.

Can the fuses at USB be safely removed to provide >140 mA to USB or is there power concern that requires the limitation? [[Liz: I believe this is a question of interest to almost nobody but Abishur, but asked Pete to answer it because Abishur is a very helpful fellow around these parts!]]

The fuses kick in hard around 280mA and fold back and limit to 140mA. If you remove them then all you have for protection is the 700mA inbound fuse. The tracking on the board is good for 500mA+ so you could if you really wanted too. What about a powered hub – to power the Pi and bigger USB devices.

No questions, but please say THANK YOU PETE!

Thanks for you support – enjoy.